Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #102

This newly released 67-page report explores how flexible work, employee wellbeing, and the “Great Reshuffle”—where workers are reconfiguring their careers—are leading firms to cultivate human-centered cultures. This type of culture focuses on bringing greater humanity in the way leaders lead, support, and grow their employees. One example of how firms enable a human-centered culture through flexibility is Unilever’s pilot program called U-Work (pages 24-25). This program creates a new type of “hybrid” employee who can enjoy the flexibility of being a contract worker and some of the security and benefits enjoyed by full-time workers. U-Work employees are paid for each assignment when they’re working. They get a monthly retainer and a suite of benefits, whether they’re working on an assignment or not. This solution recognizes that many employees want more flexible work arrangements tailored to their personal needs. Employees at the company are using the program at varying stages of their lives, including a factory manager nearing retirement who wants to coach younger workers, a parent who wants to balance caregiver responsibilities and work, and a recent graduate who wants to set up a side business and travel. Other ideas are offered.

According to a recent Conference Board report, talent attraction and retention are global CEOs’ top priorities in 2022. As firms seek to attract and retain the best talent, many are turning to their employee value proposition (EVP)—the set of attributes the labor market and employees perceive as the value gained through employment with an organization—as a source of differentiation. This 17-page editable PDF allows firms to gather and summarize information from three critical sources to inform their EVP design: 1) The labor market (including current employees), 2) talent competitors, 3) organizational strategy. For example, page 8 enables a firm to look at its overall target labor market and identify the top attraction drivers, top attrition drivers, and top perceptions of the organization. Page 9 then helps firms segment their target labor market to identify differences between overall labor market preferences or perceptions. These and other templates in the document can help firms identify opportunities to adjust the design of their EVPs to better attract and retain talent today. As a bonus, I am resharing this reference by Mercer that looks at which EVP components are top of mind for different worker segments.  

Many workers want flexibility in where, when, and how they work. This shift has led firms to adopt flexible work arrangements, such as hybrid and remote work. And while these work arrangements bring various benefits, they can limit career development opportunities. Behind this thinking is a belief that those who do not work from a physical company work location — or who are in the office less frequently than others—will miss out on learning and career opportunities afforded to those in proximity to organizational decision-makers. This rationale is connected to proximity bias: an incorrect assumption that workers in close physical proximity to their team and company leaders will be perceived as better workers than their remote counterparts. And while workers need to take responsibility for their careers regardless of where they work, HR leaders can help reinvent career development strategies in a remote and hybrid work world. This article shares three tactics to support these efforts: 1) Reconsidering the need for mobility in succession planning, 2) Building agile, borderless support systems, and 3) Upskilling people at all levels so they can thrive in hybrid settings. Concerning succession, the authors recommend firms reevaluate if mobility or geography is still relevant for all succession roles—a tactic that can be applied beyond roles targeted for succession. Other ideas are discussed. 

This new whitepaper offers insights into how firms can take an integrated approach to employee wellbeing. The paper expands on Deloitte’s work, the workforce, and the workplace model. It uses these three components as the lens for deploying wellbeing efforts at the organizational level. 1) The Work component focuses on integrating wellbeing into work design. Examples include: using technology to promote collaboration, systems for collecting and communicating feedback, and giving workers autonomy in how they do their work. 2) The Workforce component seeks to provide the right mix of benefits, programs, and policies that support workforce wellbeing. Examples include: enhanced return-to-work programs, corporate purpose, and psychological benefits. 3) The Workplace aspect focuses on providing access to physical spaces and remote work policies designed for people’s wellbeing (e.g., air, light, and sound quality; remote work support.) Table 1 on p.15 provides a framework of these three components and their underlying wellbeing components. Part 2 of the whitepaper is scheduled to be released later this year and will focus on identifying metrics, leading indicators, and necessary tools for implementing wellbeing strategies. 

One reason I pursued an academic degree in industrial and organizational psychology was to understand how to design and conduct organizational research. The end goal was not the research itself but to use the research findings to solve real business problems. For instance, when I was employed at AT&T in 2007, I designed and implemented a research initiative to identify which aspects of the employee value proposition were driving employee turnover and disengagement and show how these aspects affected business outcomes. The results helped business leaders make talent investments based on a rigorous research study versus simply gut instinct. And while I published an article on this work in the Organizational Development Journal, the format and requirements of the journal required that it be written in a more academic and scientific manner. That article’s format is different than one I wrote from a practitioner’s perspective on workforce planning. While both pieces provide value, the latter resulted in higher engagement across internal HR practitioners. Even when I share academic research-based articles in this newsletter, they are usually ranked in the bottom ten percent of viewed articles. This picture begs the question: how do we preserve scientific rigor when researching organizational topics while making it radically easy for busy practitioners to understand and make use of the findings? In this 20-minute podcast, Marc Effron provides a few ideas on this topic and shares suggestions for framing research questions that result in practical value.