Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #175

Future of jobs and skills, talent trends, using talent resources in a constrained environment, AI in HR playlist, and 7 DEI metrics.

Author

Brian Heger
May 07, 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 Bob Carruthers, VP, Talent Acquisition North America, Bayer— for referring new subscribers to Talent Edge Weekly. Thank you, Bob, 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. You can connect with Brian on Linkedin, Twitter, and brianheger.com

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THIS WEEK'S CONTENT

Below is a glance at the content of this week's issue. My detailed summaries of these resources are in the section after this one.

And don't forget to check out the 2023 Job Cuts and Layoff Tracker.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This latest LinkedIn global talent trends report explores labor-market trends and their implications for candidates, employees, and the workplace. The trends are organized into four areas: 1) Hiring, 2) Internal Mobility, 3) Employee Values, and 4) Employee Growth. One finding is that while hiring has slowed down in many organizations, internal mobility is trending upward across 16 of 19 global industries (via promotions and internal role transfers). People leaders are benefiting the most from internal mobility as they are twice as likely to move internally as individual contributors. Generation X also experiences the highest internal mobility rate, followed by Millennials and Generation Z. Baby Boomers are the least likely to move internally. Despite the overall uptick in internal mobility, many employees prioritize external job opportunities over internal moves. Among the possible reasons employees are less inclined to consider an internal move as a career option are: a) external job openings are often easier to find, b) external jobs often provide bigger pay increases, c) employees can often get discouraged by cumbersome internal-hiring processes, and d) it can be hard for employees to show that they have transferable skills to other internal opportunities. As organizations find ways to overcome these and other barriers to internal mobility, I am resharing this post, where I curated 9 articles on different aspects of internal mobility—from developing an internal talent marketplace to policies and practices that detract from internal mobility.

This newly released report explores how jobs and skills will evolve over the next five years. While there are too many insights to summarize from this massive 296-page report, three insights include: 1) Employers project that 83 million jobs will be lost and that 69 million jobs are projected to be created, constituting a structural labor-market churn of 152 million jobs, or 23% of the 673 million employees in the data set being studied. 2) Employers estimate that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years. Cognitive skills are reported to be growing in importance most quickly, reflecting the increasing importance of complex problem-solving in the workplace. 3) The skills companies report to be increasing in importance the fastest are not always reflected in corporate upskilling strategies—suggesting that learning and development strategies may not always focus on developing the right skills. These and other insights in the report raise questions for organizations to consider and answer, such as: Do we know which jobs and skills in our organization are more likely to go away? Which jobs and skills are emerging? Do we understand the skills that are workforce possesses? How do the current skills of our workforce compare with the skills we need over the next few years? How will we redeploy workers as work needs change? How will our workforce planning, talent acquisition, learning, contingent workforce, etc. strategies need to change? Other ideas are discussed.

As many organizations face talent and budget constraints, they are finding opportunities to deliver effective talent solutions in more adaptive, iterative, and creative ways. One approach organizations continue to experiment with is organizing work beyond jobs—where tasks are decoupled from jobs and used as the basis for resourcing talent needs. This approach of deconstructing jobs into tasks has been covered heavily by John Boudreau and Ravin Jesuthasan in their book Work Without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System. This new Gartner article provides insights into how work can be organized by tasks and then resourced through talent solutions that go beyond build/buy tactics. As shown in Figure 1, resourcing solutions organizations engage in when taking a "task" approach fall on a spectrum, ranging from less disruptive (a good strategy is to group a set of tasks into a new role) to more disruptive (list all internal work in task form for employees to choose work). The article provides examples from a few companies on how they are using tasks to determine resourcing solutions, including automation and AI. White Castle, for example, has been experimenting with using robots to flip burgers in its restaurants. The intention is to alleviate some of the pressure on employees and allow them more time to focus on customers. By automating this routine, monotonous task, White Castle can create a less stressful, more engaging experience for its frontline workforce. As a bonus, I am resharing this additional article by Gartner that provides four steps to break down roles into a group of tasks and then analyze those tasks to determine the best workforce strategies.

