It’s the latest episode of the People Purpose Podcast, with Chas Fields and Julie Develin. In this episode, they chat career pathing and the steps organizations need to take to build a successful internal pipeline of talent to fill current and future roles.

In light of recent worker strikes happening around the globe, employers have recognized calls for changing the way they cultivate culture and retain talent. While companies face numerous hiring challenges today, often times, employers don’t need to look far to fill existing roles.

Listen now as Chas and Julie provide practical ways to help you think outside the box about your succession strategies.

Today’s post comes to us from Workforce Institute Executive DirectorDr. Chris Mullen, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, SPHR.

As the economy works its way through “The Great Reset” following the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels like those of us who lead and manage teams are being squeezed from all sides.

Despite an historic number of job openings, and despite the fact, more than seven million people who were working before the pandemic remain out of work today, it seems nearly impossible to hire enough employees to meet demand.  

At the same time, retaining our best team members is getting hard. Some are calling it a “Turnover Tsunami.” It makes sense: With so many job openings, talented and reliable employees will always be able to choose their employer. But it begs the questions:

What’s really going on with the labor market right now?

Why is the economy so hard to put back together?

What should leaders be thinking about to ensure success in 2022 and beyond?

Workforce Institute board member John Frehse, senior managing director at Ankura and one of our resident labor experts, and Dave Gilbertson, a vice president with UKG who leads the UKG Workforce Activity Report analyzing high-frequency employee shift work data to understand economic trends, sit down together for a candid conversation to discuss these questions and more.

Today's post comes to us from Workforce Institute board member and Skeptical Guy, John Hollon. 

When some people talk, others sit up and listen. 

So it is with well-known HR technology analyst Josh Bersin. He recently wrote that he believes that the U.S. economy is getting ready to take off, and that a booming job market will be right behind it. 


Others have been making the same case, but Bersin takes the forecast to another level when he says that, "We are about to enter one of the hottest job markets in a decade." 

That's a bold statement considering how strong the job market was prior to the global pandemic and lockdown, but he points out that we're already operating with 13% more open jobs than we had a year ago, and, that estimates from Goldman Sachs predict that the unemployment rate will drop to 4% by the end of the year. 


That's amazing given what we all experienced in 2020, with a year-long lockdown and some of the worst unemployment numbers since the Great Depression. 

Making the most of an internal talent marketplace 

What's even more surprising is that Bersin not only makes the strong-but-obvious case for better funding and management of your talent acquisition team, but also to "accelerate your internal talent marketplace" as well. And THAT tells you that the concept of an internal talent marketplace has now graduated from niche concept to mainstream business practice. 


Don't know what an internal talent marketplace is exactly? 

Here is some background: It's a more efficient, technology-driven employee management and retention system. Better retention is the one of the big end-goals, and an internal talent marketplace does that by tracking the skill-set of employees and then helping them to develop and build upon their skills. This sometimes means upskilling (building upon and advancing someone's current skills), or reskilling (training in new skills). 


But an internal talent marketplace does something else as well -- it tracks what skills employees have, what jobs they have worked in, and works with them to build a career path within the organization. The larger goal is to better utilize employees when internal openings occur. As a result, filling openings with current staff as part of their career growth experience becomes more important than just recruiting people from the outside whenever a position opens up. 

Some companies have done this for years, but the pandemic and lockdown made the internal talent marketplace a more important concept and built on the notion that current employees were important resources that could be utilized all over an organization. 


As Bersin put it:
"(During a labor shortage) It starts to take months to find people, and employees with in-demand skills start job-hopping. This makes an even bigger case for internal mobility.

One of the most exciting innovations in HR is the creation of internal talent marketplaces. Big companies like Cisco and IBM have had strong internal mobility programs for years. Now, technology can help any company manage and facilitate internal mobility much more efficiently. 


For example, if you have a good talent mobility system, you can identify employees with key skills (such as marketing professionals, software engineers or analysts) and move them from business unit to business unit based on demand. This is a good thing for employees' careers and greatly increases the dynamism of your company. It's also much less expensive than hiring externally."

