HR enters the metaverse. What are the pros and cons?

HR Enters the Metaverse. What Are the Pros and Cons?

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As technology continues to evolve, so does the way we connect and work with others. One of the newest advances in technology is the metaverse, a virtual world where users can interact with each other and with digital objects in a three-dimensional space. Because this immersive world has tremendous potential to transform the way we work, future-minded HR professionals are actively exploring its potential, and technology companies are helping them understand the possibilities.

Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Apple are just a few well-known innovators that are investing heavily in metaverse technology. Fortunately, these players and others are prioritizing workplace collaboration solutions. For example, Meta Horizon Workrooms and Microsoft Mesh VR technology are both designed to help teams collaborate in the same virtual room, regardless of an individual’s physical location.

The upside is significant for vendors developing business-related metaverse tools and technologies. In fact, the enterprise virtual reality market is expected to grow from $829 million in 2018 to $4.26 billion this year. So, it’s easy to see why Bill Gates says he is confident that work teams will soon shift from Zoom calls to Microsoft’s more advanced 3-D experience.

5 Ways HR Can Leverage the Metaverse

Because the metaverse makes it possible for employees to interact with each other and with digital objects in a virtual environment, the experience is more engaging and immersive than traditional video conferencing or messaging platforms. This offers HR a range of possibilities, from virtual recruitment and onboarding to team-building activities and training sessions. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most promising HR applications…

1. Workforce Inclusion

One of the strongest benefits of the metaverse is its ability to enable a more inclusive work environment. In the virtual world, employees can interact with each other regardless of their physical location. This makes it easier for remote workers to feel included and engaged. This, in turn, opens the door to a much more diverse and inclusive work culture, with better opportunities for collaboration and innovation.

2. Recruitment

Another potential HR application for the metaverse is virtual recruitment. With the ability to create a three-dimensional space, companies can create a virtual office or work environment that helps candidates experience what it’s like to work within their organization. For example, employers can offer virtual tours, interactive experiences, and the ability to interact directly with current employees. This means candidates will discover a more authentic, immersive recruitment process. As a result, employers are likely to attract higher-quality candidates and accelerate the talent acquisition process.

3. Onboarding

HR can also leverage the metaverse for virtual onboarding. Instead of a traditional one-dimensional orientation process, new hires can enter a virtual environment that simulates their new workspace and introduces them to their team and their role. For example, this could include virtual tours and interactive experiences, as well as the ability to ask questions and interact directly with colleagues. Because this onboarding approach is highly engaging and effective, it can help new hires more quickly understand and embrace the work culture, while accelerating time-to-competency and ultimately increasing employee retention.

4. Team-Building

The metaverse can also help transform the way organizations conduct team-building activities. With the ability to create an immersive virtual environment, HR professionals can create a range of interactive experiences that promote trust and teamwork. This can include virtual games, simulations, and challenges that require communication, collaboration, and group problem-solving. By offering far more engaging digital team-building exercises, organizations can continuously develop stronger, more effective teams.

5. Training

Training is another area where the metaverse can make a significant impact. By creating a virtual learning environment, HR professionals can deliver training simulations that develop employee skills and competencies in a more engaging, immersive way. This can include simulations of real-world scenarios that make it possible for employees to practice, test, and build knowledge and skills in a safe, controlled environment. It’s also a more convenient way for distributed employees to access training from a distance, rather than requiring them to travel to a central in-person facility. As a result, this approach can improve training efficiency and cost-effectiveness without compromising learning outcomes.

Concerns About HR in the Metaverse

Although the metaverse presents numerous opportunities, HR professionals must also consider potential challenges. For example:

1. Safety, Privacy, and Data Security

Employers must ensure the privacy and safety of employees who participate in the virtual world. This includes protecting sensitive information and preventing inappropriate behavior and harassment. HR professionals will need to anticipate potential behavioral and data management issues that can arise in a virtual world. They’ll also need to develop relevant procedures, policies, and guidelines to prevent these issues. In addition, they’ll need to provide ongoing communication and training to ensure that employees understand these expectations, as well as the consequences of any harmful actions.

2. Accessibility

Another concern focuses on the need for employers to ensure that virtual environments are accessible to all employees, regardless of their physical abilities. HR professionals will need to consider how virtual environments can be designed, deployed, and maintained to accommodate diverse needs over time. This can ensure that employers remain in compliance with standards that promote equal access and participation in the virtual world.

A Final Note on HR in the Metaverse

Clearly, the metaverse has tremendous potential to transform the way we work, connect, and collaborate with others. HR professionals are beginning to explore possible use cases, from virtual recruitment and onboarding to team-building activities and training sessions.

However, there are also potential issues and concerns employers cannot afford to ignore, including privacy and accessibility. These are complex issues that require careful consideration and technical expertise. But with a thoughtful approach, HR professionals can leverage the metaverse to create a more engaging and rewarding work environment that supports employee growth and development for all.

 

What's your best management advice? 13 senior business leaders share useful lessons learned.

What’s Your Best Management Advice? 13 Top Leaders Reply

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Management advice is everywhere. But how do you know which guidance to trust? To find truly useful answers, we asked business executives to answer this question:

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice for how to become a better manager, what would you say?

In response, we received excellent management advice from 13 experienced leaders — including company CEOs, founders, and C-level executives. And I’m sure you’ll agree, the collective wisdom they shared reads like a playbook for any aspiring manager who wants to level up:

  • Prioritize Leadership Skills and Embrace Vulnerability
  • Conduct Regular Check-ins and Learn from Errors
  • Practice Active Listening
  • Master the Art of Delegation
  • Respect Individual Ambitions
  • Create a Psychologically Safe Team Space
  • Seek Team Feedback
  • Plan for Contingencies and Create Transparency
  • Foster Open Communication and Employee Understanding
  • Uplift Others and Practice Humility
  • Listen More and Trust Your Team
  • Develop Strong Relationships and Set Clear Expectations
  • Understand Your Management Style

To dive deeper into these responses, read on…

13 Senior Leaders Share Their Best Management Advice 


1. Prioritize Leadership Skills and Embrace Vulnerability

Reflecting on my own professional journey, I would tell my younger self to prioritize the development of leadership skills over technical expertise. Through the years, as I ascended to the C-suite, I realized my role was less about nitty-gritty details and more about guiding the team toward our shared vision.

For instance, when I was a manager, I was deeply involved in the technical aspects of our projects. I prided myself on my ability to solve complex problems. However, as I moved up the ladder, I found that, although my technical skills remained important, they took a backseat to my leadership abilities. It’s essential to inspire my team, manage people through change, and build a strong, inclusive culture.

My unique advice to aspiring leaders is to embrace vulnerability. It might seem counterintuitive, but showing your human side can actually strengthen your leadership. When I started sharing my own challenges and failures with my team, I noticed a significant increase in their engagement and trust.

Johannes Larsson, Founder and CEO, Financer.com

2. Conduct Regular Check-ins and Learn from Errors

I would advise my younger self to become a better manager by checking in with my team. Humans commit mistakes. Smart humans learn from those errors.

I’ve learned that checking in regularly with each employee makes a difference in our business. Talking with people about their short-term and long-term plans and how to achieve them helps employees feel valued. It improves retention, for sure.

Regular conversations give you a chance to gauge employee satisfaction when it comes to workload. Then you can make adjustments if needed. Early on I failed to do that, which caused us to lose people with strong potential. However, I’ve learned from experience, and am doing better now.

Eli Pasternak, CEO, Liberty House Buying Group

3. Practice Active Listening

If I could go back in time, I would practice active listening. Initially, I focused on sharing my ideas more than understanding my team. Now I recognize the value of listening. It’s important to seek feedback and create an environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Regular one-on-one meetings and open forums encourage dialogue and collaboration. These practices improve engagement, productivity, and satisfaction.

That’s why I urge mid-level managers to prioritize communication and active listening. Encourage people to engage in meaningful conversations and open dialogue. This unlocks team potential and opens the door to innovation and overall success.

Josh Amishav, Founder and CEO, Breachsense

4. Master the Art of Delegation

I would tell my younger self to accept the fact that I can’t do everything myself. Delegation is a critical skill both for maturing as a team leader and growing a business.

When I was just starting to get the company off the ground, I had an intuitive desire to handle every process myself. Finance, marketing, client management — I spent half of my working time trying to touch areas where I lacked expertise.

Eventually, I saw how unproductive and ineffective that approach was, so I began handing off small tasks. But team members couldn’t see the big picture, so small-scale delegation didn’t help either.

Finally, I realized how important it was to trust my team and rely on their expertise without trying to interfere with their work. Today, I’m lucky to have a team of professionals by my side who let me focus on activities that will yield the highest returns and grow the company.

Tatsiana Kirimava, Co-Founder and CEO, Orangesoft

5. Respect Individual Ambitions

As a driven leader, I used to project my ambition onto my team, expecting everyone to have the same level of commitment and desire to progress professionally. But over time, I realized not everyone aspires to be a C-suite executive — and that’s okay.

It’s crucial to respect the unique ambitions of each team member instead of imposing your own aspirations on them. When I made this mental shift, I saw improved team dynamics and productivity. Moreover, it alleviated unnecessary frustration, allowing me to find greater satisfaction in my work.

Remember, demanding too much from your team can lead to dissonance. Ask people about their goals and ambitions, and you’ll unlock a more harmonious, effective working environment.

Rafael Sarim Öezdemir, Founder and CEO, Zendog Labs

6. Create a Psychologically Safe Team Space

If I could turn back time, I’d tell myself to create a safe space for the team. I never aimed for psychological safety, but it happened. Team members have confided they feel safer than at previous jobs.

Once, a member of our marketing team spotted a software issue. She spoke up without fear, and we fixed it together. Another time, a new guy from the UX team suggested that we add an automation process. Despite being new, he didn’t hesitate to share.

It’s hard to calculate the financial impact of this but I’m sure that psychological safety makes a difference between failure and a team that prospers.

Vladislav Podolyako, Founder and CEO, Folderly

7. Seek Team Feedback

If I could go back in time, I would actively seek more feedback from my team. I used to be close-minded. I believed I had all the answers. However, I soon realized that true growth and improvement come from embracing diverse perspectives and valuing input from others.

By creating an open, safe environment where my team feels comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns, I’ve been able to foster more collaboration and innovation. Also, I’ve gained valuable insights that help me make better decisions and ultimately become a more effective leader.

Chris Muller, Vice President, Money Under 30

8. Plan for Contingencies and Create Transparency

I would encourage myself to make contingency plans a priority. Although planning for success is obviously critical, having backup strategies in place can help address unexpected obstacles that arise.

Effective contingency plans help decision-makers recognize that their leader has fully evaluated the situation and taken appropriate measures to adjust and move forward.

