Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #80

Covers vaccination policies, investing in the employee value proposition, facilitating internal mobility of top performers, hiring and recruiting trends, and female board members.

August 22, 2021

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Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly—the weekly newsletter for human resources practitioners, bringing together insights about work, the workplace, and the workforce from various sources.

If you find value in this issue or any of its resources, please share them with your network by using the social media icons at the top of the newsletter.

Have a great week, and I look forward to sharing more ideas in next week’s Edge!

Brian 

Brian Heger is a human resources practitioner with a Fortune 150 organization and has responsibilities for Strategic Talent and Workforce Planning. To connect with Brian on Linkedin, click here.

THIS WEEK'S CONTENT

  • Updated: How 20+ Companies (Now 96) Are Adjusting Their Return to Office Dates and Vaccine- Mask Mandates Due to Delta Variant | BrianHeger .com | I have added 48 firms to this list since last week, bringing the current total to 96 firms. My summary has been updated and I added a new interactive chart that shows a visual depiction of return-to-office delays for select firms.

  • New Research: Vaccine Policies May Determine Whether Employees Stay or Go | Qualtrics | Shares results from a study conducted between August 2 and August 5, 2021 on how organizations’ decisions to mandate vaccination of workers can influence their’ intention to stay with the company.

  • Investing to Win Talent | Boston Consulting Group | A 17-page report summarizes why companies should prioritize employer value proposition investments that re-recruit current employees and attract new talent.

  • Let Your Top Performers Move Around the Company | Harvard Business Review | Provides four ways in which firms can create a culture that encourages internal mobility and reduces talent hoarding.

  • State of the Staffing Nation Report | Sense | Shares data and trends from over 600 staffing leaders on hiring and recruiting trends, benchmarks, and challenges.

  • Q2 2021 Equilar Gender Diversity Index | Equilar | Provides an update on progress made in women holding Board member seats in Russell 3000 organizations.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

Two weeks ago, I published an initial list of how 20 firms were: 1) adjusting their timing for bringing workers back to the office because of the Delta variant and 2) handling decisions to mandate vaccinations and/or masks for workers who return. Due to the popularity of this article, I have continued to update this list, which now includes 96 organizations. One update includes Apple has again changed its return to office date. A few weeks ago, Apple shifted its return from September to October; it announced this week it is delaying its return to 2022. Apple joins other companies such as Amazon and Target (office workers), Charles Schwab & Co, Expedia, Indeed, Lyft, Facebook, and Roblox returning in 2022. Aside from updating this list with an additional 48 firms since last week, I added an interactive chart that visually depicts the return to office delays for firms that have reported this information. Also, if you haven’t done so already, please be sure to answer the poll question, When does your organization now expect to fully return to the office? We currently have over 200 responses (which you can view), and it would be helpful to augment this data set with our collective knowledge. 

This study explored how organizations’ decisions to mandate vaccination of workers can influence their intention to stay with the company. The study was conducted between August 2 and August 5, 2021, with 1,051 U.S.based workers. A few takeaways: 1) Sixty percent of surveyed workers support vaccine mandates for in-person work, and 24% say they would feel unsafe returning to work without a vaccine mandate. Tech workers are significantly more likely than employees in other sectors to support vaccine requirements. 2) Twenty-three percent of employees would strongly consider leaving their place of work if their employers mandated vaccines. As noted by Indeed, vaccination requirements in job postings are increasing across various sectors. And while jobs that require vaccination are a small fraction of postings overall, there have been significant increases. For example, in February 2021, software development had only 3.5 job postings per million that stated vaccination required; in July, there were 437.9 job postings per million, an increase of over 10,000%. Similar trends are happening in other sectors. It will be interesting to monitor these trends throughout the fall and see their impact on retention and hiring.

