Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #148

Covers skills-based organizations, learning & development, 2023 hiring & workplace trends, AI & human collaboration, & a podcast on telling your human capital story.

Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weeklythe 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

  • Skills-Based Organization Playlist | Deloitte | A one-page PDF that includes 5 resources from Deloitte on various aspects of skills-based talent practices.

  • The New Learning Environment | Gartner November 2022 HR Leaders Monthly | A 42-page issue with 6 articles on the opportunities and challenges facing the L&D function.

  • Indeed & Glassdoor’s Hiring and Workplace Trends Report 2023 | Indeed & Glassdoor | A 22-page multi-country report that outlines 5 key labor market trends. I reshare a bonus PDF resource on employee retention.

  • Strengthening the Bonds of Human and Machine Collaboration | Deloitte Insights | Covers how firms are responding to overcoming 3 challenges in human and AI-machine interaction in the workplace.

  • Podcast: Telling Your Human Capital Story | The Conference Board (TCB) | A 30-minute podcast where Rebecca Ray (EVP of Human Capital) and Steve Odland (President and CEO)both of TCB discuss aspects of TCB’s report, Telling Your Human Capital Story.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

Skills-based talent practices continue to be a topic of interest for organizations looking to use skills—rather than just jobs—as the basis for talent management. And while there have been many great resources shared on this topic, Deloitte is one organization that has provided much thought leadership in this area. This one-page PDF highlights five of Deloitte’s resources on skills-based talent practices. Although I have covered these resources individually in various blog posts, this PDF provides easy access to all of this information. It includes a link to my original post, the link to the Deloitte resource, and a sample “key takeaway” from each resource. A few topics covered across the resources include: a) the talent practices in which organizations are mainly integrating skills, b) suggestions for how firms can organize work beyond the constraints of the traditional job and integrate with more effective workforce planning, and c) ideas on how organizations can move towards skills-based compensation and reward structures, to name a few.

This 42-page issue of Gartner’s HR Leaders Monthly includes six articles dedicated to the opportunities and challenges facing the learning and development (L&D) function. And while this issue is focused primarily on L&D, all HR practitioners can benefit from the content as it covers areas related to the talent ecosystem—ranging from skill-building to career development. Sample articles include: 1) The Changing Role of Learning and Development, 2) Five Agile Learning Principles to Improve Leadership Development, and 3) Developing Skills for the Hybrid World. Regarding #2 (agile learning for leadership development), Table 2 on page 16covers six attributes that help managers identify high-impact experiential on-the-job-learning. Two of these attributes include: Change and Adversity (e.g., leaders should be involved in turbulent situations to build flexibility and adaptiveness) andMaking Difficult Decisions(e.g., leaders should engage in decision-making activities where the cost of making mistakes forces deliberate reflection).As a bonus, I am resharing my article, Identifying Leadership Capabilities That Drive Business Performance. While I wrote the article in 2016, the approach still applies to informing aspects of leadership development.

This 22-page inaugural multi-country report outlines five key labor market trends for the coming years. The five key trends include: 1) Tight Labor Supply will Continue to Impact Hiring, 2) Remote Work is Here to Stay, 3) As Workers Seek Higher Pay, Benefits Can Set Employers Apart, 4) Happiness and Wellbeing Matter, and 5) The Changing Workforce is Pushing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to the Forefront. Regarding trend #2, p.12 provides a few steps employers and policymakers can take to make hiring easier in the face of labor supply constraints (e.g., consider overlooked talent pools). I also want to point out that the talent supply is also affected by an organization’s ability to retain its current talent. With that in mind, I am resharing this one-page reference that integrates four resources for managers to leverage as they identify and address their most critical employee retention risks. They include: 1) pre-quitting behaviors, 2)questions to gauge the overall retention risk of a team, 3) work or life events that prompt employees to reflect on and reconsider their career, and 4) stay interview questions. This resource can help to evaluate employee retention risk and determine retention strategies.

Human and AI collaboration in the workplace continues to become more commonplace in many organizations. Still, organizations need to determine how to optimize AI for worker interaction. This article explores how AI and humans tend to collaborate, what challenges humans face when collaborating, and how to foster positive relationships between humans and machines in the workforce. The article covers how firms are responding to overcoming three challenges in human and AI interaction in the workplace. The three challenges are: 1) AI makes work harder for humans, 2) AI-structured work may increase short-term productivity but can decrease autonomy and engagement, and 3) Collaborating with AI can increase loneliness, isolation, and questions of identity. Figure 1 shows nine interactions workers can have with AI/machines, such as a) people working with AI to supervise AI’s work (machines as subordinates), b) people working with AI in a way that directs their work (machines as supervisors), to c) people working with AI in open-ended, highly iterative, and interactive ways over time in true partnership (machines as teammates). This nine-component framework can help organizations determine which types of human-AI interactions are optimal for certain types of work and work contexts.

Two weeks ago, I made a post about The Conference Board’s recently released report, Telling Your Human Capital Story. The 20-page report guides organizations on how they can tailor the messages of their human capital story to different stakeholder groups (e.g., investors, current and prospective and current employees, etc.) while still drawing from a single source of truth. As a supplement to that report, here is a 30-minute podcast episode of CEO Perspectives, where Steve Odland (The Conference Board President and CEO) and Rebecca Ray (Executive Vice President of Human Capital at The Conference Board) discuss how businesses can—and should—tell the story of their human capital strategy. Rebecca helps answer questions such as: 1) Why is it increasingly important to measure and share your human capital strategy with various stakeholders? 2) What should businesses consider disclosing about their human capital? 3) How should businesses determine which metrics to look at and which to share? 4) What are the key components of a human capital strategy? 5) How can you create a narrative around your strategy and communicate it to a variety of stakeholders? These two resources provide several ideas for how organizations can develop a human capital narrative that meets the unique needs of different stakeholders.

MOST VIEWED FROM LAST WEEK

Describes challenges organizations have faced in transitioning to skills-based hiring and highlights a few tactics to overcome them.

CHRO HIRE OF THE WEEK

This past week, 20 Chief Human Resources Officer announcements were posted on CHROs on the Go a subscription that provides the easiest way to stay informed about CHRO hires, promotions, and resignations. This week's CHRO highlight is:

To learn how to gain access to all 20 detailed Chief Human Resources Officer announcements from this past week and +1600 archived announcements, visit CHROs on the Go .

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TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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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.