By nature, I am an organized person, so I tend to anticipate potential obstacles and map out other options. But earlier in my career, I wasn’t always transparent about this.

Failing to communicate about contingencies sometimes made my staff uneasy, so I missed opportunities to gain their trust. However, over time, I learned to take proactive steps to support staff through change and reassure them that a Plan B was available.

Tasia Duske, CEO, Museum Hack

9. Foster Open Communication and Employee Understanding

In the past, I’ve seen many problems come from miscommunication and thoughts left unsaid. I know top talent left the company when they felt unheard and underappreciated because their opinions did not receive enough attention. This is why my management advice would be to foster more open communication and listen more closely to employees.

For example, it’s important to conduct satisfaction surveys so you can understand staff concerns and take action to make the work environment better. This reduces employee turnover, as well as the cost of training new hires. It also builds a positive company culture that attracts great people and keeps them on board.

Jeff Moore, CEO, Everyday Power

10. Uplift Others and Practice Humility

“Talent doesn’t give you license to be an a**hole.”

I was both blessed and cursed with many natural gifts and talents. I was creative, charismatic, a born salesman, and a spotlight hog.  When I got the chance to be “the boss,” I assumed I had a responsibility to share my awesomeness with everyone and prove that I could do their job as well or better than they could.

What a jerk I was!

Through the words and actions of various true leaders, I’ve come to realize that great leadership requires humility, patience, and the ability to lift others up to levels they never thought possible. I’m so grateful to those who were patient enough to give me the latitude to figure it out on my own. Today, as a sales and leadership trainer, I’m “paying it forward” by helping others avoid the mistakes I made.

Bill Guertin, Chief Learning Officer, ISBI 360, LLC

11. Listen More and Trust Your Team

When I think back, I remember times when stress was high. People on my team were feeling disconnected and lost trust in me because I communicated much more than I listened.

But leadership is not about being in the front of the team, always speaking or telling people to execute tasks and ideas. Effective leaders do just the opposite.

By practicing saying less and listening more, I stopped believing I needed to carry everything on my shoulders. I learned that people want to feel like they are heard and their contributions matter.

Listen first and believe that your team can add value and succeed. Nurture them so they feel you trust their decisions. Right or wrong, we can learn from our mistakes and create better solutions.

So speak less, inspire those you lead, and trust that your direct reports will rise and deliver great results.

Michele Delgado, CEO, Hartmetrics

12. Develop Strong Relationships and Set Clear Expectations

One piece of advice I would share with myself is to have the courage to step out of my comfort zone and take the time to develop strong relationships with my team.

Strong relationships are key to being a successful leader. Before taking any action, it’s important to understand the motivations and viewpoints of each team member, so you can make informed decisions based on their unique needs. So encourage people to express themselves openly. And when they share ideas, listen actively.

Also, make sure expectations are as clear as possible. Setting expectations up front makes it easier to develop an environment conducive to collaboration and innovation.

Leadership is about inspiring and encouraging your team to do great work. Ensure you acknowledge their efforts, offer guidance, and provide constructive feedback to help them grow. By providing reinforcement and support, you can foster a culture of respect, trust, and appreciation.

Nataliia Tomchyshyn, Marketing Manager, Relokia

13. Understand Your Management Style

Early in my career, I didn’t recognize my management style. Although this is not a necessity, it helps to know your style and how it works in a real-world environment.

For instance, if your approach is more participative, take time to understand the steps involved and their implications. For example, talk with managers who’ve used this approach and learn about its impact. This discovery process doesn’t need to be lengthy, but it can be revealing.

I planned to manage my team based on my predecessor’s advice. Although this helped, it took a long time to develop and test my approach. Fortunately, everything eventually worked out. But the sooner you can get a grasp of your style, the better.

Marco Andolfatto, Chief Underwriting Officer, Apollo Cover

 

What are the benefits of being a podcast guest? And what success tips can help you know? Check this advice from a long-time podcast producer

5 Benefits of Being a Podcast Guest and How to Prepare for Success

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In less than 20 years, podcasting has revolutionized the way we consume and engage with informational content, offering a powerful digital platform for individuals to share their knowledge, experiences, and ideas. Today, with more than 5 million podcasts attracting 464.7 million listeners worldwide, overall podcast reach is staggering. And every podcast guest has a unique story to tell.

Why Preparation Is Everything

Over the past 12 years at TalentCulture, I’ve helped hundreds of HR practitioners, business leaders, analysts, and authors prepare to appear on our popular #WorkTrends show. And along the way I’ve learned just how vital it is for every podcast guest to plan ahead. If you understand what listeners expect and how the production process will unfold, you’ll be better equipped to share your insights, advice, and expertise on a global stage.

Preparation makes all the difference. The process isn’t difficult, but it can have lasting consequences. Who knows? Just one solid, memorable podcast guest appearance could change your career path for you or open a new chapter for your business.

Tips for Podcast Guest Success

Whether you’re a subject matter expert, a business leader, an industry analyst, or an author, being a podcast guest is a valuable opportunity to connect with a broader audience and amplify your voice. But with so many podcasts, you’ll want to choose one that fits your message and personality.

As you explore the multitude of options, don’t just look at total reach. Also consider things like the theme and tone, audience composition, frequency, brand reputation, and familiarity. These factors will steer you to podcasts that can showcase your particular story in the best light.

And once you’ve been booked to appear on a relevant podcast, you’ll want to be ready to shine. Here are tips to help you prepare:

CONTENT STRATEGY

  • For context, listen to other episodes of the podcast and others focused on similar topics.
  • Verify the length of your interview, so you can work within expected time limits.
  • Think about the story you want to tell. How can you help listeners relate to it?
  • Create a list of key points for quick recall as you tell your story.
  • Use data and case studies to support your statements, if possible.
  • Organize your messages to fit the timeframe.
  • Prepare a list of questions for the host to ask.
  • Practice thorough responses, but be prepared to summarize or jump forward if the host moves in that direction.

TECHNICAL AND LOGISTICAL DETAILS

  • Ask if the conversation will be streamed live or recorded and edited.
  • Will it be produced with audio, video, or both formats?
  • Familiarize yourself with the podcast platform, as well as tools that can help you look and sound like a professional. (For example, is your laptop microphone sufficient?)
  • Be sure to request a tech check before the live podcast.
  • Confirm whether you’ll need to log in through a specific portal/app, or if you should call in.
  • Choose your location wisely. You’ll want to be in a quiet room with a closed door.
  • If you’re using an online portal, shut down any alerts on your computer and switch your phone to mute or vibrate mode.
  • Wear a headset or use AirPods for better audio fidelity.

PRODUCTION AND PROMOTION

  • If the session is recorded, ask if you can listen to the episode before it is published.
  • Verify if you have the option to request edits.
  • Keep in touch with podcast producers, so you can align your promotional efforts with the show’s marketing plans.

5 Benefits of Being a Podcast Guest

Participating in podcasts can be rewarding both personally and professionally. In particular, appearing on a popular show like #WorkTrends can amplify your voice, extend your influence, and open doors to exciting new opportunities. For example, it can help you:

1. Expand Your Network 

One of the biggest advantages of being a podcast guest is the opportunity to expand your sphere of influence. The connections you make can have a lasting impact on your career trajectory. You can connect with hosts, fellow guests, and listeners with similar interests. This can lead to enduring collaborations, partnerships, and friendships that enhance your personal and professional growth. Moreover, podcast hosts typically have their own networks, which can expose you to new opportunities, introductions, and potential clients or customers.

2. Build Credibility

As a podcast guest, you are showcasing your distinct knowledge and perspective. By sharing your experiences and know-how with listeners, you establish yourself as an authority in your field. This credibility can enhance your professional reputation, open doors to other speaking engagements, and increase your chances of being quoted or featured in industry publications. Think of it as a platform to demonstrate your expertise and offer valuable insights, which can solidify your position as an industry thought leader.

3. Increase Brand Awareness and Visibility

Being a podcast guest is an excellent opportunity to build brand awareness. Podcasts often have dedicated, loyal listeners who are actively engaged and interested in the topics discussed. Sharing your story, expertise, or insights about a product or service can generate awareness and interest in your individual brand or business. When you participate in meaningful podcast conversations and your message resonates with listeners, organic word-of-mouth marketing naturally follows. Also, podcasts are often distributed through multiple channels (Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, and many more). This further extends your reach beyond the original podcasting network.

4. Reach New Audiences 

Podcasts attract diverse listeners from all walks of life. This means you’re likely to reach new, untapped audiences. As a podcast guest, you can connect with people who may not have encountered your work or brand through other channels. This broader exposure can increase followers, subscribers, and customers. In addition, podcasts often have global reach that transcends geographical boundaries. This further extends your ability to influence new demographics and communities. You can leverage your podcast appearance by posting about your episode before and after on social media. You may even want to write one or more blog articles about the discussion, emphasizing key points and expanding on the topic in ways you didn’t have time to address with the host. By adding a link back to the podcast episode from these articles, you can drive even more downloads.

5. Improve Communication Skills 

Participating in podcast interviews can significantly enhance your communication and presentation skills. Podcast hosts often ask thought-provoking questions, challenging you to articulate your ideas clearly and concisely. This experience can improve your ability to think on your feet and engage in meaningful conversations. In fact, the preparation process, alone, can be valuable. Synthesizing complex information into a storyline based on simple sound bites makes it easier for listeners to understand and connect with your message. Also, you can apply this messaging to other communication efforts in the future. Plus, the communication skills you develop are transferable to other aspects of your life, such as formal and informal meetings with industry colleagues, employees, and customers.

Interested in Being a Podcast Guest?

I hope I’ve convinced you to share your unique insights through the power of podcasts. As someone who has been on both sides of the microphone, I can assure you that the process of producing an episode is fascinating and even fun. It’s also one of the best ways to grow.

Because #WorkTrends welcomes professionals from across the HR spectrum, I am continuously learning from smart people about the latest ideas and best practices in leadership, talent acquisition, employer branding, HR technology, and the future of work. And listeners seem to agree because they keep coming back for more. That’s one of the reasons why #WorkTrends download volume is among the top 6-7% of all podcasts, globally, according to Buzzsprout (in April 2023). 

If this article has piqued your interest and you’d like to learn more, I invite you to submit this inquiry form. In response, we’ll send you information about how you can become a featured guest on the #WorkTrends podcast. 

Is remote work failing Generation Z? What can employers do? Take a closer look with a diversity and inclusion expert.

Is Remote Work Failing Generation Z?

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When the pandemic arrived in 2020, everyone’s definition of work changed in a heartbeat. Most people headed home, leaving their offices, cubicles, water coolers, and daily commutes behind. After making it through that massive disruption, employers found an even tougher challenge on the other side. They’ve had to figure out how to sustain a positive, productive work culture outside of a shared space. Even now — more than 3 years later — many HR and business leaders still haven’t filled in the blanks. But the delay isn’t helping anyone, especially Generation Z.

