TALENT EDGE WEEKLY - Issue #7

March 21, 2020

Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly - the weekly newsletter for strategic human resources practitioners, bringing together talent insights from various sources.

Note: You can also access this and other content I post at my website, www.brianheger.com.

COVID-19

This past week we have all been consumed by COVID-19 and the impact that it continues to have on us, our families, friends, and colleagues.

And to provide my HR colleagues with resources and information to help navigate their organizations through this difficult time, I started a special issue of this newsletter last week, COVID-19 Resources for HR.

I will continue to update that special issue each day as I come across new information on the topic and will do so until needed. You can check that issue for daily updates.

For the current issue, I shift to other topics such as Reinventing HR, HRBP as data translator, talent assessment and development, strategic workforce planning, improving the impact of leadership development, internal mobility, emotion analytics used in recruiting, and pay transparency.

As always, I ask that you share this newsletter with at least one of your team members or colleagues and that you share it on your social media networks. Doing so will help us to continue to advance strategic HR and learn together.

If you aren’t yet a subscriber to this newsletter and want to have it delivered to your inbox each Saturday, please subscribe!

Have a great weekend everyone and please be safe.

Brian

————————————————————————

Brian Heger leads Strategic Talent, Workforce Planning, and Analytics for a Fortune 150 organization. To connect with Brian on Linkedin, click here.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

HR EFFECTIVENESS

Given the speed at which work continues to change, Josh Bersin presents the case that HR leaders need to reinvent the way we work, run HR, and manage our teams. To do so, it requires HR to drive the simplification of HR processes, employ technology to drive better employee experience, and mandates that HR be reorganized into "agile pools of problem solvers, designers and service delivery consultants." 10 suggestions are offered for how HR can deliver value in this context. And while each of the 10 ideas offers sound advice, there is one, in particular, I want to point out: Building an internal talent mobility strategy--where an organization views its talent as an internal and open talent market place where jobs and projects are openly shared, and employees are identified and placed into those assignments, sometimes enabled through AI. Instead of HR spending time on modifying structured career models, HR can better serve our organizations by developing and deploying an agile, internal talent market place approach. 

I recently read a report on how data scientists' jobs are becoming one of the fastest-growing roles. This is not a surprise given that organizations increasingly realize the potential of using data, especially people analytics, to make better decisions. However, one doesn't have to be a data scientist in order to leverage the power of data. In the HR context, Human Resources Business Partners (HRBPs) sit in the perfect role of being a "data translator" - one who first helps to ask the right business question, ask the right questions of the data, and then helps to turn those insights into a story that will engage and resonate, stakeholders, to take action. In this role, HRBPs help to bridge the technical expertise of analytics with the operational knowledge of marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, risk, and other frontline managers--so that it has business relevance and value. Organizations can benefit from equipping and empowering HRBPs to become data translators. This article provides a few ideas on the topic. 

STRATEGIC WORKFORCE PLANNING

Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) continues to become recognized as an important capability for organizations to drive long-term growth and success. And while the practice of SWP has been around for decades, it has gained increased attention during the past couple of years for several reasons including tightened labor markets, changes in the nature of work and worker expectations, and increased pressures to deliver in competitive business environments. This article provides four suggestions for carrying out SWP. The tactics range from 1) having a strong partnership between HR and Finance, 2) incorporating a skills-based approach, 3) integrating external labor market data into internal insights, and 4) shifting SWP efforts from roles to tasks - where roles are deconstructed into specific activities. These activities are used as the basis for taking actions such as determining which activities can be automated, done by contingent labor, or require strategic, creative, and unique solutions that are more likely to be done by full-time employees who become a source of strategic differentiation.

TALENT MANAGEMENT

This short article speaks to the 9 box assessment tool--a tactic that organizations have used for years in which they assess employees using a 3x3 grid (one axis for performance and one potential). The "box" that an employee gets categorized will usually inform the actions taken such as the level of development or future opportunities that the employee may be afforded. And although the 9 box may still work within some organizations, many have called for alternatives to assessing talent. My personal take is that the 9 Box:1) Adds more complexity without value. Only a few boxes are actually used in practice. 2)Raters still struggle to differentiate between performance and potential in spite of definitions.3) There is an emphasis on top and bottom boxes, which overlooks talent planning for the bulk of an organization. 4) Complexity requires multiple calibration sessions, often spending inordinate time on discussing “nuances" that don't add practical, business value. If the 9 box works for you, then great. But if you feel it is no longer as relevant given today's talent environment and priorities, it could be a good time to make a change. 

