Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #89

Covers people practices of HR leaders deemed pathfinders, a remote work survey, an HR experience index score, performance reviews, and HR tech coaching vendors.

October 24, 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

  • The Future of HR Report: Lessons From the Pathfinders | KPMG | A 26-page report on the people practices of HR leaders deemed Pathfinders: a group of 18 HR leaders (about 10 percent of the global sample) who are considered value drivers within their organizations.

  • The 2021 State of Remote Work Employer Survey Report | PayScale | A 22-page report that provides insights on how remote work is impacting employee expectations, job seeking behavior, future work environments, and pay strategies, including location-based pay.

  • The (HRXPS) HR XPerience Score: Measuring the Performance and Impact of HR Through the Employee Experience | ADP Research Institute | Using a 15-question HR experience index score, this 62-page report shares research findings on how employees’ experience HR, and which aspects of the experience have the greatest impact.

  • Performance Reviews Need a Brand-New P&L | INSEAD | Includes 18 questions that managers can integrate into performance discussions while uncovering what employees value the most.

  • Report: Coaching Tech: The Humans and the Robots | RedThreadResearch | A 56- report that shares various insights on 45 tech vendors that provide technology-enabled coaching capabilities. Vendors are sorted into four categories and questions are provided that firms can ask vendors depending on the category in which they fall.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This 26-page report shares the lessons and stories from people leaders deemed Pathfinders: a group of 18 HR leaders (about 10 percent of the global sample) who are considered value drivers within their organizations. This cohort share characteristics such as experimenting with new ways of working and emerging technologies. I like this report because it includes practical examples of how firms apply new ways of thinking to execute talent practices with tangible results. One example is Albertsons Companies (p.9), the second-largest supermarket chain in the US. The firm achieved 60,000 hires in 6 weeks by giving the recruiting teams the freedom to reinvent the hiring process and increase recruiting velocity. They reached this result by partnering with hotels, airlines, and other hospitality companies facing mass layoffs and offering to employ those employees temporarily. These firms advertised open Albertsons jobs on their internal platforms, and applicants were fast-tracked through interviews. Other company examples, such as Dropbox and Salesforce, are provided on talent practices ranging from hybrid work to internal talent marketplace. As noted in the report, the traditional playbook is gone, and it’s time for HR leaders to chart the new way forward. And in case you missed it, check out Lars Schmidt's article, Why Modern HR Requires Rethinking the Old-school Employee Handbook. Lars also wrote the book, Redefining HR: Transforming People Teams to Drive Business Performance.  

One key question firms are asking as of late is: should employees that move to lower cost-of-living areas face a salary adjustment to align with labor costs at their new location? This practice is often referred to as “geographic differential” ― a percentage variation that adjusts pay for the cost of labor between locations. And while this practice isn’t new, remote work at scale has spotlighted this topic for many firms. A few organizations have communicated their philosophy and decisions on location-based pay. On the one hand, firms such as Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google will base pay on geographic location. 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. As firms evaluate their compensation strategies, this PayScale report provides insights. Page 16 illustrates how 32% of surveyed firms were using the location of their headquarters before the pandemic to set pay for remote employees. This number has declined to 17% after the pandemic began. This trend suggests that more firms determine geography-based pay based on where employees reside rather than where the company maintains offices. What is your organization's philosophy on location-based pay? How will this philosophy translate into practice? What are the talent implications of these decisions on your ability to attract and retain top talent? 

By most accounts, the employee experience (EX) is a priority for many organizations. And given the multitude of HR-related practices that reach employees, it raises the question: to what extent does HR experience impact overall EX and other important outcomes? This 60-page report shares research findings from a 25-country study of over 32,000 respondents on how employees experience HR. As shown on page 13, this model comprises five aspects of this experience, with three items or statements to measure each experience. For example, the first three questions of this 15-question HRXPS measure employees’ perception of HR meeting their basic needs (e.g., The communication I receive from HR is always easy to understand). Page 18 shows the impact of HRXPS scores on employee behaviors. The most substantial relationships are in three behaviors. 1) Likelihood to Promote the Organization’s Talent Brand, 2) Intent to Leave and Active Job Search 3) Actual Voluntary Terminations. Does your organization have an overall measure of HR experience? With HR organizations firming up their priorities for 2022 and beyond, an index similar to this one can help pinpoint what strategic and tactical actions the HR function can take to enhance the employee experience.

The pandemic events over the past 19 months continue to have implications for performance management. Hybrid work, the continuous shifting of work goals and priorities, and workers trying to balance work demands and personal obligations are among the several factors that have affected how firms evaluate employee performance. Meanwhile, top of mind for many organizations is employee well-being, retention, and attracting top talent in a competitive labor market. And while a segment of organizations views these factors as distinct topics, they are firmly connected. Stated differently, understanding the interplay between these talent components can be a pivotal lever for improving performance, wellbeing, engagement, and firm performance. This article caught my attention because it includes 18 questions that I believe can uncover answers for driving meaningful impact in the areas mentioned above. And as many organizations are getting ready to have performance check-in discussions with their workers before the year-end, it might be good to use a few of these questions as part of those discussions. They range from: What are your aspirations for career advancement? What are your needs at this life stage? How do your lifestyle needs align with your growth aspirations? Organizations can prepare their managers to have these conversations and use the resulting output to affect change in the areas that matter most.  

The profound shifts in work and the workplace have emphasized the vital role that “coaching” can play in helping workers navigate these changes. Simultaneously, HR tech continues to evolve. As these two forces converge, firms have an opportunity to augment their human-based coaching with coaching enabled through technology. Based on survey responses from 45 coaching tech vendors, RedThreadResearch has developed a 2x2 model to help organizations better understand the coaching tech space. The model’s two axes are 1) Human vs. machine delivery and 2) Utilizing internal vs. external resources to deliver the coaching. This model, Figure 3 on p.12, plots the 45 tech vendors into four distinct quadrants. For example, the Human Coaches, External Resources quadrant (upper right) includes “coaching tech that matches external professional coaches with internal employees and provides a platform for continued interaction between coach and coachee.” The 56-page report contains a section for each quadrant and describes how HR tech providers could best serve various coaching needs (e.g., just-in-time coaching). As firms vet providers on their coaching capabilities, page 50 includes a valuable set of questions—organized by the quadrants. For another excellent resource on this topic, check out Josh Bersin’s report, Coaching at Scale: AI Democratizes Leadership Development.

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

Last week, two resources received the most engagement.

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