Talent Edge Weekly - Issue # 162

Covers Gartner's issue on CEO Talent Champions, firms requiring workers to be in the office more frequently, microstressors, 2023 LinkedIn Learning report, and pay equity.

Author

Brian Heger
February 19, 2023

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Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly—bringing together insights about work, the workplace, and the workforce. Read by human resources practitioners, business leaders, and others interested in the world of work.

A special shout out to Mariangela Battista—VP, Global Head of Talent Management, IGT— for referring new subscribers to Talent Edge Weekly. Thank you, Mariangela, for your support of this newsletter!

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Have a great week, and I look forward to sharing more ideas in next week’s Edge!

Brian 

Brian Heger is an internal 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

Below is a glance at the content of this week's issue. My detailed summaries of these resources can be found in the section after this one. However, you can click the quick links below if you want to go directly to the source without seeing my summary and bonus resources—but I recommend that you read the summaries!

  • CEO Talent Champions | Gartner’s February Issue of HR Leaders Monthly | A 41-page issue that looks at how CEOs and Chief Human Resources Officers can strengthen their relationships as they partner in five different areas.

  • The Companies Backtracking on Flexible Work | BBC Worklife | Shares how the worker-employer power dynamic is swinging back towards employers and how a segment of firms might be using this leverage to increase the number of mandatory days employees need to be in the office.

  • The Hidden Toll of Microstress | Harvard Business Review | Provides an overview of how microstressors—individual stressors that seem manageable at the moment, but that accrue over time—can have an impact on aspects of employee wellbeing. Includes a diagnostic for identifying and acting on microstressors.

  • 2023 Workplace Learning Report | LinkedIn Learning | A 52-page report that looks at key learning and development shifts and how the L&D function continues to evolve. I share 6 bonus resources for enabling internal mobility.

  • Report: What is the Truth About Pay? | ADP Research Institute | A 36-page report that provides data-based insights on factors that influence—and don't influence— workers' perceptions of pay equity.

And don't forget to check out the 2023 Job Cuts and Layoffs Tracker, Chief HR Officer Hire of the Week, Most Viewed Resource from last week's issue, Tweet of the week, and more!

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

The partnership between the CEO and Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) is critical to the success of any organization. However, CHROs and CEOs don’t always align on the talent priorities for their firms. As CHROs partner with their CEOs on aligning and executing their talent strategies more effectively, this new 41-page issue of Gartner's HR Leaders Monthly provides ideas. The issue introduces Gartner’s CEO Talent Champions—30 best-in-class CEOs from the Russell 3000 Index whose organizations have achieved and demonstrated a commitment to exceptional talent outcomes. Four criteria were used to identify the top 1 percent of CEOs: 1) Financial performance, 2) Talent-related ESG measures, 3) Employee voice, and 4) Public commitment to employee value proposition preferences. The report explores how these CEOs make tough talent decisions similarly in five ways. Specific steps are offered on how CHROs can support their CEOs in each of the five areas and, in doing so, enhance the quality of that partnership. For example, CEO Talent Champions overinvest in explaining the rationale behind specific talent decisions to ensure employees understand them. CHROs can help their CEOs by evaluating employee understanding, weighting communication toward rationale and inputs, and helping employees share questions and concerns. This month's issue also includes a section on 9 trends shaping the future of work (begin on p.30).

Many organizations continue to offer flexible, remote, and hybrid work arrangements. However, a segment of firms that have embraced remote and hybrid work is increasing the number of mandatory days employees need to be in the office. For example, Disney announced it is requiring employees to come back into the office four days a week starting on March 1, targeting Monday through Thursday as in-person workdays—a decision prompting thousands of employees to sign a petition urging CEO Bob Iger to reverse this requirement. Amazon, Starbucks, and Activision Blizzard are among the other employers recently announcing plans to have workers return to their corporate offices more frequently in 2023. This BBC article notes that as economic uncertainty looms, and companies axe jobs on a wide scale, the power dynamic is swinging back towards employers: many may be using the downturn as an opportunity to enforce or overhaul their working practices. While organizations reserve the right to require workers to return to the office for a set number of days, these decisions come with unforeseen risks when not critically evaluated and thought through. With this as the backdrop, I am resharing a bonus article by Gartner, How Should We Collaborate in a Hybrid World? One idea offered is to structure in-office requirements around the work the team is doing rather than requiring a minimum number of days per week (e.g., if a team is working on a project with five phases over six months, they will meet in person during a few critical checkpoints of the project lifecycle).