In case you missed this HBR article earlier in the year, the authors do a nice job of outlining 7 science-based recommendations to help update an organization's hiring tactics and develop a better talent pipeline. A thesis of the article is that great managers and leaders are also great "talent agents"- where they detect talent before others see it (both internally and externally). However, to become an effective talent agent it requires leaders to be more open minded and abandon outdated, but popular, selection and placement assumptions. For example, many still look for talent in the same old (wrong) places or follow the popular trend of thinking the “best hire” is the “best culture fit”, or have a preconceived notion of what experience a candidate must have. Aside from this approach undermining efforts to boost diversity (demographically, experiential, and thinking styles) it may also exclude talented team members within an organization's own internal talent market--where a "non-obvious" candidate can become a top performer in a role. 

A study of 32 million profiles of active LinkedIn users who've worked at a larger company (one with more than 500 employees) since 2013 illustrates the important role that internal mobility plays in retention. The study found the likelihood of an employee staying with a company decreases as the years pass. One year after being hired, there's a 76% chance the worker will still be with the company; however, this drops significantly by year five with estimated retention of 38 %. However, employees who were promoted within three years of being hired have a 70% chance of staying onboard, and those who made a lateral move have a 62% chance of staying. Those who were not promoted and who did not change jobs internally have only a 45% chance of remaining. Aside from internal mobility, the study showed the manager effectiveness, as well as employee empowerment, also had an impact on retention. Overall, the study underscores that internal mobility, manager quality, and empowerment are important drivers of retention.  

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

The report provides an overall review of the current state of leadership development as well as analysis, critical questions organizations must answer, and tactics on how leadership development can be improved. The study presents the finding that less than 60% of organizations believe their leaders possess the competencies and emotional intelligence to successfully drive business goals over the next couple of years. Driving this concern are four factors. 1) Succession management is inadequate , 2) High-potential identification/development is not effective, 3) Top leadership is not sufficiently active in developing leaders , 4) Insufficient focus on building foundational leadership skills (including emotional intelligence). While the report provides various insights, pages 21-22 provide a list of questions that organizations can ask and answer in order to overcome these challenges.

TOTAL REWARDS

A survey from WorldatWork and Mercer found that 67% of organizations report pay transparency as increasing in importance at their organizations. However, only 14% of organizations have approached pay transparency beyond a “moderate” level. Pay transparency was defined as the degree to which employers are open about what, why, how and how much employees are compensated, and to which they allow employees to share pay‐related information with others. This can extend beyond base pay to include variable pay and other rewards components, as well as other facets and/or means to rewards, such as promotions, recognition, development and performance assessment. The report has insights that might be useful for organizations as they develop or refine their philosophy on this sensitive topic. With employees increasingly expecting and valuing transparency in general from their employer, this topic in the context of rewards is likely to grow in the years ahead. 

TALENT ACQUISITION | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

As video technology and AI are increasingly adopted by many organizations in the context of recruiting, we continue to learn of the downsides that these technologies (many of which are in their infancy) can sometimes bring. One of the recruiting AI applications that have come under increased scrutiny is emotion analytics (EA) -a software that collects data on how a person communicates verbally and nonverbally to understand the person's mood or attitude. It uses this information to determine how suitable the candidate is for a role and how successful a candidate will be in the position. However, research from psychologists, plus concerns from AI experts and privacy groups, indicates EA does not produce accurate results. This article goes into more detail on this topic. It is a good reminder that while we should continue to use and explore new recruiting technology, we need to consider the unintended consequences that some of these tactics can have on fairness, employee experience, and hiring decisions. 

SHARE YOUR IDEAS

If you have an article, report, or resource that you recommend, please send me an email at [email protected]. I would love to review it and share it in a future newsletter.

And, if you have any ideas or suggestions on how this newsletter can be improved or deliver greater value, please send me a note with your suggestions.

FINAL COMMENTS

If you enjoy this content and would like to access all issues of Talent Edge Weekly, you can do so by clicking here

Again, if you found this newsletter to be of value, please share the link above with your social media networks, including status updates on Linkedin.

I look forward to sharing more ideas in next week’s Edge!

Have a great weekend everyone and, again, be safe.

Brian