What exactly is happening here? And what are the implications? Let’s take an in-depth look at what employers should consider…

Why Generation Z Matters

It’s not surprising to learn that what we know about Gen Z on the youngest members of our workforce.

Imagine starting your first adult job at home. You have no peer relationships or experience in how to navigate organizational life. Think about how overwhelming it would be to move through each day without knowing how to find context, where to look for the right resources, or who can most easily steer you in the right direction. But this has become a norm for all too many younger workers.

No one recruits people to fail. And despite a shaky economy, talent is increasingly hard to recruit and retain. So employers are understandably concerned about onboarding and upskilling Generation Z staff more effectively in today’s remote work environment.

What’s the Next Step for Employers?

Some organizations already had a head start on this new world order. For example, virtual teams have long been what we know about Gen Z. This company continues to improve remote work processes and systems. And recently, Buffer has focused on preventing issues that keep recent graduates from succeeding as new hires.

Buffer is the exception rather than the rule. Most companies had not considered challenges like these before the pandemic, so they were totally unprepared to support young hires in a remote climate. Now, organizations everywhere are actively seeking insights so they can make it work.

Unfortunately, useful data about key issues and best practices is still limited. But smart employers are thinking ahead, so they can minimize negative consequences. For instance, it’s especially important to consider how remote work potentially limits access to equitable opportunities for career growth and development among younger workers.

Here’s a central question to address: “Compared with recent generations, do our Gen Z employees have what we know about Gen Z and develop in their careers?”

Defining Generation Z

When talking about how young people are affected by remote work, we want to be clear. This group includes working-age people born after 1996. This aligns with Pew Research, which selected 1997 as the starting point. Before then, Gen Z was too young to be affected by political and cultural changes that notably influenced Millennials.

Currently, Gen Z and Millennials are experiencing very different life stages. Therefore, when researching these groups, it’s important to apply different measures of security, financial stability, and so forth.

For example, many Millennials are starting a family, buying a home, and settling down. Meanwhile, Gen Zs are finishing high school or college, moving out of their parent’s home, getting their first job, and becoming more independent.

Gen Zs are the definitive internet generation. All members of this cohort were born after the internet became widely available, and they came of age surrounded by the abundance and complexities of social media. Theoretically, Gen Zs are ready to thrive in a highly connected business world. But are they ready to thrive in a remote-first world? 

Remote Work Benefits for Generation Z

Remote work has created an unprecedented opportunity for people who want more autonomy because they can more directly manage their work schedule, location, office set-up, family time, and more. So understandably, remote work is popular among older workers who want to improve their work-life balance. But what about Gen Z?

Here are some reasons younger workers value remote work:

  • Lower commuting expenses
  • Less commute time (and more time for other priorities)
  • More professional opportunities for people with accessibility needs (when commuting is difficult or impossible)
  • More time/flexibility to pursue further education while earning an income
  • Potential to work for multiple employers at once (increase income and expand skills faster)
  • Likely exposure to a more diverse spectrum of people across roles and geographies (compared with onsite jobs)
  • Reduce the risk of toxic management (because behavior is captured in communication channels such as email, slack, and Zoom calls)
  • Freedom to reduce stress by taking breaks for self-care, or spending time with family/friends
  • Potential to start a family at a younger age (if desired) by leveraging flexible scheduling
  • Ability to take time for caregiving, if older or younger family members are at home

Remote Work Risks for Generation Z

Although Gen Z can benefit from remote work, there are downsides, as well: 

  • More obstacles to informal learning. Fewer chances to overhear and join relevant conversations, discuss questions in the hall and on breaks, or be invited to meetings and activities on-the-fly
  • Fewer 1-on-1 relationship-building opportunities
  • Lack of face-to-face community connections
  • Risk of isolation
  • Missed opportunities for on-the-job learning (skills and institutional knowledge)
  • More difficulty finding support networks and career networks
  • Threats to personal time (Digital days at home may start earlier and end later than normal)
  • Potential for increased stress if micromanaged from a distance
  • Zoom and screen fatigue
  • Pressure to create a proper workspace, even if it’s not affordable for a young person
  • Higher out-of-pocket expenses (equipment/workspace, internet, phones, hardware)
  • Regular remote office distractions that affect focus and concentration (for example, neighborhood construction, power outages, housemates)
  • Greater burnout risk (from a persistent lack of boundaries, unclear scheduling, or unrealistic expectations)

Long-Term Equity Implications 

Some of the problems noted above could have a serious, lasting impact on young workers’ professional and personal lives. For example, without in-office experience, Gen Z staff are more likely to suffer from a lack of mentorship, advancement opportunities, informal learning, and professional community.

In addition, remote and hybrid work models often blur the lines between home and work. If you’re home, you could be working. And if you’re working, you could be doing something else. Distractions are all around. Is this decision fatigue or a lack of discipline? When remote workers don’t separate these roles at the start of their careers, boundary issues can potentially follow them all the way to retirement.

That’s why it’s especially important for business leaders, managers, and older team members to understand why remote Gen Z workers need extra support to establish a foundation for success.

Remote Work FAQs

Why Do Employers Oppose Remote Work?

Some employers don’t support virtual teams because they have multiple business concerns. They may expect the worst: weaker productivity, collaboration, informal learning, and a loss of tribal knowledge. Or they may be concerned about employee wellbeing: increased isolation, stress, and disengagement.

Has Remote Work Decreased Productivity?

Depending on an organization’s workload and scheduling, remote work can lead to a decrease in productivity. Employees may be more distracted when working remotely, or if their workspace is chaotic they struggle to focus.

Many other factors can reduce productivity in a remote or hybrid work setting, so this is an important consideration to discuss openly on an ongoing basis.

Why Is Remote Work So Exhausting?

Remote work can feel exhausting, especially if you haven’t established a clear separation between work space and home space. Juggling these blurred lines can add a psychological load that increases stress and eventually leads to exhaustion.

Setting People Up for Success

Given what what we know about Gen Z and remote work, how can employers create a culture that helps young workers feel comfortable working at your organization? It may seem like in-office work is the best answer for anyone at the start of their career. However, some digital solutions can make remote-first teams feel more connected, supported, and included. For example:

  • Establish consistent office hours
  • Encourage everyone to rely on collaborative communication tools
  • Practice knowledge sharing as a way of working
  • Build and promote remote-first mentorship programs
  • Regularly ask Gen Z workers and managers open-ended questions about what is working (and what is not)
  • Schedule periodic digital water cooler chats and invite everyone to suggest agenda ideas

It’s important for leaders to build on what many of us have learned about remote and hybrid work over the past few years. Challenge yourselves and others to think outside the box. Put yourselves in the shoes of each employee — not just younger people — and think of ways to help everyone feel more connected and included. Experiment. Hold on to what works, and integrate it into your culture.

Does your HR strategy leverage organizational competencies? Find out why it pays to link link company strengths with human resources efforts - and how to get started

Does Your HR Strategy Leverage Organizational Competencies?

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In today’s ever-shifting talent landscape, companies large and small are searching for more effective ways to attract, recognize, and retain their workforce. These opportunities come in various forms — new or improved systems, strategies, platforms, and processes. But one smart move is to double down on organizational competencies. In other words, it’s worthwhile for companies to identify, prioritize, develop, and more fully leverage their unique strengths.

What Are Core Competencies and Why Should We Care?

Organizational competencies are a combination of the essential capabilities, knowledge, and skills that create value and fuel a company’s success. They define “how” an organization accomplishes its goals.

Although core competencies are deeply rooted in an organization’s DNA, they don’t materialize on their own. Instead, they’re established and reinforced through years of business experience and cumulative institutional knowledge, along with ongoing training and development. And although competencies are fundamental, they aren’t necessarily rigid and fixed. Just as any business grows and evolves, core competencies can shift over time.

Examples of organizational competencies include:

  • Customer focus
  • Innovation
  • Integrity
  • Partnering
  • Quality
  • Resilience
  • Resourcefulness/problem-solving
  • Teamwork/collaboration

By investing in their core competencies, businesses can improve performance in ways that create and sustain a competitive advantage. In fact, recent McKinsey research concluded, “Companies that focus on their unique strengths and leverage them across the organization are more likely to outperform their peers.”

Linking Organizational Competencies With HR

The concept of leveraging core strengths is not new. However, it’s gaining renewed attention, as employers struggle to address the challenge of attracting and retaining talent in today’s post-pandemic world. In this increasingly complex, fluid global business environment, employers must find ways to differentiate themselves.

One approach is to recognize and support the symbiotic relationship between business strengths and HR. In other words, it pays to ensure that organizational competencies are an integral dimension of HR strategies and operations. For instance, a company could emphasize the importance of improving HR’s ability to:

  1. Build and expand the workforce by attracting and retaining exceptional talent
  2. Identify and address workforce challenges and opportunities
  3. Empower leaders to measure, communicate, and proactively improve staff performance
  4. Better understand, measure, and coach people based on their functional role, team mission, and broader organizational needs

By strengthening these competencies, employers can expect to see improvement in workforce performance as well as overall business outcomes. Why? Here’s what experts say…

4 Ways Organizational Competencies Elevate HR Results

1. Recruitment and Talent Attraction

One way organizations can improve HR outcomes by leading with strengths is through recruitment. Employers that clearly articulate their core competencies and differentiate themselves from competitors are better positioned to attract top talent.

According to LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, “When companies focus on their unique strengths, they are able to attract talent that is aligned with their values and culture.” In fact, research indicates alignment with culture is one of the most powerful ways to drive retention.

2. Employee Learning

Training and development is another area where organizational competencies can help HR make a significant business impact. Companies that create a culture of continuous learning and improvement are directly shaping organizational competencies.

This kind of investment not only addresses an organization’s existing knowledge and skills gaps, but also demonstrates a long-term commitment that resonates with staff. As John Doerr, author of Measure What Matters, says, “Companies that invest in employee development are more likely to retain top talent and see a positive impact on their bottom line.”

3. Performance Management

Organizational competencies can also play an integral role in performance management. By clearly defining strengths and expectations, employers can provide people with a roadmap for success.

This also helps managers provide targeted feedback and coaching to support employees as they strive to define and achieve their goals. According to Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, “When managers are able to clearly define expectations and provide feedback that is both kind and direct, they can help employees develop their competencies and reach their full potential.”

4. Performance Support and Coaching

Finally, organizational competencies can help HR teams more effectively identify and support high performers, while also coaching up people who are not performing at their best. By relying on clearly defined competencies, HR practitioners can more confidently create a framework to evaluate performance and identify areas for improvement.

This can also help managers provide targeted coaching and support to help employees develop additional competencies and reach their full potential. As Marcus Buckingham notes in his book, First, Break All the Rules, “Companies that focus on developing employees’ strengths are more likely to see improvements in performance and engagement.”