As workers continue to re-evaluate whether their organization's or potential organization’s employer value proposition (EVP) aligns with their individual preferences, this 17-page BCG report provides useful insights. It argues why companies should invest in talent by prioritizing EVP improvements that re-recruit current employees and attract new talent through three EVP components: 1) Innovate flexible working models, 2) Embrace digital tools that enable connectivity, and 3) Reimagine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Based on a Future Forum study conducted over 10k knowledge workers across the US, Australia, Germany, Japan, France, and the UK, slide 8 shows the importance that workers place on ten EVP components. Among the top 5 are: 1) rewards ( pay, benefits, recognition) 2) flexibility, 3) relationships with coworkers, 4) workload, and 5) relationship with one’s manager. While the report mentions that rewards and recognition have risen in importance during the pandemic, it doesn't say the extent to which it has changed compared to previous years. Regarding flexibility, a recent The Wall Street Journal article noted how many firms are using flexible work arrangements as a perk to poach talented people. Said differently, flexibility has become “the new signing bonus.” Both references have helpful ideas as firms realign their EVPs to employees’ preferences.

Internal mobility (IM)—the movement of employees across roles (and even assignments and projects) within the same company—is a key component of an organization’s talent strategy. However, many firms still struggle in this area. As pointed out in this article by Kevin Oakes, CEO of The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), one barrier to IM is talent hoarding: the practice of allowing managers to keep their top performers from moving anywhere else in the company. Kevin shares four ways in which firms can create a culture that encourages internal mobility, two of which are: 1) Have managers develop a performance goal of consistently rotating internal talent (especially top talent) out of their team and into other internal groups. 2) Reduce bureaucracy that has “hiring managers go through significantly more steps if they want to bring an internal employee into their group or department instead of hiring someone from the outside. Another challenge I have seen is where firms have rules for how long a person should be in a role before he/she can consider another internal role or opportunity–even if there are compelling reasons why the person should move into a different assignment.  In an increasingly competitive labor market, unlocking the potential of internal mobility can be one of the most impactful enablers of a firm’s talent strategy. (You can also check out Kevin’s book that was released earlier this year, Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company.)

Talent acquisition functions are quickly evolving their talent practices to reflect an increasingly complex recruiting and hiring landscape. This 48-page report includes insights from over 600 staffing leaders from over a dozen industries on the challenges they face. A few insights: 1) Sixty-six percent of respondents said that time to fill is the most critical performance metric to watch in the next 12 months, followed by cost-per-hire and redeployment rate. 2) Recruitment team sizes have remained more or less the same despite increased talent demand in several industries. 3) Increased pressure on recruiters has affected their response times to new leads, as respondents say that their recruiters take over 6 hours to respond to new leads; that said, the report doesn’t mention a benchmark of best in class recruiting functions. 4) Recruiters report spending up to 50% of their time on manual/repetitive tasks. 5) Regarding candidates dropping out of the process from job offer to job start, 44% of recruiters say 1 in 5 candidates drop out. While various solutions may need to be employed to overcome these challenges, AI and automation are likely to be one of them.  Other ideas are discussed.

The Q2 2021 Equilar Gender Diversity Index (GDI) revealed that women now hold more than a quarter of Russell 3000 board seats, increasing to 25.2% from 15% just five years ago. Nearly 47% of directors added to boards in Q2 were women. However, the report notes that women have a long way to reach parity, which is currently at the halfway point. One major issue holding back the increased prevalence of women on boards is their ability to access the pipeline roles (such as CEO and CFO) leading to director positions. While the number of women in C-suite positions continues to rise, they are often in roles that are not as commonly sought after for board experience—such as human resources, administration, GC/chief legal officer, marketing, and accounting. In 2021, over 60% of chief human resources officer (CHRO) roles in the Russell 3000 belonged to women, up from 38.3% in 2012. However, just 5.6% of CEO positions and 13.7% of CFO positions in the Russell 3000 were occupied by women in 2021. You can check out a July 2021 Forbes article by Naveen Bhateja—EVP, Chief People Officer at Medidata Solutions—that provides three reasons for why now is the time to make sure every board has a CHRO member.

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

  • How to Measure Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | Gartner for HR | A 13-page report on measuring the three aspects of DEI and how to avoid common measurement pitfalls. Provides a view of which talent management processes are most susceptible to bias.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

OUR RESOURCE LINEUP

​​brianheger.com provides free access to +1,000 curated articles, research reports, podcasts, etc. that help practitioners drive better business results through strategic human resources and talent management.

CHROS on the Go is a subscription that provides the easiest and most convenient way to stay informed about Chief Human Resources Officer hires, promotions, and resignations in organizations of all sizes and industries.

​Talent Edge Weekly is a free weekly newsletter that brings together the best talent and strategic human resources insights from various sources. It is published every Sunday at 6PM EST.