Filling that opening with someone right under your nose 

It sounds obvious -- Why wouldn't companies want to look to current employees first and give them a shot at internal opportunities that open up? 


Well, as people who have worked for a few years know, a great many organizations are pretty terrible about letting employees know about open positions inside the company. And, growing and promoting employees takes a deep commitment from top management and a strong company culture that puts a premium on making it happen today, tomorrow, and in the months and years to come. 

Deloitte probably described the thinking behind internal talent marketplaces best: 
"The business opportunity is clear-cut. First, you can avoid replacement and recruitment costs incurred when people leave. But even greater is the opportunity to reshape your employment brand and workplace culture. Many of today's youngest workers are eager to build their careers rapidly and want to work for organizations that challenge them and promote them quickly. Internal mobility – how that happens–is not just a way to retain talent. It also helps to create a powerful magnet for people outside your organization who seek professional growth. 

The result? The talent market can see your organization as one that champions ambition and performance in everything it does. Think about what kind of talent you'll attract and keep – whether inside or outside your organization." 


Yes, maybe the U.S. economy is ready to take off and recruiting and hiring will go gangbusters again. But even if it does, embracing internal talent marketplaces is a good thing for smart companies to do. After all, the person who may be the best fit for that job you're trying to fill might already be working for you ... and right under your nose. 

This podcast is a conversation between Joyce Maroney, former Executive Director of the Workforce Institute and board member John Hollon and part of the series of podcasts we're hosting on key ideas from our most recently published book, Being Present:  A Practical Guide for Transforming the Employee Experience of Your Frontline Workforce. Here, John shares his advice for identifying and developing transferable skills.

John Hollon is a long time Workforce Institute board member as well as an award-winning journalist and nationally recognized expert on leadership, talent management, and smart workforce practices.  John's chapter in our book is entitled Rethinking Frontline Hiring With An Eye Towards Transferable Skills.  In his chapter, he talks about the importance of hiring and developing workers based on broader analyses of their skills and their opportunities for growth.

I hope you take the opportunity to listen in on this conversation below.

John Hollon talks about the importance of transferable skills.

Today's post comes to us from Workforce Institute board member John Frehse.Here he discusses why a slowing economy doesn't release top talent for you.

Talented employees are a precious resource. The Container Store has a famous mantra: Three good employees are equal to one great employee. I agree with them. Great employees contribute more, promote a positive culture, and drive extreme results. Unfortunately, they are also becoming harder and harder to find.

The problem with talented employees is that they are always in demand. As global markets retract, the need for talent may actually increase as companies require a higher level of performance from fewer employees. This may cause the supply of available great employees to shrink, creating wage pressures and trapped revenue for those that cannot function without them.

Great employees are dedicated and rarely available in the free market for hire. They must be lured away from companies that place a high value on them. When negative market trends appear, they are the last to be considered for layoff. What does happen is medium to low performing employees become greater in supply and this does not improve hiring situations for companies in need of talent.

Challenges upskilling and large skills gaps are already clearly defined in areas such as manufacturing and technology, but this may only get worse.

It would be an incredible advantage if your company was better than the rest of the marketplace at identifying and hiring talent. As technology catches up with the marketplace for great employees, it has become easier to identify talented employees (and to hire them away from companies who do not fully appreciate them). Visibility into individual employee thought leadership, project work, and general accomplishments is on display on LinkedIn and other platforms, and more hourly employees are participating than ever before.

Because of sites like Glassdoor and social media in general, talented employees also have more visibility into the true culture of companies in their field of interest than they ever have before. It is easier to identify the great companies but also the underperformers. This visibility into areas of compensation, culture, and total rewards is allowing employees to find the right employer. Companies talking the talk but not walking the walk are getting punished both on social media and business sites. Transparency is allowing talented workers a job mobility they have not always enjoyed. This will only increase as technology improves this visibility into the truth.

