The Work In Progress Report

Josh Bersin from Deloitte notes 'Low unemployment is hard on employers. Job turnover rate hits a five year high at almost 20%. Healthcare it's over 30%. 

"Digital disruption is battering everything from retailing, high street banking to taxi hailing and while professional services have appeared resistant to digital transformation, that too is about to change"

In any industry, you have some form of supply chain, it’s a core competency in your business model. Your skills supply chain should be no different.

A successful talent-management strategy gets the best people into the most important roles, focusing on where the organization really creates value and how top talent contributes.

​The upside of all the changes taking place in the world of work is that the human element is now being celebrated.

Talent policies should help build a workforce that aligns with corporate strategy and that drives stronger financial, customer, and operational performance.

HR professionals hiring talent today need to fully appreciate the generalists who can shift gears as fast as technology is driving digital transformation.

Rather than devaluing their skills, the technology of today— and the technology that is yet to come — will help people to be better at their jobs.

PERSONALITY PITCH. It’s time to get personal. Who are YOU? I’m an ENFP. If you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types, you now have a good amount of information about my preferences—my likely style of communication, areas of strength and weakness, and whom I might work most effectively with at your company.

These are powerful insights and ones that would make much sense for me to reveal to a boss and team members to promote effective collaboration. What about sharing them with a strategic partner or other business relationship to support negotiating a productive conclusion?

Who does that though? Not too many people do yet. The number is growing though as the spotlight is starting to shine on talent. Especially as the workforce becomes decentralized, there is now greater desire, indeed need, for more understanding about managers’ and team members’ personalities, strengths, and skills to promote effective interactions and habits, and improve outcomes. 

I am currently enjoying Ray Dalio’s book, Principles. I love the idea he developed and implemented at his company, Bridgewater. Each employee has their own “baseball card” which documents their personality traits, strengths, skills, and elements of their track record. These are available for any colleague to view to help understand who they are and how to interact well, and how to create the strongest teams, matching complementary skills, traits, and strengths. 

In the past, we have each been defined by our company, department, and title. As business evolves, the focus is more on changing skills’ needs. Careers are becoming more latticed and weave through and between companies. Now, the weighting is more on us as individuals to define ourselves.

It’s not just about personal branding, but also about identifying our strengths and skills so that we can create and benefit from having our personal “baseball cards”. When we know more about who we are, we can work out what we want to emphasize and develop to improve our performance, maximize outcomes and progress, and manage our careers more easily.

If you are interested to understand more about Future-of-Work talent management, please contact me - Sophie.Wade@flexcelnetwork.com  

An interview with Ram Charan, the author of "Talent Wins," about how insights from the book can be applied in the real-world.

Going beyond traditional boundaries to push talent management into the Future of HR and everywhere in the organization.

Proactive measures and personal involvement are becoming essential for your team, workforce, and business, as well as your own work and career.

The linear, continuous and compounding career has disappeared. No dispute. However, while the ‘high potentials’ continue to receive attention and direction, few companies have made much progress to fill in the void with new – personalized and ‘latticed’ – career models and pathways for the bulk of their employees.

The consequence of inaction? Without any indication as to how their potential is going to be developed or their futures unfold, employees naturally default to assuming that the company doesn’t care and there is no future for them there. Millennials may be particularly sensitive to this deficit as they have little sense of or faith in the career trajectories of ‘yesteryear’. Their consequent conclusion: It’s time to move on.

To engage and retain employees, as well as attract new hires, it is critical for companies to implement and continuously communicate innovative, new career frameworks. Unequivocally, creating and implementing an individualized, non-linear AND probably cross-functional, employee career development initiative is no easy task. In the transitioning world of work, new options like talent circulation and job rotations are increasingly well-received, and the possibilities are exciting…in theory. However, there are significant practical implications for corporations of almost any size looking to execute them.

Steve Levy is all too aware of these challenges. As a veteran in the field, he has seen many evolutions of the recruiting discipline – from both internal and external perspectives – working in close association with HR. He notices new trends and futurist projections, absorbing them to the extent he deems appropriate, undermining hyperbole with a wry smile.

Considering this new career conundrum, he observes that while the traditional HR function has incorporated generalized career planning strategies and programs, HR has not substantively embraced the creating, monitoring and ongoing nurturing of customized latticed career plans to shape each and every employee. This structural shift will require a new approach and mind-set. In addition, sophisticated tools that have recently entered the mainstream are needed to help map, develop and track workers’ skills and career ‘circulation’, as well as provide personalized training and other educational courses to augment employees’ capabilities in identified areas.

Most important, says Levy, companies must recognize that a highly positive candidate experience during the initial engagement, recruitment, and hiring processes must transition to an equally positive employee experience once on the job. Consistency is critical, as well as ensuring that (appropriately set) expectations are met and sustained. HR, then becomes a proactive enabler - a continuous catalyst and support for enhanced employment engagement, and thus productivity too. 

In conversation about the new more fluid, or less defined, edges of companies, and the leveraging of freelance talent ‘pools’, Steve recalls certain companies’ legacy alumni networks. Former employees or un-hired top prospects were included in the ongoing extended community of the organization and revisited at appropriate times. Similar models are increasingly being adopted, also embracing new freelancer members, as firms use an accordion-type framework to access scarce skilled, but familiar and culturally-suited resources, or address seasonal or client-related needs.

Career planning, design and development needs focused attention. Your employees already know the issues. They are looking for you to acknowledge and address them.