Using artificial intelligence (AI) technology for various talent and HR practices—such as recruiting, employee engagement, and performance management—has the potential to revolutionize HR and various talent management practices. As HR leaders and their teams explore these technologies and their use cases, I have pulled together this one-page PDF with 5 resources. These resources address different considerations for AI-based tools in HR, such as: 1) promoting the responsible use of AI technologies in HR, 2) understanding how AI works and derives its predictions and inferences—a process known as “explainable AI,” 3) risk-mitigation strategies for overcoming common challenges of implementing AI tools in talent management, and 4) different uses cases for AI in HR. The PDF includes links to the source articles and reports and briefly summarizes the contents. For example, the 36-page paper by the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) presents recommendations for validating and using AI-based assessments for employee selection. It provides guidance—backed by scientific research — on how AI-based assessments can be used effectively and legally in employee selection contexts. The 59-page toolkit by The World Economic Forum includes editable checklists and questionnaires to guide the evaluation and implementation of HR-based AI platforms, such as questions to ask vendors when evaluating their AI tools. Each resource can help educate purchasers of these platforms on the various components of AI—increasing the likelihood of selecting the right technologies for their organizations while mitigating risks.

As pointed out in my one-page summary on 2023 talent priorities according to seven sources, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) remains a top priority for many organizations. But to make meaningful progress in DEI, organizations must not only prioritize it but also implement impactful practices that enable DEI. This new article explores DEI progress through the lens of meritocracy—where decisions about promotions, salaries, and other rewards are based on objective criteria. It uses seven key metrics—spanning the entire employee life cycle—to be most helpful in assessing progress towards a true meritocracy. The seven metric categories are: 1) attrition, 2) performance, 3) promotions, 4) leadership pipeline, 5) employment pipeline, 6) pay equity, and 7) inclusion. Across these categories, metrics can be identified, measured, and reported to show progress in DEI and to establish accountability. For example, in the United States, Walmart shares promotion rates by race and gender in its annual Culture, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion report. To supplement this HBR article, I am resharing this 61-page report by World Economic Forum, which identifies five success factors common across DEI efforts. It includes practices from eight companies (e.g., EY, Limak, PwC, Randstad, Schneider Electric, Shiseido, Tata Steel, and Walmart) on advancing DEI in their organizations.

MOST VIEWED FROM LAST WEEK

This PDF shares four resources to help answer questions about high-potential employee identification: 1) What are the indicators of potential? 2) Should we change how we define and measure potential to align with the changing nature of work and the workplace? 3) Are there different types of potential? 4) What are examples of how high-potential employees can go undetected?

CHIEF HR OFFICER HIRE OF THE WEEK

As part of CHROs on the Go— a digital platform subscription that provides the easiest, fastest, and most convenient way to stay informed about hires, promotions, and resignations in the Chief Human Resources Officer role—20 new CHRO announcements were posted on the platform last week.

This week’s CHRO highlight is:

  • FranklinCovey (SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH) [NYSE: FC]—one of the largest and most trusted leadership companies in the world—announced that it has appointed Meisha Sherman to the role of Chief People Officer. Sherman joins FranklinCovey with over 30 years in human resources and was most recently the Chief People Officer of Mindbody. She also held senior HR roles with Envista Holdings Corporation and Danaher Corporation, to name a few. In her new role, Ms. Sherman will also serve as a member of FranklinCovey's executive committee.

Do you want to join hundreds of others getting the EDGE each week in knowing which CHROs are being hired, promoted, and resigning? If so:

Currently, there are +2000 CHROs announcements on CHROs on the Go, with an average of 25 new announcements added each week!

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

Click the link or table below to 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 Morgan Stanley and Shopify.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

TALENT EDGE WEEKLY REWIND

Highlights a previously shared Talent Edge Weekly resource that received many views and engagement!

This 16-page paper offers ways to accelerate the transition to an “Agile HR” operating model through one of four pathways—ranging from agile experimentation to full agile transformation. As illustrated in the 2×2 matrix on page 13, choosing the best pathway depends on two considerations: 1) the business need for greater speed and flexibility to design and deliver HR solutions and 2) the function’s readiness for change in terms of culture, leadership, and skills.

If so, you can check out issue #174, which includes 15 of the most popular resources from April. Topics include workforce planning, succession planning, workforce trends, AI in the workplace, and more.

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