Final Notes on Core Competencies and HR

In today’s challenging business environment, sources of competitive advantage are hard to find. This is why more employers are leveraging organizational competencies to inform and improve their strategic HR efforts. By linking their unique strengths to talent acquisition and retention, employee learning, performance management, and coaching capabilities, they’re seeing improved workforce metrics. What’s more, they’re seeing better business results, as well.

What drives innovation management at successful companies? Check these tips and examples from an innovation expert.

What Drives Innovation Management at Successful Companies?

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In today’s fluid, fiercely competitive business environment, many organizations continuously strive to stay ahead of the curve. They know success requires an ongoing commitment to creativity and innovation. But breathing life into an innovation management strategy can be a complex, time-consuming challenge. What helps market leaders sustain an edge? Let’s take a closer look…

Too Often, Innovation Goals Don’t Match Reality

Why is innovation so crucial? It enhances productivity and profitability. What’s more, it can translate into significant long-term cost efficiencies. For example, according to McKinsey, innovative companies generate 2.4 times more profit, on average, than their less innovative counterparts.

But despite these promising statistics, most companies face a significant gap between innovation aspirations and reality. In fact, more than 80% of business leaders say innovation is one of their top three priorities — yet only 10% are satisfied with their current level of innovation performance.

What can organizations do to close this gap? Effective solutions depend on the people behind the innovation management process.

Managers Are the Secret

Fostering a culture of innovation involves more than just lofty aspirations. It also requires managers who are equipped with the right skills and resources to empower others. As the fundamental link between senior leadership and staff, managers are naturally positioned to foster creativity and innovation.

6 Keys to Innovation Management Success

At leading-edge companies, employees are empowered to experiment with new processes, tools, and services. They may explore a new product line, enhance the customer experience, or develop a tool to improve operational efficiency.

Regardless of the challenge at hand, people must feel ready to respond and supported in their efforts. This is where managers play an integral role in shaping innovation culture. Here are six innovation management steps that make a measurable difference:

1. Set the Right Tone

Innovation thrives when teams feel confident and competent enough to experiment, challenge the status quo, and embrace new ideas, processes, and technologies. This requires functional expertise and awareness of the organization, as well as a spirit of discovery. It also requires a nurturing environment that fosters psychological safety and encourages the free flow of ideas.

But perhaps most importantly, innovation demands a certain appetite for risk — with the reassurance that people can fail fast, learn from experience, and build on that foundation. Managers can set the tone by emphasizing each of these success factors.

2. Ensure That Employees Have Time to Contribute

Time is another consideration. No one can engage in innovation if they’re juggling endless to-do lists and reacting to requests that constantly come their way. Managers can make innovation a priority by allocating sufficient time for team members to stay on top of relevant trends, challenge tradition, investigate core issues, generate ideas, and explore solutions with others.

This is the case at 3M, a company known for its game-changing products. 3M’s long-standing culture of innovation encourages all employees to spend 15% of their work week proactively cultivating and pursuing “innovative ideas that excite them.”

3. Develop Strong Skills

Managers must come to the table with solid innovation management capabilities. After all, motivating employees to reach outside of their comfort zone isn’t easy. It requires emotional intelligence, empathy, and exceptional communication skills. Effective coaching skills are useful when encouraging people to innovate throughout their careers. And entrepreneurial skills come into play when spotting promising opportunities and helping employees find the determination and resourcefulness they need to push the envelope.

Smart companies know the breadth and depth of skills their managers possess. But many employers lack this kind of comprehensive insight. If you need a clearer, more complete view of manager skills across your organization, an inventory can help. First, identify and prioritize skills that matter most to you. Next, audit managers and document their skill sets. Then analyze this data to look for patterns that can help you find strengths and weaknesses.

Skills-Based Development in Practice

Although skills mapping is an important part of the planning process, innovation really comes to life when managers and their employees put these skills into practice. This is why organizations like Unilever and IBM have adopted a skills-based approach to workforce development, planning, and decision making. These companies rely on skills to guide key all kinds of workforce decisions, including hiring and promotions. This frees them from focusing too heavily on limited roles and job-specific siloes. It also enables them to adapt and innovate more swiftly than industry counterparts.

At Unilever, this skills-based approach takes various forms, including a talent marketplace where both permanent employees and “U-Workers” can participate in projects and tasks across the organization, based on their skills. U-Work is a contract work program that provides participants with a guaranteed minimum monthly retainer and enables them to work in a flexible way they prefer.

Meanwhile at IBM, half of its U.S.-based roles no longer require a degree. The company is also investing in upskilling veterans and neurodiverse individuals to develop high-demand skills the company needs.

Results from early adopters of skills-based strategies are promising. For instance, among companies that rely on skills to match people with work opportunities, 26% are better able to anticipate future disruptions, 26% have a more agile workforce, and 26% are more innovative.

4. Let Data Lead the Way

Many organizations are already sitting on a wealth of employee skill data, so implementing skills-based approaches is faster and easier than ever. This data is also an invaluable source of information for managers who are building innovative teams.

Skills data is available from HR, learning, and recruitment systems, as well as work-related platforms like project management tools and document systems. By combining and analyzing data about the work and learning people complete every day, along with their resumes, skills assessments, performance reviews, and feedback from others, managers can get a comprehensive view of their team’s skills and potential.

This kind of skills intelligence makes it possible to identify candidates who could complement a cross-functional innovation team, or expose gaps that may hinder future innovation. In short, it helps managers lead innovation with better insight, conduct career conversations with greater precision, and understand how disruption is shaping their team’s talent requirements.

5. Ensure Everyone is Onboard

Developing a culture of innovation requires buy-in at every level. Celebrating successful solutions and their impact on the business can boost everyone’s enthusiasm for future innovation.

Recognition from managers is particularly powerful. However, it doesn’t need to include a tangible or financial reward. Simply being acknowledged by a senior leader makes a memorable difference, especially if you spotlight employee innovation efforts at team or company meetings. Also, to motivate particularly strong contributors, senior leaders could offer mentoring support. This, in turn, stretches employee innovation skills and experiences that can pay-off in the future.

Enabling team members to share ideas and suggestions can be a highly effective “grassroots” way to support innovation culture. It can be as simple as adding several minutes to your team’s standing meeting agenda.

Or you can schedule standalone brainstorming or knowledge-sharing sessions. In this case, you’ll want to establish a process to ensure that all ideas are heard and acknowledged. Using a “yes, AND” tactic tells employees that their input is welcome and leaders will seriously consider its potential to add business value.

6. Clarify Your Agenda With an Innovation Framework

Interesting ideas are everywhere. But smart organizations don’t blindly pursue all possibilities. Instead, they build a blueprint that helps teams generate ideas, evaluate their potential, and implement solutions that deliver the best benefits for your organization.

This blueprint is also called an innovation framework. By consistently following these guidelines, you can keep resources focused on results that matter, rather than creating distractions.

Evaluating a new idea against your team objectives and business goals ensures that it will have a desirable impact on the top and bottom line. Alternatively, innovating within a need or known constraint can provide solutions to challenges you face.

For instance, the Covid pandemic led to numerous innovations in remote work, education, telehealth, vaccine technology, virtual restaurant services, and more. Now, many manufacturers and retailers are evaluating their innovation pipelines for ideas to tackle the cost of living crisis affecting many regions of the world.

There’s a mistaken belief that innovation is a costly, large-scale endeavor. In fact, it thrives when nurtured from the ground up. Even the smallest pilot projects can yield substantial long-term business impact. So, when planning a pilot project, managers can review team skills to be sure they assign the right people, with the right skills, to the right challenge, at the right time.

Then, managers can move teams forward through this innovation process framework by identifying and addressing one business problem at a time, and building momentum as they tackle subsequent challenges.

Moving Forward With Innovation Management

Every innovation effort begins with a single step. And every small step towards building an innovative business has the potential to create a significant impact in the long-run.

This is why innovative organizations equip managers with all the skills and resources they need to help teams thrive in the face of change.

Want to achieve better business outcomes? Support your managers, so they can embrace a skills-based approach, empower people to experiment, and nurture a culture where innovation is celebrated in all its forms. This will position your organization for long-term success.

 

Developing-Your-Team-versus-Driving-Performance

Developing Your Team Versus Driving Results: How Do You Strike a Balance?

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Faced with increasingly turbulent economic times, businesses are rapidly learning the importance of strong leadership. The world has had enough problems dealing with the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath. And companies that lacked strong leaders have been struggling to move through a nonstop stream of business problems in recent years. Many organizations have responded by emphasizing short-term performance. But the truth is that you’ll ultimately achieve better results by developing your team, as well. It’s a long game. However, this strategy pays in multiple ways.

Developing Your Team Builds Strength for the Future

During difficult times, it is natural for businesses to focus on achieving essential near-term results. The burden of generating more leads, maintaining a strong sales pipeline, and sustaining profitability normally falls to leaders. But these objectives also need to be balanced with broader business interests.

When teams are successful, it’s clear that their leaders are effectively managing people, strategy and resources. But when the inverse is true, it can underscore leadership problems that shouldn’t be ignored.

Here’s a contradiction that makes things even more complicated: as companies push harder for better results from team members, staff are likely to feel underappreciated, especially if individuals aren’t encouraged to develop in ways that help them grow professionally.

So, you may get the results you need in the short-term. But it can come at the cost of long-term company success, as skilled team members decide to move on and pursue more promising opportunities.

In this article, we look at how business leaders can strike a better balance between driving great results and developing their teams.

Great Leadership is a Journey, Not a Destination

The first thing to consider is that it is important to understand your own expectations of leadership, and determine if you ought to adjust those assumptions. Being a leader means making measured decisions and balancing their consequences every single day.

You can always learn more and understand more. But this isn’t something leaders can afford to take for granted. It’s important to intentionally embrace growth and stay open to learning — for yourself and everyone on your team.

“The best leaders learn from experiences — including failures — and apply those lessons to unfamiliar situations in the future,” says Gemma Leigh Roberts, a chartered psychologist specializing in leadership. “They see challenges as opportunities, as opposed to threats, proactively seek knowledge to stay up to date in a rapidly shifting professional environment, and are curious to identify areas for development and try new ways of doing things.”

Retain Top Staff by Developing Your Team

It is important to remember that if you want to get strong results across your company, you need a strong team. Your business results are driven by the people working with you. There is always pressure to get the best out of all your people in their day-to-day activities. But it’s equally important to ensure that top performers are kept happy, challenged, and supported.

Remember that talented individuals will always be able to find positions elsewhere. So, you’ll want to nurture and retain your organization’s best performers. A key way of doing this is by providing them with opportunities for career growth and development.