So, what can be done? The first step is to look within your own company and be honest about the culture. Too many organizations suffer from the Pollyanna effect. This is when companies ignore realities and refuse to discuss internal challenges (which all companies have). Instead, they promote a false narrative about how everything is perfect. No company is without challenges, and employees know the truth. Not addressing this truth perpetuates a broken culture and this will inevitably spill out into public view.

The following post is courtesy of board member, and Skeptical Guy, John Hollon. In this post, John discusses the importance of soft skills for success in the workplace.

It's surprising that soft skills get so little respect in today's workplace.

Look at any job description posted for just about any job. What you'll find is a long list of very specific technical skills that are required, as well as specific job experience the hiring manager wants. Rarely, if ever, will you find anything directly addressing any soft skills that the job candidate needs to possess.

This is baffling, because ongoing evidence continues to confirm that soft skills are really the key to great employees.

Back in August 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported that companies all over the U.S. were finding it increasingly difficult to find applicants who could communicate clearly, take initiative, problem-solve and get along with co-workers. These traits, often called soft skills, “can make the difference between a standout employee and one who just gets by.”

Nearly three years later, the hunt for workers with strong soft skills has grown even more urgent.

Just last month, a CareerBuilder hiring survey found that the top employment and hiring trend this year was that "candidates' soft skills are increasingly important when applying to jobs."

And just how important are those soft skills? The survey said that a whopping 92 percent of employers "say soft skills, including interpersonal skills, communication abilities, and critical thinking, (are) important in determining whether they hire candidates.”

It's hard to get much more important than that.

In addition, 80 percent of employers in the CareerBuilder survey said "that soft skills would be equally or more important than hard skills when hiring candidates, since specific technical skills are necessary for some jobs."

This points out something that many recruiters and hiring managers seem to forget: While an employee's technical skills may get their foot in the door, it's their people skills -- aka, soft skills -- that will open most of the doors to come. It's a person's work ethic, attitude, communication skills, emotional intelligence, and other soft skills that are critical for career success.

Whether you hire high-level executives, minimum wage workers, or anybody in between, their social skills and ability to communicate well with those they work with -- yes, their "soft" skills -- are critical to their success.

Chief Executive magazine made this very same point when they noted that, “According to PricewaterhouseCoopers' _CEO Survey,' 77 percent of respondents believe that the biggest threat to their businesses stems from underdeveloped soft skills. After all, not striking a balance between soft and hard skills can limit businesses from maintaining a competitive advantage.”

During my management career, I've seen the importance of soft skills downplayed at just about every level -- from recruiter to hiring manager to line manager to top-level executive. And, I can't tell you how many times I've seen high-level managers pooh-pooh the need for soft skills despite all the research to the contrary.

This new CareerBuilder survey is just the latest to make the case that soft skills are incredibly important, despite the postings you see on job boards and company career pages that make no mention of them at all.

If there's one thing Millennials have made clear, it's that the ability to connect with people personally will never go out of style. If you aren't focusing on soft skills in your recruiting and hiring, you better get going because you'll need them more and more as Millennials and Gen Z become a larger and ever more important part of America's workforce.

Today's post, the second in a 3-part series, comes to us from Workforce Institute board member and HR Bartender Sharlyn Lauby. Be sure to check out part one “5 Currencies Essential to Your Company's Employee Value Proposition”. In today's post, she talks about the importance of creating employee trust in your organization.

With unemployment rates at historic lows, companies are very focused on recruiting. Not just finding and hiring the best talent (which is important) but having a recruiting process that's going to pave the way for new hires to do their best work and stay with the organization.

The key to hiring and retaining the best talent is trust. If we want people to apply for jobs, they need to trust the company. Candidates will accept the company's offer, if they trust the recruiter and hiring manager. And ultimately, new employees will stay only as long as they feel they can trust the work environment.