As pointed out in my one-page summary on 2023 talent priorities according to seven sources, employee wellbeing (EWB) is a growing focus for many firms. While organizations have programs and initiatives to support EWB (e.g., wellness programs), one often overlooked driver of employee wellbeing is: reducing or eliminating sources of stress related to ways of working. This article by Rob Cross and Karen Dillon—authors of the forthcoming book, The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems--and What to Do About It (April 18, 2023)—share ideas for identifying and mitigating these sources of stress in organizations. They define microstressors as “individual stressors that seem manageable at the moment, but they accrue, and they can create ripple effects of secondary and sometimes tertiary consequences that can last for hours or days — and even trigger microstress in others.” The accumulation of these unnoticed small events ultimately affects employee well-being. The article addresses various angles of this topic, including different microstressors in the workplace, such as misalignment between collaborators on their roles or priorities or unpredictable behavior from a person in a position of authority. It includes a diagnostic to determine which of the 14 microstressors might be part of the work environment. Leadership teams can use the tool to identify opportunities for improving the work environment, organizational performance, and employee wellbeing.

This newly released 52-page Workplace Learning Report provides an overview of learning and development (L&D) shifts and how the L&D function continues to evolve. While there are several insights in this report, one result is that only 15% of workers surveyed report that their employer actively encourages them to seek new opportunities within the company. It’s also interesting to observe that on page 34, internal mobility is number 10 of the top 10 program areas that are being prioritized by the L&D function. Could the lack of progress in internal mobility within organizations be that there are too many L&D priorities? Should the L&D function focus on the vital few areas that can have the greatest ROI for organizational stakeholders? Since internal mobility enables so many vital organizational capabilities and outcomes—from redeploying talent quickly to talent retention— L&D practitioners should elevate this priority for their organizations. As L&D professionals enable internal mobility in the organizations they support, here is a one-page PDF that includes six articles and resources with several ideas. Topics range from activating an internal talent marketplace to encouraging employees to apply for internal opportunities. Just click the title in the PDF, and it will take you to the source document.

Pay equity—compensating employees the same when they perform the same or similar job duties while accounting for other factors, such as their experience level, job performance, and tenure with the employer (SHRM)–continues to be a topic of interest for many organizations. And while one lever for driving pay equity is pay transparency—the degree to which an organization openly and proactively shares information about salaries—this new 36-page report by ADP Research looks at other factors influencing how workers feel about pay equity. The research explores questions such as: Does gender affect one’s feeling about pay? How about one’s race, or education level, or part-time versus full-time status, or the length of one’s tenure within an organization? While various factors, such as tenure and level of education, do not appear to influence the perception of pay equity, other factors do. For example, people who divide their time between home and onsite work are the least likely to say that their pay is unfair. Non-hybrid, onsite workers are the most likely to say their pay is unfair. When workers do work they enjoy and are good at, they are much less likely to say they’re paid unfairly. The data-based insights from this report provide a more holistic view of the various factors that influence workers' perceptions of pay equity.

MOST SHARED FROM LAST WEEK

An 88-page report covering various talent practices and workplace topics such as workforce planning, employee experience, compensation, employee preferences, employee wellbeing, skills-based organizations, and more. You can also view this post here on LinkedIn.

CHIEF HR OFFICER HIRE OF THE WEEK

This past week, 20 new 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:

  • Elektrofi (BOSTON)—a biotechnology company focused on drug formulation and delivery innovations— announced the appointment of Paulette Gangemi as Chief Human Resources Officer. Ms. Gangemi joins Elektrofi with 20 years of experience leading Human Resources teams in the high-science biopharmaceutical and energy industries. Most recently, she led Employee Relations and Employment Practices at Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. She was previously the regional head of HR for ThermoFisher Scientific’s Pharmaceutical Services division and also served as Head of HR for the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

To learn how to gain access to all 20 detailed Chief Human Resources Officer announcements from this past week and +2000 archived announcements, visit CHROs on the Go.

If you are already a member of CHROs on the Go, you can log in to access all announcements and site functionality.

Here you can see the latest updates from a segment of organizations that have announced job cuts and layoffs since the start of 2023. Recruiters, search firms, and hiring managers can use this resource to identify opportunities for recruiting talent from organizations affected by layoffs. A few firms that announced job cuts this past week include Bank of America, DocuSign, LinkedIn, KPMG, and Wix, to name a few.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

TALENT EDGE WEEKLY REWIND

Highlights a previously shared Talent Edge Weekly resource that received a high number of views and engagement!

A one-page PDF resource that includes 18 questions that CHROs and their teams might be asked about different aspects of talent.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Partial View of Recommendations. Click Image to See All Books

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