“While training is often necessary when teaching people new skills, it’s only the first step toward a more distant end,” says Margaret Rogers in Harvard Business Review. “In my experience, the most impactful development happens not through formal programs, but also through smaller moments that occur within the workplace: on-the-job learning opportunities that are wholeheartedly catered to the worker’s unique needs and challenges.”

Ideas for Developing Your Team While Keeping Results in Mind

1. Link Personal Goals to Business Goals

Too often, when we think about “top performers,” we consider it only from the perspective of how well people are achieving their professional goals. But it’s also important to link their goals with business objectives. To illustrate this point, let’s look at an example:

Imagine the highest-performing member of your sales team completes 50 sales in a recent month. But since then, only 5 of those sales have turned into repeat business because your top performer has been overselling in order to complete the original sales. Meanwhile, another member of the team made 30 sensible sales, and has subsequently turned 15 of those sales into valuable repeat business.

Here’s another example: Say a staff member wants to upskill for a role that will benefit your business, and they want to enhance their driving capabilities. By supporting this staff member’s personal training goals, you can help them acquire a higher-level license that will also be of value to your organization. In this circumstance, a personal goal can serve two purposes — simultaneously helping a team member grow while also helping the organization address business needs.

2. Establish Achievable Goals

If you want to motivate staff and provide them with opportunities for development, you need to ensure that you set realistic goals for their growth. It is also important for leaders to understand and agree with the scope of these goals.

“You need to have the discipline to take risks,” explains Howard Shore of management training specialists, Activate Group. “If your management and executive team are not aligned in their goals, and if your company culture is underdeveloped and unsupportive of change, this can create enormous friction.”

3. Know When to Change and Adapt

Leaders and managers recognize when their business is doing well because they’re rewarded with strong revenues, profits, and momentum. They know established goals are being met. Likewise, their employees and customers also feel more accomplished and satisfied. However, if success comes down to striking a good balance between today’s results and preparation for the future, then it’s essential to recognize when things may be off-balance.

Smart leaders know how critical it is to stay alert and keep an eye out for issues that require adjustment. When, how and why can an off-kilter equilibrium slow your progress or tip the scales of success against you? Here are some obvious but important factors to keep in mind:

  • Rising salaries
  • Increasing financial costs from external causes, such as inflation, recession, exchange rate fluctuations or taxes
  • Falling profits
  • Deteriorating business growth
  • Staffing issues
  • Supply chain problems
  • Threatening economic events or political instability.

4. Give Staff Ample Agency to Grow

It is important for staff to understand that they have agency in your business. The best way to manage this is by delegating tasks to team members, rather than trying to manage everything yourself. In this context, effective leaders focus on how to let people lead themselves. Having agency gives people a chance to develop on their own terms, and provides paths to growth that can be beneficial to the business as well as the individual.

5. Link Success to Opportunity

Just as it is wise to provide staff with the chance to grow, it is important to emphasize the idea that a company’s long-term success depends on team members’ collective contributions. Company-wide success is an opportunity for staff, too. This is why goal alignment matters. In the best-case scenario, individual success aligns with company achievements. This makes it easier to find an effective balance between results and team growth.

Final Notes on Driving Results Versus Developing Your Team

Leaders are essential to team success. A great team with poor leadership can lose focus or descend into infighting. It is up to management to find ways to maximize results while also ensuring effective development of their team. By keeping a continuous eye on both and proactively managing both sides of the equation, companies look forward to long-term success.

Nontraditional Career Paths Could Be Your Next Talent Goldmine. Here's Why

Nontraditional Career Paths Could Be Your Next Talent Goldmine. Here’s Why

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For decades, higher education has been considered the best way to gain the knowledge and experience employees need for a successful career. (At least, that’s what many people assumed.) For hiring managers, a college degree has long been a baseline for candidate qualifications. But what about people who pursue nontraditional career paths? If you overlook these candidates, are you missing out on a talent goldmine?

The Truth About Nontraditional Qualifications

All too often, resumes from people without a traditional education are immediately dismissed. This practice is so prevalent that applicants with any bachelor’s degree are more likely to get an interview, even if they didn’t study relevant subjects. In other words, you may have related skills and experience, but if you don’t have some kind of college education, you probably won’t be considered.

These hiring habits are antiquated and harmful. Exclusionary practices limit the candidate pool to a select group of people who can afford the financial burden of higher education. And those who can’t afford a degree but pursue one anyway will accrue a massive debt burden just to be competitive.

Frankly, focusing solely on people with a college education is not only bad for candidates — it’s also bad for business. Here’s why. When you reject nontraditional applicants up front, you’re arbitrarily excluding qualified candidates from interviews. As a result, you’re likely to miss perfectly qualified, eager candidates with the right skills and experience. It also means your recruiting process may be longer and more costly. What’s more, it can lead to weaker hiring decisions.

Fortunately, employers are starting to soften their stance on higher education. Large companies such as Google, Bank of America, and General Motors have been removing college degree requirements from certain jobs. Not surprisingly, younger workers are welcoming these changes. For example, 75% of Gen Z workers already believe college isn’t the only way to get a good education. And as more younger workers enter the workforce, their influence on hiring practices will increase, as well.

Bur hiring managers who want to hire the best candidates don’t need to wait for prevailing trends to change. There are concrete steps that can open your organization to more qualified applicants, regardless of their educational background. So, what exactly can you do to destigmatize nontraditional education in hiring decisions, and strengthen your businesses in the process?

4 Ways to Support Nontraditional Career Paths

1. Make Sure Change Starts at the Top

To transform a hiring culture that’s deeply ingrained in your organization, everyone needs to get involved. Start by ensuring that leaders accept new hiring standards and consistently champion these changes.

Get senior executives and middle managers to buy-off on talent acquisition methods that attract candidates from alternative sources. This is especially true for leaders in charge of hiring decisions. Broadly communicate your commitment by advertising new methods internally and externally. And prepare to prove the impact of this approach by ensuring that nontraditional hires have sufficient resources and support to succeed in their role.

2. Follow Other Employers’ Lead

An increasing number of companies across a broad spectrum of industries are already letting go of four-year degree requirements. When this occurs, skills and experience requirements also tend to expand. One useful tip is to research businesses with similar talent needs so you can learn from them.

For example, analyze how organizations like yours have adjusted their job requirements and evaluate the impact of these changes. For example, if you’re in the tech industry, Dell is an excellent example. Dell actually abandoned its university recruiting program. Now, the company offers apprenticeships and certificate programs to help develop talent with a wide range of desired qualifications.

3. Build Your Own Nontraditional Education Opportunities

One of the best ways to find top job candidates is to train them in-house. There are many ways to foster nontraditional talent from within, including career development opportunities, apprenticeships, upskilling, and reskilling programs. In fact, upskilling alone can improve a company’s culture and boost CEO confidence in measurable business results.

Many companies are already using these strategies to move their hiring practices away from a traditional focus on college degrees. For instance, Accenture launched an apprenticeship program in 2016. This program has helped the company hire hundreds of productive, qualified candidates from nontraditional education paths.

4. Get Involved in Your Local Community — And Stay Involved

Have you tapped into your local community as a sourcing channel? Many organizations have discovered that hiring locally removes relocation obstacles and makes it easier to verify candidate references. By sourcing local candidates, you can also increase the likelihood that new talent will fit well into your company culture.

For the best results when hiring locally, it’s important to conduct ongoing community outreach. By building your local networks and expanding awareness and knowledge of local sources, you can more easily build a more reliable, qualified talent pool.

Final Notes on Elevating Nontraditional Career Paths

The days of hiring managers demanding degrees are numbered. Candidates don’t always have equal access to higher education — or the money and time to complete a college education. Degrees still have their place in the talent acquisition process. But increasingly, employers are seeing better results by adjusting their sourcing and hiring methods — starting with degree requirements. By leading the charge, HR and business managers can reduce skills shortages, overcome talent obstacles, and improve organizational performance.

Which HR trends matter most in 2023 and beyond? Check this list from an industry insider

HR Trends That Matter in 2023: An Insider’s Guide

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People often ask me which HR trends should be on their radar. It’s a fair question, because I organize two of the HR profession’s most popular conferences, UNLEASH America and UNLEASH World. During the programming process, I work closely with hundreds of human resources leaders and industry influencers, as well as HR technology and services providers. Spotting key trends is easy, because patterns appear as I reflect on the topics speakers pitch, along with themes that emerge among exhibitors, attendees, and startup competitions.

This year, 7 closely related HR issues and opportunities are trending:

  1. Asynchronous work
  2. Distributed, remote and hybrid work
  3. Upskilling and reskilling
  4. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging
  5. People analytics
  6. Employee experience
  7. AI and automation

These HR trends probably sound familiar, but they continue to define the future of work. That’s why they’ll take center stage at our conferences in the year ahead. For details on what I’m seeing and hearing about these hot topics, read on…

7 HR Trends That Matter Now

1. Asynchronous Work

Asynchronous work is the future of work. It’s an environment where people collaborate and complete tasks without real-time presence or communication.

Some industries have relied on asynchronous work for decades. For example, in the software sector, developers often work from wherever it’s convenient. They rely on a blend of standards, practices, and tools that support distributed project management, team problem solving, and interactions. This improves productivity in various ways — especially by reducing interruptions when people want to focus on their primary tasks.

Asynchronous work also improves the accuracy of strategic planning and decision making. Without accuracy, running a business is very difficult.

Many companies are still striving to enable asynchronous work. This includes connecting systems of record so relevant data is secure but also highly available. The goal is to ensure that information isn’t scattered, so people don’t need to call or message others whenever a question arises. Speed bumps like these can create huge volumes of reactive work.

An asynchronous work infrastructure is the foundation of another key HR trend: distributed, remote and hybrid work…

2. Distributed, Remote, and Hybrid Work Models

The pandemic was like a time machine. It instantly catapulted much of the world into a variety of work models that many of us discussed for decades, but hadn’t implemented. Now, these work models are here to stay.

For example, consider one of our biggest clients. At the start of 2020, this company was planning an 18-month global roll out of Microsoft Teams. But when the pandemic struck, they actually rolled-out Teams within only a few days!

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Organizations of all types suddenly had to embrace flexible work  arrangements. Now, although some teams are returning to the office, remote work structures remain. This is driving demand for hybrid work, where people can engage remotely at least one day a week.

Another HR trend emerging from the pandemic is the four-day work week. Previously, this was also widely discussed but not widely implemented. Then, during quarantine, flexible work arrangements became a necessity. This paved the way for ongoing adoption of the four-day work week and other innovative scheduling models.

Pandemic-era flexible work arrangements also helped many employees improve work/life balance. This is yet another HR trend that received attention in the past, but was rarely achieved.

Flexible work models aren’t perfect. But I doubt we’ll ever return to a world where people go to the office and work from 9-5 all week. We’ve seen flexible work succeed, even under the most difficult circumstances. We now know it doesn’t make sense to endure long, expensive commutes and childcare struggles. And why limit creativity and productivity to a prescribed time and place?