During last year's KronosWorks conference, Malysa O'Connor, senior director of marketing at Kronos, talked about some of the research they're seeing regarding today's recruiting environment and how companies use that research to tweak their existing recruiting process for better results. Here are some highlights:

Start a conversation with prospective candidates before they apply. O'Connor shared that 76 percent of candidates research organizations online before applying. Obviously, organizations want candidates to find out the “good stuff” about the company. One way for them to hear about the good things the company is doing is to hear it directly from the company. Create a talent network that allows prospective applicants to stay in touch and hear what's happening inside the organization.

Leverage technology to the company's advantage. One-third of candidates say an organization needs at least a three-star rating on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed for them to apply. There are a couple of ways for companies to address recruiting rating sites. First of all, create a fantastic candidate experience and you won't have to worry. But that's easier said than done. The second strategy is to encourage (not force) candidates and employees to rate the experience.

Provide applicants with a realistic job preview. Forty-six percent of candidates will evaluate a company's reputation before accepting a job offer. Part of that evaluation is going to be looking at whether the offered position is being presented in an accurate light. Today's candidates aren't looking for surprises. They are fine with accepting less than perfect opportunities provided the company is being transparent and honest about the requirements of the position.

Use onboarding to bridge the candidate and employee experience. O'Connor mentioned that 83 percent of candidates base their decision to apply on an organization's values. This means that during interviews, candidates will be looking to see if a credibility gap exists in the company's employment brand. Not only will organizations want to include a values conversation in interviews, but during orientation and onboarding as well.

Good processes will yield good outcomes. Organizations that want to hire the best talent need to have an excellent recruiting process because candidates have choices. And if the organization wants candidates to choose them, then understanding how to build trust in the recruiting process is essential.

Today's post comes to us courtesy of Workforce Institute Board member and HR Bartender Sharlyn Lauby.  To learn more about this topic, check out Sharlyn's book, Manager Onboarding: 5 Steps for Setting New Leaders Up for Success. 

Managers have one job - to find and train their replacement.

When managers are focused on that one job, they hire the best employees, train them for success, coach them for high performance, and make retention a priority. Because of that, they can take a vacation or attend a conference with confidence, knowing that the department isn't going to fall apart in their absence. Managers who are focused on their one job can participate in the CEO's super-secret special project that will allow them to learn new skills and collaborate with new colleagues. They can do cool stuff that will enhance their careers.

Managers who focus on finding and training their replacement aren't dispensable. In fact, they're promotable. And, organizations that want managers who will hire, train, and retain the best talent need to set those managers up for success. Starting on day number one.

Unfortunately, many organizations tend to hire or promote the most technically competent person into management. The new manager gets training on-the-job, which isn't bad. On-the-job training can be very valuable. But too often, on-the-job training happens after the new manager makes a mistake. A mistake that could have been avoided if the new manager had received proper training and guidance in the first place.

One way to give a new manager the tools they need for success is with onboarding. Think about it - companies currently provide onboarding to new hire employees. Why not onboard new managers?

And this isn't the same as management training or leadership development. Those programs offer skills that employees can use immediately like communication skills, decision-making, and problem-solving. Manager onboarding programs include skills that managers need the minute they become a manager such as workforce management and employment law. There's a place for all of these programs.

Here are three steps to get started with creating a manager onboarding program:

  1. Interview the current management team. Talk with managers about their experience of becoming a manager. Did they receive enough training and support? What was missing? Not only will you get valuable information, but you can start creating buy-in for the program.
  2. Assess what knowledge and skills are being offered. And when. Once you've collected information from current managers, compare that to what the organization is offering in terms of training and development. Also look at when it's being offered. Is it too late OR too early (and managers forget it)?
  3. Start creating programs that address the gaps. It's possible that companies can shift when managers are receiving information, so they are trained at just the right time. If a topic isn't being offered, companies can consider setting up training programs or mentoring to help the new manager.

According to Gallup, seventy percent (70%) of the variance in employee engagement is attributed to managers. Organizations concerned about productivity and retention will want to make sure that managers are well equipped to handle their role. Because it impacts the bottom-line.

Today's post comes to us from Neil Reichenberg, Americas board member and Executive Director of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA-HR).

