TALENT EDGE WEEKLY - Issue #8

March 28, 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

As we all continue to deal with the impact of COVID-19, I have been updating special issue #6 of this newsletter, COVID-19 Resources for HR, each day. So far, that issue has 58 references that HR colleagues can leverage as they help their organizations and workforces navigate during this challenging time.

I will continue to update that special issue as I come across new information. Feel free to check that resource daily for updates.

For the current issue, I cover the following topics:

  • Shifting from Leadership Potential to Developmental Readiness | BetterUp

  • Reinvent Talent Strategies: The Digital-Age Mandate for HR | Gartner

  • Shorten Time-to-Hire by Removing These 5 Bottlenecks | G2

  • The 2020 Compensation Best Practices Report | PayScale

  • Demystifying AI in Assessments | ERE

  • Realizing the Potential of America’s Hidden Talent Pool | Accenture | Opportunity at Work

  • 2020 Employee Care Report: The Hidden Causes of Turnover | Limeade

  • Rethinking Workforce Planning for the New World of Work | HR Happy Hour Podcast | Paul Rubenstein

  • Book Recommendation: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less | Greg McKeown

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 good weekend everyone and please be safe.

Brian

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

TALENT MANAGEMENT | TALENT DEVELOPMENT

Last week I made a post about the limitations of the 9 Box talent assessment and how in my opinion it: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 the top and bottom boxes, which overlooks talent planning for the bulk of an organization. 4) complexity requires multiple calibration sessions that often waste time and don’t add practical value. As organizations consider alternatives to the 9-box, this white paper provides one option by offering the concept of "developmental readiness." The notion of developmental readiness posits that everyone can learn and grow, but certain people are better positioned at certain times to benefit more fully from certain types of development. By incorporating a more agile approach like this one into talent processes, organizations might be better positioned to enable their workforces to reach their development potential. Further, it can help organizations to deploy development resources for a greater ROI.

HR EFFECTIVENESS

In this 25 page report, Gartner outlines four levers that HR can pull to refine their talent strategies in this digital era. The levers include 1) Reskill the Workforce, 2) Adopt an Agile Recruiting Model, 3) Foster Innovation, 4) Leverage Analytics. For each of the four sections, there is a quick overview, actions organizations can take, benefits from taking action, and a case example. And while each of the four levers is important, the section on leveraging analytics, which begins on page 19, reinforces the importance of using labor market intelligence to help business leaders understand talent gaps and use this information as they make decisions (i.e. Buy, Build, Borrow, Bot) to close them. The section on this topic includes 9 action steps to collect, interpret and communicate labor market data.

TALENT ACQUISITION

Time-to-hire is one of the most important hiring metrics and is generally defined as the duration of time (usually measured in days) from when an applicant enters the hiring pipeline until they accept a job offer. This measure differs from "time-to-fill" which focuses more on the time from when a job is posted until a candidate accepts the offer. In essence, time-to-hire measures recruiting efficiency and helps to pinpoint which workflows in the process are causing a slowdown (e.g. time it takes to schedule interviews, post jobs, collect feedback from interviewers, to name a few.) As organizations look for ways to not only hire the best talent but to accelerate their onboarding and provide them with a great candidate experience, this article provides tactics for removing 5 time-wasting bottlenecks. Talent acquisition functions can use this information to do an audit of their time-to-hire and identify actions for improving this important metric.

Although the digitalization of HR – or Digital HR is not new and has been well in motion for many organizations over the past few years, it has come into to sharper focus over the past few weeks with the COVID-19 crisis. Many organizations have been forced to relook, or to accelerate these efforts. As a result, HR and IT organizations are working together to determine ways to accelerate and improve digital workplace. PwC’s HR Technology Survey explores the effectiveness of technology investments from the views of 600 HR and HR information technology (IT) leaders on six continents. There are several insights in this summary report, including that the among the top new investments are 1) talent acquisition tools (49%), improved user experience for employees (48%) skills mapping/career path tools (46%). As organizations create or modify their digital HR strategies, it is important to note that 8 out of 10 ten (82%) organizations surveyed report that they have struggled with adoption challenges, most of which can be linked back to planning phases that miss getting all the right people in the room to answer the right question for change at scale. Tips re offered for overcoming these and other challenges.