3. Upskilling and Reskilling

Although tech industry layoffs are rampant and a recession is looming, the war for talent continues to escalate. But this isn’t really news. It’s been building for years. So, what is the HR trend to watch here?

Many workers who perform repetitive tasks increasingly feel frustrated by a lack of career growth. For decades, we’ve discussed the gap between these jobs and knowledge work. But now, the gap is growing even wider, as technology continues to advance and employers invest more heavily in upskilling and reskilling knowledge workers.

To keep top talent onboard, employers are making learning and development a priority. Professional development is also a powerful way to attract new talent in an increasingly competitive hiring climate. But what does this mean for people with jobs that are likely to become obsolete or automated soon?

Professional growth is increasingly important to people in every line of work. So employers are investing in learning programs to help attract and retain a future-ready workforce. HR departments are finding that implementing and maintaining effective learning programs is much faster, cheaper, and easier now. That’s because learning systems are adding innovative tech like AI-driven capabilities, interactive video, and augmented reality to improve learning experiences. They also offer APIs to connect learning platforms with other HR and business systems, so employers can more easily assess employee skills, track development progress, and measure learning outcomes.

Ultimately, this means employers are becoming better-equipped to help individuals grow in their careers, while helping their organizations succeed.

4. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Another key HR trend focuses on workforce diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB). This isn’t just lip service. It has been a serious priority for years, and the commitment continues. Here’s why:

Studies show that diverse companies outperform others. That’s partially because they can tap into a broader range of employee perspectives — spanning age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and more.

In healthy cultures, all employees are paid equally for similar roles. But that’s not the only requirement. People also need to feel welcome, respected and included in relevant meetings and decisions. These pillars of DEIB are more important than ever in today’s dynamic work world, and they’re becoming even more integral to the fabric of vibrant organizations.

5. People Analytics

For decades, data analytics has played a central role across business disciplines — finance, logistics, e-commerce, sales, marketing, and information technology. Now it is becoming common for HR applications such as learning, recruitment, performance management, and employee experience platforms.

Going forward, HR teams will increasingly rely on people-oriented analytics systems to make evidence-based decisions. For example, when relocating an office, decision makers will want to assess talent, performance, and many other data points to determine who should staff that office.

Also, look for AI to play an increasingly important role in people analytics applications, so organizations can improve decision support, performance analysis, and predictive processes.

6. Employee Experience

Now more than ever, organizations are emphasizing employee experience — including onboarding, workflow, culture, career development, and other aspects of work life. This is because a positive work experience correlates with higher engagement, productivity, satisfaction, commitment, and retention.

Also, employee experience is gaining traction because analytics systems are becoming more prevalent. This means more organizations have the capacity to evaluate the impact of employee-focused initiatives. Measurement typically focuses on onboarding, training, and other career experiences such as project assignments and promotions.

Employee experience is derived from customer experience and personalization initiatives used in marketing to assess customer preferences and develop relationships based on those interests. Similarly, the more an HR organization learns about employees and their preferences, the more effectively it can design custom work experiences with a more positive impact on engagement, performance, morale, and commitment.

7. AI and Automation

I’ve mentioned AI previously, but AI and automation deserve a separate discussion. That’s because both are transforming HR processes by dramatically streamlining tasks and enabling HR teams to focus more on strategic priorities.

AI and automation are critical to people analytics and employee experience initiatives. For instance, they can help detect when an employee is unhappy and at risk of resigning. Then, they can recommend ways to correct the issue before it’s too late.

In addition, these tools can alert HR and business managers when employees aren’t receiving appropriate onboarding or learning support. They can also assess and recommend an employee’s unique training path based on the market’s changing demands and the organization’s talent realities.

AI and automation will increasingly permeate HR, reduce the burden of administrative tasks, and offer invaluable insights regarding employee growth, performance, engagement, satisfaction, and commitment.

Final Thoughts on Current HR Trends

The pandemic unleashed work changes no employer could predict. But that’s only the beginning. Now, changes that started several years ago are leading to even more challenges and opportunities ahead.

In today’s volatile talent market, workers continue to place new demands on employers. Meanwhile, HR tech innovation continues to accelerate, giving organizations even more powerful and effective tools to improve all facets of work. As employers rapidly adopt new tools and techniques to improve organizational impact, the future looks bright across the HR landscape.

How can you create a culture of learning that inspires growth in a hybrid work environment? Check these ideas on the TalentCulture blog

Learning Culture: Ideas for Nurturing Growth in a Hybrid Work Environment

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TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023
At what point in a career does learning stop? Hopefully, never! Most business and technical professionals realize that becoming proficient in a job and becoming more capable over time requires continuous learning. But this can be difficult for employers to support, particularly in a hybrid work environment. Here’s why…

The Business Challenge

According to research, 70% of employees feel inadequately trained for their current job. What’s more, 74% feel they could benefit from additional training. Yet, the U.S. economy loses an estimated $550 billion a year from workforce disengagement, due in part to a lack of learning opportunities.

Training is critical for employee retention. And retention is critical for organizational success, especially in difficult economic times when companies need to accomplish more with less. But in the wake of the pandemic, hybrid work is becoming more widespread, which further complicates employee development. It’s no longer enough to rely on classic learning strategies based on in-person classroom training, seminars, and conferences.

Although hybrid work creates new challenges for employee training, it also opens the door to fresh thinking. Effective training in a hybrid work environment requires an organization-wide learning culture that ensures equitable opportunities for in-person, remote, and hybrid workers, alike. That’s a tall order, but these ideas can help:

What is a Learning Culture?

“Learning culture” is a simple concept. It’s an understanding that professional growth and development are integral to daily work life and success. It’s also an active commitment to continuous improvement among individuals and teams within an organization.

A strong learning culture encourages and rewards people for developing and sharing knowledge and skills. That’s why employee training is often seen as a benefit, alongside retirement savings accounts, paid family leave, or medical and dental coverage. But a true learning culture isn’t just a perk. It’s a way of thinking and doing that enhances work experiences, while paving the way for future advancement.

This commitment is clearly good for employees — but it’s also good for business. In fact, statistics show that organizations with a strong learning culture enjoy 24% higher profit margins, on average. Also successful companies are nearly 5x more likely to have a healthy learning culture. So it’s worth the effort to improve the way your organization develops employee capabilities.

Despite the simplicity of this concept, a learning culture can be difficult to manage. In fact, ATD estimates that only 31% of organizations have a culture of learning. And now, as hybrid work environments take hold, fostering this kind of culture is becoming even tougher. Why?

The Social Learning Hurdle

Hybrid work complicates learning cultures because it introduces a different mode of remote engagement. This is a problem because many organizations still rely on more traditional methods of informal learning — what psychologist Albert Bandura called “social learning.” Specifically, he notes:

“Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling. From observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed. This coded information serves as a guide for action.”

In other words, we learn how to do our jobs largely by watching others perform similar tasks. As we watch, we pay attention to their expectations and responses, as well as the behaviors of others in our environment.

This is relatively easy to accomplish when people are located at the same place. But when work involves a mix of in-person, remote and hybrid experiences, social learning manifests itself in different ways. This can create problems — especially when our location is determined by factors like commute distance or personal preference, rather than our work role. Ultimately, these unpredictable work patterns can lead to social learning barriers and disconnects across an organization.

To attract and retain top talent, employers need to create a cohesive culture that overcomes these barriers by making continuous learning opportunities and reinforcement available wherever people are located.

Training Resources For Hybrid Work Settings

Bandura was clearly on to something with his social learning theory. Humans are social animals. We learn best from exposure to great teachers, whether they’re formal instructors, informal mentors, or peers. Keep this in mind when developing a training strategy for any hybrid environment. You don’t want to sacrifice the power of human interaction by focusing solely on classic modes of online learning, like asynchronous self-guided training modules. Otherwise you risk disconnecting people from one another.

Where should you focus instead? Hybrid is the keyword here. Invest in next-generation training experiences that bring in-office and remote workers together, with social learning as the glue. For example, consider these resources:

1. e-Learning platforms that support instructor-led breakout sessions, advanced gamification functionality, and in-training assessment and analysis. These capabilities support richer social experiences than isolated on-demand training modules.

2. VR and metaverse technologies that make it possible to create three-dimensional virtual spaces where social learning participants can engage within a shared digital environment.

3. Tools that enhance popular web meeting tools. For example, the Adobe Connect open architecture lets industry partners extend the platform’s core capabilities. Extensions include custom pods, learning management system integration, advanced authentication, login functionality, and much more.

4. Discussion and collaboration tools that function as standalone products or as features you can integrate into a learning management system.

5. Social tools that work within a digital learning environment to supplement and reinforce traditional onsite and online training. For example, Adobe Learning Manager offers built-in social learning tools that make it easy to informally share ideas, content and meaningful insights before, during or after people complete a course.

Supporting Learning Engagement in a Hybrid Work Environment

Of course, identifying helpful hybrid learning tools is one thing, but providing a culture that drives engagement and performance improvement is another. Here are some useful ideas:

1. Proactively encourage all team members to pursue learning opportunities on a regular basis. For example, allocate a particular number of hours each week to the pursuit of development goals. By making resources accessible across devices, platforms and locations, you can enable people to participate at their convenience.

2. Acknowledge and reward team members for the time and energy they invest in learning. This can take the form of financial incentives or team dinners. Even something as simple as a Slack shout-out can boost motivation when employees achieve development milestones.

3. Knowledge sharing is essential for a healthy learning culture. And when team members are rewarded for sharing knowledge, they become more invested in the learning process. So don’t overlook the deep expertise already available within your ranks. Think about how to empower individuals as subject matter experts. Establish methods for people to create, promote and recommend content, so you can get everyone more invested in collaborative learning, even across hybrid teams.

4. Measurement matters in any learning endeavor, so you can determine baseline benchmarks and track progress over time. Digital systems can automatically track training engagement, progress and completions. But you’ll want to track other metrics as well. For example, think ahead about the kind of feedback you want to gather from team discussions, post-learning quizzes, and organization-wide surveys. All of these can help you determine learning effectiveness and map the way forward.

5. Better culture starts with better conversations — especially in a hybrid work environment. That means open feedback channels are essential. What works? What doesn’t? How can your organization improve hybrid learning experiences? Be sure to involve team members in the process of planning, evaluating and evolving their learning journey, for more successful outcomes, all around.

Should you create an AI-driven talent marketplace? Learn how one company successfully navigated this process

Should You Create an AI-Powered Talent Marketplace?

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After years of upheaval that have redefined society, business and work, we’ve entered a period some call the “Great Reflection.” During this era of mindfulness, employees everywhere are reevaluating what they truly want from their career and their employer. In response, companies are investing more heavily in workforce retention strategies. For instance, the internal talent marketplace concept is rapidly gaining momentum.

