Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #83

Covers perceptions about the reasons for employee turnover, predictions on the future of performance management, the business case for AI, and a webcast on people analytics.

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 135) Are Adjusting Their Return to Office Dates and Vaccine- Mask Mandates Due to Delta Variant | BrianHeger .com | I share an update on how 135 firms are approaching their return to the office and vaccine mandates. A bonus article is provided to help make vaccine mandate decisions.

  • ‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The Choice is Yours | McKinsey | Emphasizes the disconnect between employers’ and employees’ perspectives on why employees are leaving their organizations. Suggests employers should uncover the reasons workers leave and use that information to drive change and build a strong talent attraction brand.

  • 6 Predictions for the Future of Performance Management | Gartner's September HR Leader's Monthly | Includes seven articles on Gartner’s latest research on performance management (PM) and total rewards. One article addresses how PM will evolve.

  • Workers Want to Do Their Jobs From Anywhere and Keep Their Big-City Salaries | The Wall Street Journal | Provides perspectives on whether firms should adjust the salaries of workers who moved from higher cost-of-living areas to lower-cost-of-living regions during the pandemic.

  • The AI Dossier | Deloitte AI Institute | A newly released 47-page report that examines business use cases for AI across six major industries. This reference can be used to inform the "Bot" component of a firm's strategic workforce planning.

  • Webcast: Excellence in People Analytics with David Green and Anna Tavis | NYU SPS Human Capital Management Program | A one-hour webcast where David Green discusses aspects of the book he co-authored with Jonathan Ferrar, Excellence in People Analytics: How to Use Workforce Data to Create Business Value.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

As many organizations continue to decide about their return-to-office dates and vaccination mandates, I have updated my list of how 135 companies are approaching these decisions. A few headlines this past week include: 1) AmEx has again delayed its return for its U.S. employees, setting Jan 24 as the target date at the earliest. AmEx previously moved its return from Sept 13 to Oct 11, and now joins companies such as Apple, Amazon, Ford Motors, and Starbucks (office workers), which shifted their return to 2022. 2). Microsoft is again delaying its return. It originally moved its full reopening from Sept 7 to Oct 4 but announced it is putting the plans on hold indefinitely. While it hasn’t determined a new return to work date, Microsoft will provide employees 30-days notice. 3) Alaska Airlines announced that unvaccinated employees must regularly be tested and use their own sick time if they contract or are exposed to the virus. As a bonus article, you can check out the new HBR article, Should Your Company Implement a Vaccination Mandate? which recommends seven steps for firms to take before making this decision. Thanks to newsletter subscriber Bob Kelner for suggesting this article. 

At a time where many workers continue to contemplate and decide to leave their jobs, this article argues that to address the issue, employers need to take the time to understand why their employees are leaving. Without this understanding, organizations risk implementing solutions based on faulty assumptions. For example, Exhibit 5 shows the misalignment between employers’ and employees’ perspectives on why employees leave. Employers cite compensation, work-life balance, and poor physical and emotional health as the top reasons employees leave. And while these issues matter to employers, among the top factors employees cite as reasons for quitting are: 1) they didn’t feel valued by their managers (54 percent) or their organizations (52 percent) or 2) because they didn’t feel a sense of belonging at work (51 percent). Said differently, employees were far more likely to prioritize relational factors versus transactional ones. The article also offers seven questions for firms to consider as they understand why employees are leaving. “By understanding why employees are leaving and by acting thoughtfully, firms may just be able to turn the Great Attrition into the Great Attraction.”

This issue of HR Leaders Monthly includes seven articles on Gartner’s latest research on performance management and total rewards. The articles cover topics such as assessing employee behaviors, challenging assumptions of traditional high potential management, and well-being programs for a post-pandemic world, to name a few. One article, beginning on p. 17, covers six predictions for the future of PM. As I mentioned in previous posts, work is becoming more project-based—versus merely role-based—in many organizations. And, this observation is one reason firms are building their internal talent marketplace—where they can identify and quickly redeploy internal talent (where and when needed) as talent needs emerge. The notion of ITM has implications for PM and is reflected in prediction #2: Short-Cycle, Project-Based Performance and Pay Decisions Will Become the Norm. This norm will require the cadence of performance feedback, evaluation, and rewards to align with the duration of project cycles—resulting in “project-to-project performance management." HR leaders can use the six predictions and four questions at the end of the article to reimagine PM within their organizations.

Many employers use location-based compensation structures to determine pay for a job. However, a segment of workers living in higher cost-of-living areas moved to lower-cost-of-living regions because of being able to work remotely during the pandemic. This trend has forced firms to answer the question: Should workers who moved to these lower cost-of-living areas face a salary change to align with labor costs at their new location? While many workers would argue that their work has the same value no matter where they do it, firms have taken different stances on this topic. Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft cut pay for remote employees who moved to less expensive areas. Google developed a “Work Location Tool” to assist employees in calculating how their compensation might change if they relocate. Smaller companies, including Reddit and Zillow, have shifted to location-agnostic pay models. Since there is no one-size-fits-all approach given the multiple factors involved, firms must critically evaluate the impact of these decisions on their ability to hire and retain top talent. This article provides additional perspectives on this topic. What is your firm's philosophy on location-based pay in the context of remote work?

A recent 40-page BCG report— which segmented 32 HR priorities by current capabilities and future importance—found that strategic workforce planning (SWP) is among the top three most urgent areas to act. Simultaneously, PwC’s 2021 CEO Priority study emphasizes how CEOs believe adopting different technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), will significantly affect how work gets done. The convergence of SWP and AI priorities spotlights the “Bot” component of SWP strategies, where aspects of work can be executed and /or supported via AI. Despite AI’s promise, it's challenging to determine where and how to deploy AI as part of SWP solutions. This newly released 47-page report by Deloitte's AI Institute examines the most compelling business use cases for AI across six major industries, including consumer; energy, resources and industrial; financial services; government and public services; life sciences and health care; and technology, media, and telecommunications. Firms can use this reference to identify opportunities for how AI (e.g., Bot) fits into their broader workforce planning solutions (e.g., Build, Buy, Borrow, etc.). 

This one-hour webcast discussion is the first event of NYU’s SPS Human Capital Management Program’s Fall 2021 Virtual Book Launch Series. It was hosted in partnership with the NYC HR Analytics Meetup on September 8, 2021. It includes a special talk by author David Green, followed by a Q&A forum facilitated by Dr. Anna Tavis, Academic Director of the Human Capital Management Department at the NYU SPS. It is always enlightening to hear David speak on the important topic of people analytics and share various insights from his book, Excellence in People Analytics: How to Use Workforce Data to Create Business Value, released on July 27, 2021 and co-authored by Jonathan Ferrar. Among the many topics that David covers are the “Nine Dimensions of People Analytics (PA) Excellence" in which top-performing PAs functions excel. David notes the nine are not sequential, so it is possible to address them in different orders of implementation. He breaks down each dimension so that practitioners can answer the following questions:  1) How can I improve my impact? 2) How can I create more value, and 3) What should I focus on? The Q&A starts around the 41-minute mark.

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

To check out my summary of book recommendations, click here or on the bookcase image below.

Partial View of Book Recommendations

OUR RESOURCE LINEUP

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