The 2018 State and Local Government Workforce Trends report recently issued by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence found that the recruitment and retention of qualified personnel with the needed skills for public service was the top priority workforce issue. Other top priority workforce issues are employee morale, providing a competitive compensation package, and employee engagement.

The report is based on survey responses by members of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA-HR) and the National Association of State Personnel Executives (NASPE).

This is the 10th year that the survey has been conducted and the report includes some very interesting trends data. For example, state and local governments report low incidence of negative employment actions as compared to 2009 at the height of the recession. Only 8% reported imposing either hiring freezes or layoffs in 2018 as compared to 68% reporting hiring freezes and 42% conducting layoffs in 2009. Similarly, only 16% as compared to 41% in 2009 reported making retirement plan changes.

Another positive trend is that almost 80% of the respondents indicated that they are hiring more employees this year. Policing is the top position that organizations report having a hard time filling. Due to the nature of the work, none of the respondents said they can fill positions through temporary or contractual arrangements. Engineering, information technology, emergency dispatchers, skilled trades, and accounting are other positions that governments are struggling to fill. Office and administrative staff positions are the ones most likely to be filled by temporary or contractual arrangements.

In terms of what employers are looking for, interpersonal, technology, and written communications are the skills most needed in new hires. Online job advertisements are the best recruitment source followed by employee referrals, government websites, and social media. To make themselves more competitive employers, almost half are offering flexible schedules, such as compressed workweeks and flexible hours. However, a third stated they do not offer any flexible work arrangements.

By a large margin, the respondents believe their benefits packages are more competitive than their pay. There were 90% who said that the benefits that they offered were competitive with the labor market as compared to 56% who reported that their wages were competitive. State and local governments continue to shift more health care costs to their employees, with almost 1/3 reporting they have taken this action during the past year. Close to 20% noted they have implemented wellness programs.

It's great to see state and local governments hiring and expanding, but the low rate of unemployment coupled with the increasing number of retirements (44% reported higher number of retirements than the year before) will make it a challenging environment for state and local governments to compete for top talent.

What challenges are you seeing in this space? What do you think state and local governments could do to better compete for top talent? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Today's post comes to us courtesy of board member John Frehse, Senior Managing Partner, Ankura Consulting Group, LLC.

July 1 marked the halfway point for 2018 and represents a good time to reflect on what lies ahead. National unemployment is extremely low at 3.9%, and employers from healthcare to logistics to manufacturing are all complaining about the same thing: The inability to hire and retain qualified employees. This has been an issue for decades, but the current state could, and should be labeled a crisis. Companies are not meeting demand and losing customers. There are three reasons why this will only get worse in 2019:

  1. The Booming Economy: This comes and goes in cycles and no single piece of legislation or President can really drive this cycle alone, but tax changes and relaxing of regulations are at least partially responsible for putting the economy into overdrive.
  2. The Changing Needs of American Industry: Every industry in the United States has evolved rapidly over the last decade. Service, products, and technology are all better. This evolution, largely driven by analytics and the ability to see inefficiencies and improve upon them, along with a wide range of technology breakthroughs (think Uber, robots, and other automation innovations), has created a demand for higher-skilled employees.
  3. The Changing Appetite of the American Workforce: The workforce is changing, and this is not just a discussion about Millennials. From the youngest to the oldest generation, changing attitudes about how long to work and how long to stay at a job have destabilized labor supply.

So, what are we going to do about it?

To answer this question, we need to understand what today's employees want from their employers. Uber and others have created a more on demand environment where you work when and where you want and report to no one. When compared to traditional employment opportunities, this is very attractive. Here are the top 5 things our clients talk about their employees wanting the most. Notice that pay is not on the list. Although important, it is not primary.