Why marketplaces? CIPD research says 30% of employers intend to increase wages in 2023. This is certainly one way to show people you value them. Who wouldn’t appreciate competitive compensation? But many people are looking for deeper reasons to stay onboard. As a result, more companies are focusing on employees’ career development concerns.

According to Gallup, 76% of people are seeking opportunities for professional growth. At the same time, modern businesses know they can’t advance their agenda without a future-ready workforce.

That’s why now is a good time to invest in an internal talent marketplace. This kind of solution offers multiple pathways to develop more skilled, innovative individuals and teams. But how can you accomplish this in a way that is cost-efficient, personalized, and accessible? This is our story…

Inside a Talent Marketplace: One Example

To accelerate internal mobility, Schneider Electric, a global leader in integrated energy solutions, has developed and deployed an Open Talent Market (OTM). This marketplace leverages leading-edge technology to help retain talent and stimulate employee growth.

OTM is an AI-driven career development and internal mobility platform that matches workforce skills and ambitions to opportunities across the organization. First, employees describe their current skills and past experiences, as well as their future aspirations. Then OTM provides information about relevant open positions, part-time projects, and possible mentors.

The platform also offers career planning capabilities. For example, people can explore potential career paths and establish short-term development tracks to address immediate upskilling needs or develop new skills for the future.

How the OTM Process Works

This talent marketplace is open to all connected employees at Schneider Electric, and through pilot programs for shop floor employees who don’t have daily access to a work computer. With artificial intelligence as its backbone, OTM manages the entire experience at speed and at scale.

To get started, employees create a profile in the platform, which can be based on a LinkedIn profile or resume upload. Next, they can edit and expand their profile information, adding appropriate skills, experiences, interests and development areas. The more data an employee includes, the better the AI results will be.

Schneider Electric embraces the “3E” development framework – Experience (70%), Exposure (20%), and Education (10%). And because OTM is so easy to use, employees can independently explore upskilling and development opportunities that align with each of these learning methods.

Talent Marketplace Benefits

In addition to improving talent development and mobility, this solution has formalized the way our organization manages its internal gig economy. Now, by offering part-time projects through OTM, the company can unlock hours from employees who are eager to work on stretch assignments.

But the real beauty of this talent marketplace comes from its underlying AI, which makes it possible for anyone to discover opportunities that might not otherwise have been considered.

Too often in the past, finding a new position or mentor was all about who you knew. Now, it’s about transparency. That means everyone has access to a broader spectrum of opportunities that might not have been visible previously.

At the same time, the AI personalizes the matching process. In other words, it helps employees focus on opportunities that fit their unique skills and interests, instead of requiring them to filter through a sea of options. This levels the playing field and accelerates the talent matching process by identifying the strongest possibilities, regardless of current role or business unit.

Preparing to Support Internal Mobility

An effective talent marketplace depends on a culture that is open to internal mobility. For many organizations, this requires a significant mindset shift before and during the rollout.

At Schneider, the end goal is to retain our employees by placing them in opportunities that are best suited to their skills and help them continue to grow. This is why we strive to foster open dialogue among employees, current managers, and hiring managers about internal mobility and talent development.

To set the stage for OTM, we adjusted several key policies and procedures, and built OTM logic to support our business objectives:

Policy Changes

  • To help employees pursue new opportunities more on their terms, we’ve removed minimum “time in current role” requirements, as well as the need for a manager’s approval when applying for a new position.
  • To encourage actionable communication about opportunities, we ask internal candidates to receive feedback about any application, regardless of its outcome. In the past, this was not occurring consistently.
  • To support continuous learning and development, we request that employees dedicate 10-15% of their time to projects outside of their current role.

System Functionality

  • When using OTM for career planning, employees can see possible career paths based on several criteria, including their desired roles, typical paths that others in their current role have pursued, or whether they’re interested in moving into management. Within those paths, they can see existing open positions, as well as skill development opportunities to help prepare for future roles.
  • In addition, employees can use OTM to build shorter-term career tracks based on skills or experiences they want to gain or a specific position they want to pursue:
    • A track based on skills and experiences lets employees browse available opportunities, as well as courses offered in our learning management system.
    • A track based on positions lets employees select a specific position they’d like to pursue. Then the AI compares market data to find the skills most often applied in that role and identifies which of those skills the employee already has and indicates any gaps. The platform then suggests available projects, mentors and courses in our LMS that could help an employee fill those gaps.
  • Lastly, OTM is not a one-way street. The AI helps employees uncover matched opportunities. But it also lets recruiters and project owners discover candidates with a skill or experience needed for a position or project role. This feature required change management to ensure that our managers perceive it as a tool that enhances internal mobility, rather than “poaching.”

Talent Marketplace Results

To-date, 80,000 Schneider Electric employees are registered OTM users. And since its launch in May 2020, this solution has helped more than 26,000 employees connect with projects, positions or mentorship assignments.

OTM has been a highly effective way to actively involve employees in managing their careers. It supports people as they develop, grow, and shape their future. And it helps the organization more fully utilize talent, while strengthening engagement and retention. At Schneider, our commitment to a world-class talent marketplace is leading to a brighter future, all around.

 

EDITOR’S NOTE:  In developing this article, Jessica Staggs collaborated with Michele Egan, Open Talent Market Digital Transformation Lead at Schneider Electric

When you train employees do you also boost retention? Find out how to make this strategy work in from FranklinCovey CEO Paul Walker on this #WorkTrends podcast

When You Train Employees, Do You Also Boost Retention?

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Sponsored by FranklinCovey

If you’re involved in hiring or managing people, no one needs to tell you that competition for top talent is incredibly fierce. And keeping teams engaged and motivated is getting more difficult all the time. That’s why it pays to be especially thoughtful and strategic about how you train employees.

This isn’t just my opinion. It’s the conclusion of organizations like SHRM, which found that employees are 76% more likely to stay onboard when their organization has a dedicated process to support workforce learning and growth. Similarly, Deloitte estimates that retention is 30-50% higher among companies with a strong learning culture.

But this begs the question — exactly how can you build and sustain a learning environment that engages people so they want to stay onboard and advance your agenda? That’s the topic we’re exploring today with a brilliant business leader who is also a recognized expert in learning and development…

Meet Our Guest:  Paul Walker

I’m honored to welcome Paul Walker, President and CEO at FranklinCovey! As the company’s chief strategist and operational leader, Paul is committed to transforming organizations and enabling greatness. He actually started his career at FranklinCovey 22 years ago, and has grown and adapted along with the company. So clearly, he knows first-hand how learning and development can help retain top talent. Please join us as we explore this topic:

Connecting Learning With Retention
Welcome, Paul! Let’s dive right in. How is training tied to workforce retention?

Our work with clients and research from others tell us that training is integral to retention for several reasons:

  1. When you train employees, they feel valued because you’re investing in them. And the more valued people feel, the more likely they are to stay.
  2. It helps people perform better. We all want to do our best work everyday. If we need skills to do that, and our employer is helping us acquire those capabilities, it not only helps us do better today, but may also prepare us for something exciting in the future. Again, we feel valued.

How to Train Employees Effectively
What do people really want from work-related training?

There are probably more factors, but over and over again we see employees focusing on these things:

  1. Is it easy for me to access, so I can get the most out of it?
  2. How well does it fit into the flow of my daily work life?
  3. How relevant is it now, and will it prepare me for where I want to be in the future?
  4. Is it useful? Does it actually help me perform better?
How Can You Train Employees for Retention? Join us for a live #WorkTrends Twitter Chat - Wednesday, March 29th - 1:30-2:00pm ET. Follow @TalentCulture on Twitter for questions - and add the #WorkTrends hashtag to your tweets so others can see your comments and interact with you!

JOIN US ON TWITTER!

Choose Learning Metrics That Matter

Retention is important, but what other KPIs should we consider?

When we want to train employees, we need to be sure we’re not just advocating for retention or other objectives that may feel a bit soft to people who make budgetary and strategic decisions. These leaders don’t necessarily see how learning supports what they want to accomplish.

Instead, we need to focus on how learning improves the quality of the team’s results. That’s crucial to the organization’s performance.

We need to talk in the language Deloitte used in its research that says:

  • 92% of companies with more intentional, sophisticated learning develop more novel products and processes,
  • 56% are often first-to-market with products and services,
  • 52% are measurably more productive, and
  • 17% are more profitable.

Make It a Leadership Priority to Train Employees

Absolutely. There’s value here, and our KPIs should reflect that…

I would also say the best organizations have figured out how to ignite a passion for employee learning in their leaders. In other words, people development is a key leadership expectation, and leaders want to be involved in helping their people grow and develop. It’s not just the responsibility of HR or L&D…

For more insights from Paul about how to train employees for retention, listen to this full podcast episode. And be sure to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

In addition, we invite you to join our live Twitter chat about this topic on Wednesday, March 29th from 1:30-2:00pm ET. Follow us at @TalentCulture for questions and be sure to add the #WorkTrends hashtag to your tweets, so others in the community can easily find your comments and interact with you!

Also, to continue this conversation on social media anytime, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Developing entry-level talent: How to invest for success

Developing Entry-Level Talent: How to Invest for Success

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Imagine you’re a hard-working entry-level employee who’s been in your current position for less than a year. Your skills are solid, but they don’t help you stand out from other entry-level talent. You know which skills could help you advance, but you’re not sure what resources are available to you or how to get support for a growth plan. You don’t see a pathway to expand your skill set. You just feel stuck.

Sadly, this isn’t unusual. But scenarios like this can have serious consequences for employee morale, mobility, and retention across an organization. For example research says:

It’s no surprise that people look elsewhere when they believe their skills aren’t seen, valued, and nurtured. But this doesn’t need to happen. As an employer, you can avoid losing entry-level employees by investing more effectively in their future with your organization.

Where Employee Development Fits In

A comprehensive professional development program is one way to demonstrate your commitment. Upskilling, reskilling, cross-training and continuous learning practices help employees keep existing skills fresh, develop new capabilities, and expand their career potential over time.

Future-minded employers know that developing entry-level talent is not just good for employee engagement and morale. It’s also a smart business strategy because it builds “bench depth.” By encouraging employees to embrace new responsibilities and growth opportunities, you can create a more diverse internal talent pipeline that will adapt with you as your business needs change.

A commitment to developing entry-level talent also sends a powerful message from the highest levels of your organization. It tells people that every member of your workforce is important, and you’re invested in their future success.

What’s at Stake for Employers

Organizations that invest in entry-level talent realize significant benefits:

1. Higher ROI

When you’re facing workforce skill gaps, recruiting qualified talent may seem like a faster, cheaper, easier solution than employee development. But this is a short-sighted approach that doesn’t necessarily lead to a stronger team. Bringing in new talent requires multiple costly, time-consuming steps, from recruiting to interviewing to hiring. And there’s no guarantee new hires will onboard successfully and become committed contributors.

