Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #103

As HR teams support their organizations on the most pressing business issues in 2022, this PwC pulse report articulates the top concerns and opportunities shared by executives. The pulse report was conducted between January 10th and 14th and surveyed 678 global executives across multiple industries. For more than three-quarters of executives (77%), the ability to hire and retain talent is most critical to achieving growth. This finding aligns with a recent Conference Board report showing that CEOs across the globe cite talent attraction and retention as their number-one internal focus for 2022. The PwC report shows that respondent firms are supporting talent attraction and retention by offering more incentives to talent, including higher salaries, better benefits, and greater flexibility. Regarding compensation, 62% of respondent firms are increasing compensation to bolster talent attraction and retention, and another 22% are considering it. And while attractive compensation packages are compelling short-term attraction and retention tactics, other components of a firm’s employee value proposition (EVP)—such as flexible work and shared purpose—in general, are likely to have a more enduring impact considering shifts in worker preferences. As firms determine the right mix of EVP attributes to best attract and retain talent, I am resharing the June 2021 issue of Gartner’s HR Leaders Monthly, which has a few articles on EVP.

Pay transparency—the degree to which an organization openly and proactively shares information about salaries—is a hot topic for many organizations. One factor drawing attention to this topic is increases in legislation. Ten states and cities (e.g., California, Colorado, New York City) have already passed laws that require employers to state their salary ranges, either in job descriptions or when an applicant requests it. The Finnish government has also proposed a new law that would allow the country’s workers to find out what their colleagues are earning if they suspect they are being discriminated against. As organizations think through this topic, I am sharing this PayScale paper showing how pay transparency can be viewed on a spectrum spanning five stages (pages 10 and 13). For example, at the third stage, organizations give employees insight into their compensation structures, such as outlining the company’s pay philosophy, providing salary ranges for open positions, and outlining a clear set of policies for raises. The fifth stage of transparency is open salaries, which gives employees insight into how much their colleagues make—a tactic used by Buffer over the past few years. As pressure continues to build for companies to become more transparent with employees about pay, firms can use this spectrum to assess where it currently falls, determine where it ultimately wants to be, and create actions steps to close the gap between the two.  

As hybrid and remote work continues as a dominant flexible work arrangement for knowledge workers, organizations seek to understand the long-term implications of these arrangements. This Future Forum Pulse survey by Slack surveyed 10,737 knowledge workers across sectors in the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Japan, and the U.K. to understand aspects of hybrid work. One finding is that people of color, women, and working mothers are opting for flexible work arrangements at higher rates than their peers. The difference in hybrid/remote work utilization across worker segments has raised concerns about the potential for rising “proximity bias” (PB)—inequities between co-located and remote employees where there is favoritism of workers who spend more time in the office or in proximity to organizational decision-makers. Firms can respond by developing strategies for mitigating PB when making talent decisions (e.g., evaluating and rewarding performance, allocating development opportunities. One tactic is to build manager capability in a) recognizing their tendencies to engage in PB and 2) helping them to develop mindsets and behaviors that minimize PB. Another tactic is measuring the extent to which workers believe PB exists in a firm’s organization. This can be achieved by adding a couple of questions to your company survey or a pulse survey with items such as: Do you believe yourself and your coworkers are treated differently depending on your work location (on-site, remote)? Do you believe that on-site workers are prioritized over remote workers? What other tactics will you consider to reduce proximity bias in your organization?

I began to track return to office dates and vaccine mandate decisions in August 2021 to help those in my network understand how 150+ firms were handling these decisions. However, as organizations repeatedly changed their return dates over a 10-week period (a few changed their dates 5x), I stopped tracking this information on October 21, 2021. Said differently, the return dates were changing so frequently that the dates themselves became less useful. But as we approach February 2022, many firms seem to have greater confidence in their return dates—with many announcing plans to return their workforce to the office over the next few weeks. This observation places a spotlight on a question that has been lurking for the past year: what impact will return-to-office have on employee retention? Firms paying attention to this question are likely to have already developed and implemented talent strategies to address this concern. However, those firms and managers that have yet to answer this question and proactively plan are more likely to face heightened turnover risk as workers return. This risk is more significant given that workers considering leaving have had time to plan their exit strategy. And with many firms planning to payout bonuses this time of the year—a trigger for when employees might time their exit—the near-term risk is compounded. While it may be too late for managers to retain their best talent, the next few weeks could present one last opportunity to do so. This document includes questions to uncover what’s most important to individual workers. Managers can incorporate a few of these questions into their next 1×1 conversation with direct reports and develop a plan for keeping those workers they want to retain.

Artificial intelligence and analytics continue to permeate most areas of HR, ranging from recruiting to compensation. In fact, a few reports suggest that over 250 different commercial AI-based HR tools exist today. And while these tools are incredibly powerful and produce many benefits (e.g., reduce time in screening many applicants during the selection process), they also come with risks; one of those risks is algorithmic bias, where AI-based algorithms can amplify institutional and historical biases that discriminate based on race, gender, and class. For example, a new HBR article notes how Amazon stopped using a resume screening tool built by its engineers because it was biased against women. On the recruiting front, a social media ad for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) field opportunities that had been carefully designed to be gender-neutral was shown disproportionately to men by an algorithm designed to maximize value for recruiters’ ad budgets, because women are generally more responsive to advertisements and thus ads shown to them are more expensive. As HR leaders seek to reap the benefits of AI platforms while reducing risks, this 28-page report provides several insights. Page 10 begins a section that shows how bias emerges in AI-based HR tools, such as chatbots, video interviews, targeted job advertisements, performance evaluation, etc. Page 16 begins to discuss bias mitigation techniques.