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 End of a Return-to-Office Date | The New York Times | Provides a view on why firms should abandon announcing return-to-office dates. I share updates on how firms are responding to the Omicron variant.

• HR Predictions for 2022 | Josh Bersin | Shares 15 predictions for HR in 2022, including that talent intelligence and skills taxonomy will become the cornerstone of a firm's people strategy.

• Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence for Human Resources: A Toolkit for Human Resources Professionals | World Economic Forum | A newly released 59-page toolkit to promote the responsible use of artificial intelligence-based tools in HR. Includes two practical checklists.

• Worried About Employee Turnover? Ask These 6 Questions to Size Your Risk | Gartner | Provides factual data about the "Great Resignation" and offers 6 questions to help firms assess their level of employee retention risk.

• Podcast: The Skills-Based Organization | Deloitte Capital H Podcast | A 30-minute discussion with thought-leader John Boudreau and Cargill's Head of Global Learning & Development, Julie Dervin, on how skills (not merely jobs) are becoming the unit of analysis for organizing work.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

The End of a Return-to-Office Date | The New York Times 

As concerns over the Omicron variant grow, I have provided updates during the past two weeks on the steps companies are taking to stop the spread of the virus among their employees. More firms have announced delays in their return-to-office (RTO) dates this past week, including Nike, Manulife Financial Corp., and CNN. These firms join organizations such as Apple, Google, Jeffries, and Lyft, which previously announced their delays. Broadway shows like Hamilton and Mrs. Doubtfire have canceled performances, and the rest of New York’s iconic Radio City Rockettes season has been canceled. Goldman Sachs and other companies are canceling upcoming holiday parties, and JPMorgan has moved its annual healthcare conference online because of concerns over the Omicron variant. Given the uncertainty about the virus, this article argues firms should abandon RTO dates during this time. Instead, organizations should acknowledge the uncertainty of the situation and communicate they will continually assess the situation rather than focus on solving for a specific RTO date. With many firms prioritizing employee well-being, abandoning RTO dates could minimize the psychological toll placed on workers that can result from continuously shifting office return dates. What are your thoughts?

HR Predictions for 2022 | Josh Bersin 

Skills are a focus for many organizations that seek to understand their workers’ skills, the skills their organization needs, and the gap between the two. In this report by Josh Bersin on 15 HR predictions in 2022, one prediction to highlight is #7: Talent intelligence and skills taxonomy will become the cornerstone of your people strategy. Josh mentions that part of solving the skills challenge is having a skills taxonomy—a standard language for organizing and describing skills. And while technology platforms can enable skills taxonomies, Josh mentions that more is required to solve the skills challenge. One recommendation is to build a new center of excellence (COE), the COE of skills architecture. This new team will own job architectures, skills technologies, skills taxonomies, and the coordination of the capability academies. I like this recommendation since a perennial challenge for many firms in advancing their skills strategy has been integrating the "skill efforts" of various stakeholders. This team requires input from capability leaders — business or functional leaders (non-HR) that represent each strategic area of the company. The skills section of this report begins on page 10. Since this report is licensed and requires a direct download, you must use this download link to get the full report. As a bonus resource, here is a previous post I made where Josh discusses skills taxonomy in a 30-minute podcast.

Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence for Human Resources: A Toolkit for Human Resources Professionals | World Economic Forum 

Organizations are increasingly exploring opportunities to use artificial intelligence (AI) to manage talent more effectively, fairly, and efficiently. However, the use of AI in Human Resources (HR) has come under scrutiny because of multiple concerns, such as data privacy and bias. Further, since over 250 different commercial AI-based HR tools exist, this landscape can be challenging to navigate. This newly released 59-page toolkit developed in collaboration with a community of over 50 experts provides ideas to promote the responsible use of AI-based tools in HR. This resource contains an overview of AI in HR, how AI works, and critical considerations for the responsible adoption and monitoring of AI systems. It includes two editable checklists and questionnaires to guide the evaluation and implementation of HR-based AI platforms. 1) Tool Assessment Checklist (pages 29-45) focuses on the decision to adopt a specific AI-based HR tool, including questions to ask vendors and organizational stakeholders. 2) Planning Checklist (pages 46-54) addresses how firms can plan to strategically use AI in HR and how HR can develop the capacity to support these efforts. This resource provides excellent insights into using AI-based HR tools as a source of talent differentiation while overcoming the challenges.

Worried About Employee Turnover? Ask These 6 Questions to Size Your Risk | Gartner 

The term “Great Resignation” yields about 2,880,000 results in a Google search, at the time of this writing. And just like any other workforce trend or term that becomes popular, it's challenging to separate fact from fiction. This article provides a few facts about the great resignation based on Gartner’s research. “One in five employees, on average, is actively looking for a new job. 31% of IT workers actively sought a new job in Q3 2021. Among industries, the number of active job seekers is highest (25% to 36%) in telecommunications, technology, oil & gas, and financial services, and lower in education, healthcare, real estate and government (14% to 15%). Latin America has the highest percentage of active job seekers (24%), on average, while Europe and North America are lowest (16%).” To anticipate and mitigate turnover, the authors recommend organizations answer six questions, including: How in demand are your employees? How confident are your employees that they can find a new job? How closely does your hybrid work strategy match employee preferences? As firms continue to assess and act on employee retention risks, I am resharing this bonus Gartner reference, CHRO Guide: Reinvent Your Employee Value Proposition for a Postpandemic Workforce.

PODCAST: The Skills-Based Organization | Deloitte Capital H Podcast 

Jobs have traditionally been the unit of analysis for organizing work. But as work becomes less predictable, more fluid, and affected by rapid disruption, many argue that work should be organized by skills and tasks rather than fixed and static jobs. And while jobs won’t completely go away any time soon, skills and task-based approaches to organizing work enable firms to deploy their workforce agilely and unlock workforce capacity. In this 30-minute podcast, Michael Griffiths, Deloitte’s lead for Learning Consulting practice, discusses skills-based organizations with Julie Dervin, who has been leading a skills-based transformation at Cargill, and thought leader, John Boudreau. Since many talent practices are based on jobs, firms must think through the implications of decomposing jobs into specific skills and tasks and using them (not job descriptions) as the basis of work. A few questions that arise include: How do skills and task-based approaches to organizing work impact workforce planning? What does this approach mean for job descriptions? How does organizing work by skills and tasks impact how we pay people and recruit them? For additional resources on deconstructing work into skills and tasks, check out John’s article with co-author Ravin Jesuthasan, Work Without Jobs, and Dave Ulrich’s article From Workforce to Work-task Planning.

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

• The Omicron Variant: How Companies Should Respond | Harvard Business Review | Provides guidelines as firms evaluate and make workplace decisions in response to the Omicron variant. I provide updates on how a few firms are responding.

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