  1. The ability to make a difference every day
  2. Recognition when earned
  3. Time off - specifically a significant number of weekends off
  4. A shift schedule that maximizes the number of days off each week
  5. Shift schedule predictability

The labor supply is not growing, and based on birth rates, it may be shrinking in the next two decades substantially. Employers need to be proactive to compete for the talent they need to keep their businesses running. The right labor strategies can help any company standout. Instead of approaching labor strategy by copying what everyone else is doing, some differentiation will make a difference. If everyone is working 8-hour shifts, maybe offering 10 or 12-hour shifts, with the right work and pay polices, will drive interest and applications. Think about what your employees want most - beyond just a paycheck - and then find creative ways to meet and maybe even exceed their expectations. If you're able to do this, you'll be in a strong position to survive and maybe even thrive in this increasingly tough hiring climate.

Today's post comes to us courtesy of board member Dan Schawbel, Research Director at Future Workplace and author of Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation.

The skills gap continues to persist in America and on the last business day of February of this year, there were 6.1 million job openings, with little changed from the previous month. Companies, and employees, both suffer when job openings go unfilled, especially over a long period of time. The average cost HR managers say they incur for having extended job vacancies is more than $800,000 annually. In a new survey by Future Workplace and The Learning House of 600 U.S. HR leaders, with half representing small businesses of fewer than 1,000 employees, we found that almost half of companies are blaming colleges for not preparing students for jobs. A third of those surveyed agree that colleges are most responsible for getting an employee _work ready' yet more than 40 percent of companies have not collaborated with colleges to make curriculum more responsive to workplace needs.

With the intense pressure to fill critical job roles, some companies are bypassing colleges altogether. The failure to close the skills gap has resulted in stalled growth, a stressed workforce and a lack of innovation. The study found that companies are turning to other channels and technologies to solve this problem. An entire 90 percent are dropping the four-year college degree requirement and are now more open to hiring candidates with a recognized certification (66%), online degree from a MOOC (47%) or even a digital badge (24%). Both EY and PwC have already dropped the traditional college degree requirement and are hiring non-traditional candidates to broaden their talent pools. The smaller companies surveyed that have less of a brand presence, and fewer resources, were more open to hiring untraditional candidates because they have to be more agile and less selective.

In addition, 40 percent of employers believe artificial intelligence (AI) will help fill the skills gap by making hiring more efficient, eliminating unconscious bias and taking over routine tasks. The study found that employers are only investing $500 in the training and development of each employee and 40 percent are outsourcing to vendors to handle it instead. The smaller companies surveyed have less money to invest per employee, which skewed the results, while companies like AT&T, who announced they are investing more than $1 billion to retrain over 100,000 workers.

Companies are under pressure to fill their skills gap in new ways out of desperation and a realization that colleges simply can't keep up with the ever-changing demands of the marketplace.

Photo by Adrian Williams on Unsplash

Today's post comes to us from board member David Creelman.

Dr. Rob Briner recently kicked off a conversation on LinkedIn about personality tools such as this one used by the National Health Service in the UK:

Creelman

 

If you've been around HR for any length of time you'll have seen dozens of similar models. If you've studied the academic evidence on these models you'll know that most have little scientific validity.

But, admit it, these personality maps are still fun, aren't they?

The Tension between Fun Models and Evidence-based Practice

Talking about personality is useful because we need to be constantly reminded about how people are different. These models are fun because they help us launch a conversation we are interested in. If we think of them as conversation starters, then there's no harm in using them. Kenny Moore, co-author of The CEO and the Monk once used horoscopes to achieve the same thing. The issue is not whether horoscopes are scientifically valid, it's whether they provide a helpful spark for a conversation.

However, if we are using a personality tool to aid decision making (such as who we hire) then we have to use valid tools. There is no shortage of highly educated industrial-organizational psychologists who can help you distinguish between valid and invalid tools.

Moving HR Forward

If a tool is a conversation starter, then we shouldn't dismiss its value even when it's not scientifically valid. If a tool is a decision aid, then we need to be rigorous in assessing its scientific validity.

The problem within HR is that too often people are not aware of the distinction between a conversation starter and a decision aid. Professionals, especially HR managers, need to study evidence-based practice and when to use it.

 

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