Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #87

Covers aligning HR and business strategy, 2021 women in the workplace report, employee turnover trends by industry, and how boards approach CEO succession planning.

October 10, 2021

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 146) Are Adjusting Their Return to Office Dates and Vaccine- Mask Mandates Due to Delta Variant | BrianHeger .com | I share an update on how 146 firms are approaching their return to the office and vaccine mandates, including four firms that have shifted their returns to 2022.

  • HR Leaders Monthly – October Issue on Aligning HR and Business Strategy | Gartner | Eight articles to help align HR and business strategy via various talent practices.  

  • 2021 Women in the Workplace Report | LeanIn.org and McKinsey | A 62-page report that shares new findings on the impact of the pandemic on the experiences and careers of women.  

  • Is ‘The Great Resignation’ Real? An Analysis of Salary Increases and Turnover in the Competitive Labor Market | Aon | Examines trends to see which industries and geographies have been most affected by employee turnover throughout the pandemic.

  • How the Best Boards Approach CEO Succession Planning | Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | Shares seven leading practices in CEO succession planning, many of which can be applied to all C-suite roles.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

It has been nine weeks since I published an initial list of how 20 companies are approaching their return-to-office dates and vaccine mandates. Each week, I have updated this list which now includes information on 146 companies based on 137 references. A few headlines this past week are: 1) Capital One, Nike, Under Armour, and Viacom CBS have joined the growing number of firms moving their office return to 2022. Many of these firms had previously moved their returns multiple times.  2) Largely driven by a Dec. 8 deadline set by President Biden for employees of U.S. federal contractors to be vaccinated, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines now require their workers to be fully vaccinated to remain employed. And while IBM has also informed its U.S. workers they must be vaccinated by the Dec. 8 deadline, the firm stopped short of terminating employees that don’t comply; instead of losing their job, unvaccinated workers won’t get paid after Dec. 8 until they are vaccinated. Unlike firms that are federal contractors, Spirit Airlines has provided employees an option to get vaccinated or submit to regular COVID-19 tests. 3) Regarding incentives, Merrill Lynch is incentivizing branch employees who return to the workplace and are vaccinated with $200. Please continue to check this ever-changing list for updates. 

As HR organizations plan their 2022 strategic agenda and initiatives to support business priorities, this October issue of Gartner’s HR Leaders Monthly includes eight articles with insights on this topic. Page 37 begins an article titled, “Addressing HR Leaders’ Top Strategic Planning Challenges.” It mentions how only 27% of HR leaders surveyed say they review their HR strategies once per year or more as the business strategy changes. One tactic to overcome this challenge is to a) identify a set of business triggers (e.g., enter a new market) and human capital triggers that promote leaders to revisit and adapt business and HR strategies. b) The article notes that HR leaders must answer three questions when communicating HR measures and impact to business stakeholders. 1) What story is HR telling the board? 2) Which problems is the strategy addressing? 3) What contribution is HR’s strategy making to the success of the business strategy? HR leaders might want to ask these questions to their team at their next team meeting to develop a collective narrative. If you missed it last week, check out Marc Effron’s article, The CEO’s Three Questions About Talent, which provides additional insights for developing your firm's talent narrative. 

One of the most viewed reports I shared last year was the 2020 Women in the Workplace Report, a publication produced annually by LeanIn.org and McKinsey since 2015. The study is the largest on the state of women in corporate America. Last year’s study provided various insights on the challenges facing many working women–especially mothers, senior-level women, and Black women—during the pandemic. The 2021 version of this study was recently released and shared new findings. The 62-page report has various insights, including 1) Women report being even more burned out than a year ago, and burnout is escalating much faster among women than men. 2) Since the first year of the pandemic, there has been an increase in the number of women (1 in 4 in 2020, and now 1 in 3 in 2021) who are downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce altogether  3) While female representation has increased across the talent pipeline since 2016, there are still significant gaps at the leadership level — especially for women of color. Several other insights are provided, including page 50 that shows how top-performing companies are driving progress in women’s representation across the leadership pipeline. Firms can use these insights to more effectively advance equity, inclusion, and the wellbeing of women within their organizations. 

There continues to be an influx of reports and articles about the Great Resignation — an ongoing trend of workers leaving their jobs for new opportunities. At the time of this writing, if you conduct a Google search on the phrase Great Resignation 2021, you will yield a staggering 264 million results. And while the great resignation is a real concern for many firms, some question whether it is more hype than reality. Using new data from its Salary Increase and Turnover Survey and publicly available data, Aon examined trends to see which industries and geographies have been most affected by employee turnover during the pandemic. One insight from the report is that, in looking at turnover from June 2019 to June 2021, “turnover is more robust in certain industries that remained strong or grew during the pandemic, including life sciences and manufacturing. In these industries, employees were more likely to have abundant job opportunities. Other industries like media and entertainment saw a decline in turnover over the two-year period.” And while these results are likely to shift as firms return workers to the office, it reinforces how broader workforce trends may manifest differently when data are segmented. Regardless, firms have an opportunity to reevaluate and adjust their employer value proposition to align with the shifting needs and preferences of the workforce. 

With the profound changes in the workplace and business environment, boards are likely to focus more on CEO succession in a post-pandemic environment. A few reasons driving this renewed focus include 1) In 2020, 56 S&P 500 CEOs resigned— with 20% doing so under pressure, up from 13% the year before. 2) The average CEO tenure continues to fall, 3) The skills required for a CEO in a post-pandemic environment have changed and will continue to evolve. This article identifies seven leading practices in CEO succession planning. One practice speaks to the importance of having a strong internal pipeline of CEO-level candidates. And while this practice isn’t new, firms appear to fall short as the number of S&P 500 firms that have replaced their CEOs with an external hire has continued to rise for the last five years. The authors suggest having a formal internal succession program that provides first-hand experiences in the CEO’s function, including board interaction. Whether for CEO or C-suite role succession, a few questions for those responsible for succession planning in their firms: What percentage of these roles could TRULY be filled with internal talent in your company? In what timeframe could they be ready to assume these roles? What are the vital few development activities that would accelerate their readiness? If internal succession is lacking, what is your strategy for external succession? 

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

This Time It’s Personal: Shaping the ‘New Possible’ Through Employee Experience (EX) | McKinsey | Provides ideas on how companies can craft an EX to attract, retain and engage the best talent, including a framework that articulates nine moments that matter in the EX.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

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