TOTAL REWARDS | TALENT STRATEGY

Attracting and retaining top talent usually requires a strategic approach to compensation, career pathing, better benefits, and more varied and incentivizing ways to reward performance. To gain insights into these areas, the 2020 Compensation Best Practices Survey gathered responses (nearly 5,000) from November 2019 to January 2020 across the US and Canada. While this 60-page report contains various insights, one part of the report that starts on p. 49 is especially interesting and focuses on compensation practices of top-performing organizations - those who exceeded their revenue goals in 2019 (represented 21% of respondents). According to the report, top-performing organizations: 1) consult salary market data more frequently than non-top performing organizations 2) are more generous with variable pay and incentivize employees with a variety of bonuses, 3) are more likely to have trained managers on communicating compensation. Top-performing organizations also share a formal compensation philosophy with employees and their employees have a better understanding of how to get to the next level in their career. This is a useful report for talent strategists as they integrate rewards tactics into their overall talent strategy.

TALENT ACQUISITION | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

This is a short --but informative--article on artificial intelligence (AI) within the context of assessments. It provides a review of some common definitions used in AI, such as Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Deep Learning. And, more importantly, it highlights a few of the limitations in AI applications, ranging from bias and how models built using one sample may not hold when applied to another (technical term of this challenge is referred to as Overfitting). In spite of these challenges, AI continues to improve various aspects of hiring such as sourcing and the candidate experience. It does this by using various applications such as chatbots and testing to name a few. For organizations looking to expand their use of AI in the context of assessments and hiring, the article also includes a few questions that organizations can ask when vetting vendors for this purpose.

LABOR MARKET | DIVERSITY | TALENT STATEGY

Although many organizations cite a paucity of talent and an inability to fill important roles as a key challenge, there is a vast overlooked talent pool of workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs). These are workers who have a high school diploma or equivalent and do not have a four-year college degree but do have the skills to perform higher-wage work today. STARs have developed skills on the job and through alternative routes, such as community college, military service, and apprenticeships. This report provides three key findings of STARs, including that this is an underutilized talent pool that is vast and diverse in terms of regions, races, ethnicities, genders, and generations across the United States--and who possess desired skill sets. The report is a good reminder that we should shatter inaccurate perceptions and preconceived notions about this talent pool and look for opportunities to leverage this segment of workers to help close talent gaps and drive business performance.

EMPLOYEE RETENTION | WELLBEING

Over the past few years, employee wellbeing has become a top priority for many organizations. And with the ongoing situation of COVID-19, it has heightened importance. According to this report, which surveyed 1,000 full-time U.S. workers, organizations rarely fulfill employees’ socioemotional needs for affiliation, esteem, and emotional support. The report identified key problems linked to employee turnover, including low levels of inclusion, high levels of burnout and the inability to address mental health issues like stress and anxiety. It provides insights on where employers fall short, how a lack of care manifests in the workplace and how companies can change to retain top talent. An interesting finding is that almost 40% of workers who left their company encountered a colleague encouraging them to leave a job with them. That number increases to over 50% when employees feel "burned out." It is a reminder that when one worker feels this way, it is likely to impact and influence how co-workers feel about their own situation, presenting a ripple effect within an organization.

THE SOUND OF INSIGHT

STRATEGIC WORKFORCE PLANNING

This episode of the HR Happy Hour Show has Paul Rubenstein, Chief People Officer at Visier, as a guest. The discussion centers on new ways of thinking about workforce planning, learning agility and reskilling, and avoiding the headcount trap, when planning for the people and skills needed for the future. As Paul mentions, headcount driven workforce planning needs to be reimagined to meet the dynamic and evolving needs of the business, and to help organizations prepare to address skills and capability gaps. They also talk about the importance of learning agility - both from an organizational and HR viewpoint, as well as with individual learners. The discussion with Paul starts at around the 3:30 minute mark of the show and the workforce planning discussion begins at around 9:20 minutes.

WHAT I AM READING

While I had already read this book a couple of years ago, I found myself reaching for it on my bookshelf this week. I am not certain of what motivated me to do so, but I believe it has much to do with the "self reflection" that the current COVID-19 pandemic (or any type of crisis) compels many of us to do on our life in general, our relationships and priorities, and how we spend our time. While the book provides some great suggestions for prioritizing one's life by focusing on what is most important, it also has application for how we can develop simpler HR tools, processes, and systems that drive better execution, engagement, employee experience, and business results within our organizations. If you find yourself with a little extra time this week, this might be a good book to read in the coming days.

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

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

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

Brian