Why bet on an uncertain outcome, when you already have a team in place that you’ve worked so hard to recruit and onboard? If you spend the same amount of time and money helping existing employees grow, you’re more likely to achieve a higher return on investment.

2. Less Brain Drain

The value of institutional knowledge is also important to consider. The lower your commitment to development, the higher your turnover rate is likely to be. And as employees leave, they’ll take away “insider” intelligence about how your organization gets things done. For example, you’ll lose insight into strategies, tactics and processes that worked, as well as those that didn’t. This kind of information can make or break operational efficiency, effectiveness, cohesion, and more.

By developing entry-level talent, you can equip employees with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in your environment. Along the way, you’ll build and reinforce institutional knowledge, rather than eroding it as disenchanted employees leave.

3. Stronger Employee Value Proposition

We know people are drawn to employers that emphasize continuous professional development and growth. If your loyal workforce sees you turning to new hires instead of investing in existing employees, what should you expect to happen? Morale will sink, the desire for professional growth will vanish, and skills will stagnate. Eventually, employees will look for growth opportunities outside your organization.

Instead, why not reinvigorate your team through learning? Focus on reskilling, upskilling, and cross-skilling. It’s a more sustainable way to strengthen employee satisfaction, commitment, retention, and performance. To get started with a successful entry-level employee development program, consider these five steps:

5 Ways to Develop Entry-Level Talent

1. Establish a Reasonable Budget

Start by defining the key elements of your employee growth plan. Identify the professional development topics and skills your program should address. Any development model will involve both direct and indirect costs, and these should align with market value.

However, expenses aren’t the only consideration. You’ll also want to estimate the value of potential benefits. For example, you may choose to establish a mentorship program that pairs new hires with veteran employees. This is a relatively low-cost way to support a culture of learning, but it can lead to significant tangible results.

2. Provide Time and Resources for Employee Participation

Simply put, employees need dedicated time and support to engage in professional development. Allocate a specific number of days for this purpose — perhaps even paid time away from the office, if possible.

A little workplace flexibility goes a long way in helping talent feel valued, and giving employees choice in managing their schedules encourages accountability and self-regulation.

3. Tap Into the Power of Work Relationships

Ask entry-level employees what kind of development support they feel would be helpful. Then ask managers to co-create a roadmap with their direct reports, based on the knowledge and skills they want to develop.

Managers are likely to know how to leverage connections among team members so they can learn from one another. Research shows that these relationships matter. For example, McKinsey found that 91% of people supported by mentors are satisfied with their jobs. In addition, cohort-based learning enhances workplace communication, overall.

4. Include Team-Building Opportunities

Besides mentorship programs, consider other ways for entry-level employees to learn from teammates. Cross-departmental collaboration, for example, is an underused resource. When employees work with others and learn from one another, they can sharpen both interpersonal and job-related skills. They’re also more likely to understand the company’s inner workings and see the value in individual workplace roles.

5. Showcase Progress

For any program that demands time and energy, employees and employers alike want to see results. To reinforce the benefits of participation, plan to demonstrate how development efforts lead to professional growth, improved performance, and team success. For instance, one study of U.K. reskilling programs resulted in positive economic returns and improved morale. These are the kind of concrete results everyone appreciates.

Summary

These suggestions are intended as launching points to help you make the most of your investment in entry-level talent. With these development factors as a framework, your learning programs can make a measurable and lasting difference in workplace communication, productivity and innovation. Most importantly, this kind of investment can help you build a stronger team that will be invigorated and inspired to move forward together. Everybody wins.

How can your LMS bridge the skills gap? An expert explains how a modern learning management system can help develop essential workforce skills

How Can Your LMS Help Bridge the Skills Gap?

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Sponsored by Learnsoft

The Skills Gap is Growing. So is Pressure on L&D

Demand for skilled employees seems limitless. Modern technology and automation are  displacing workers in all industries, even while creating new jobs that need to be filled. Baby Boomers are rapidly retiring, but entry-level people from younger generations haven’t yet developed enough expertise to take on these positions. And competition for skilled professionals in technology, healthcare and other specialties remains fierce.

Throughout the pandemic, HR departments felt pressure to deliver a high-performing workforce. Unfortunately, that pressure isn’t likely to ease any time soon. In fact, by 2030, talent shortages in the U.S. alone are expected to result in $162 billion in unrealized revenue. 

If these trends give you heart palpitations, I apologize. But the good news is that these pressures are causing employers to look within their organizations to bridge this skills gap. As a result, we’re seeing increased investment in upskilling and reskilling of current employees. Even so, L&D programs are not as efficient as HR and business leaders want them to be.

In part, this is because organizations are not leveraging available learning tools and resources to their full capacity. If you see this happening in your organization, how can you improve?

Let’s take a closer look at the primary types of skills gaps and how organizations are responding. Then, I’ll explain how a learning management system (LMS) can go beyond simply delivering training content to help your business address critical skills challenges.

3 Kinds of Skills Gaps: What Are They?

“Skills gap” is generally used as a catch-all phrase for whatever is amiss in the employee/employer productivity relationship. But actually, there are three gaps to consider:

1. Skill Gap

Unlike the broader term, this specifically refers to intellectual or functional gaps in a person’s ability to perform a particular job effectively. For example, in healthcare this can be demonstrated by a lack of certification required to provide patient care. Or in construction, skilled laborers may need to develop proficiency with new equipment before they can use it at a job site. This differs from a knowledge gap.

2. Knowledge Gap

When employees do not know relevant information about their job or how their role fits into their department or organization, this is a knowledge gap. It can surface during onboarding – but can persist throughout an employee’s tenure. This is why hiring managers need to understand a new employee’s industry and job-specific knowledge, and then provide resources to bring that individual up-to-par as soon as possible.

3. Performance Gap

To perform well in a role, skills and knowledge are essential. However, motivation and commitment are just as important. This brings us to the performance gap – which is the disparity between an organization’s goals and an individual’s performance. This can be measured by a lack of engagement, low productivity levels, poor quality output, and other relevant metrics. These gaps can be especially detrimental, because they tend to expand over time when organizations lack tools to accurately measure key performance factors.

How Employers Are Addressing Skill Gaps

The most efficient way to accurately measure skills in an organization is with an appropriate skills management tool. For example, almost all large companies (98%, according to Training Magazine), use an LMS to manage and deliver e-learning courses and training programs.

The most-used function of an LMS is the ability to track training completions and course certifications within the learning platform. This solves some of the basic skills problems organizations face. However, the missing piece in many LMS platforms is a comprehensive and intuitive reporting capability.

For years, organizations in many industries tracked individual skills and knowledge through manual processes. In some industries, this is still managed manually.

That’s right. In 2023, organizations continue to struggle with automating and streamlining data management and reporting. Even when training is conducted online through an e-learning platform, the data is not easily transferred between applications.

I’ve worked with organizations where employees complete training online or in-person, and then a data entry specialist spends time manually extracting the completion data and copying it into an excel file. Next, they manually import the information into another HR application. This process is time consuming, inefficient and leaves room for error. But fortunately, there are better ways to manage this data-intensive business process.

An LMS Can Do More Than Deliver Content

1. Leverage Integrations

To truly maximize the benefits of an LMS, you need to integrate it with other enterprise applications and tools. By integrating your LMS with your HR ecosystem, you can streamline and automate your training processes, reduce administrative burdens, and enhance the user experience.

Your organization can track and manage L&D goals across the entire company using a single login system that connects an end user to any application within the LMS system. Users don’t need multiple logins to access the intranet, the compliance training portal, benefits and payroll, professional development courses, and so on. Instead, they’re all housed in one system – and those systems talk to each other so they can verify transferred data.

Here’s the benefit from a skills gap perspective: Because these applications work together within the HR ecosystem, you can easily identify employee reskilling and upskilling needs.

2. Support Employee Career Advancement

Understanding employee competency is essential to optimize the talent available in your workforce. This is why an LMS platform’s reporting function is just as important as its content delivery function. Job turnover is bound to happen, but how can an LMS help you more rapidly fill unexpected job openings?

L&D can quickly turn to a comprehensive reporting dashboard that identifies team members who are compliant and certified to fill a role. Intuitive reporting can make it easy to identify these qualified employees, regardless of their team or location. You can also leverage reporting to pinpoint existing skill deficits and make data-driven employee development decisions.

3. Establish Clear Paths to Success

The most important step in closing any skills gap is offering individuals opportunities to upskill through learning experiences and resources that expand their professional knowledge. Research indicates that employees agree. In fact, according to SHRM, 76% of employees are more inclined to stay at a company where continuous learning is available.

This is the strong suit of a modern LMS. It can help L&D teams work with managers to define skills benchmarks, build assessments that identify skills gaps, and determine how development can close those gaps.

You can outline specific courses employees must complete to move up in rank. Then you can communicate about these career growth opportunities and the path forward.

4. Meet Employees on Their Learning Terms

The keyword here is learning. There are many ways to distribute information. But you need to ensure that employees don’t just “acknowledge” that information. The goal is to absorb it, understand it and retain it.

A lack of learning engagement doesn’t benefit employees, and it can even put your organization at risk. For example, Corporate Compliance Insights found that 49% of survey respondents skipped or did not thoroughly listen to mandated compliance training. Imagine almost half of your workforce admitting they don’t pay attention to required learning! Sadly, this is a reality.

How can you avoid passive learning and drive engagement? Whatever content you create, it’s important to bring training directly to individuals and make sure the experience is as accessible, useful and relevant as possible. 

Be sure people have access to personalized training that best suits their needs. In some scenarios, this means face-to-face virtual training. In others, it means microlearning modules people can knock-out in 5 or 10 minutes.

Engaged learners make empowered workers. It is important to remember that people are lifelong learners. Employees need to train, retain, and show competency in their roles. This doesn’t stop when they clock-in for work. A flexible LMS can help employees train at workstation or remotely on a laptop or phone. And it should support personalized learning paths that help tailor learning to individual interests and goals. 

Your Organization Has Changed. Has Your LMS?

Addressing the skills gap means prioritizing your employees by making learning accessible, personalized and engaging. Most LMS providers require organizations to enter a multi-year contract – some up to 10 years. That’s a long time to use a platform if it doesn’t meet all your needs.

Is your LMS keeping pace with the needs of your workforce or your business? Consider these criteria of an effective LMS platform:

  • SaaS-based solution with flexibility to address diverse, changing needs
  • Integrates seamlessly with your HR ecosystem
  • A user experience that is easy for learners, instructors and administrators
  • Functionality that accommodates individual learning schedules and needs
  • Supports various content types to drive learning engagement
  • Streamlines upskilling/reskilling/cross-training efforts
  • Enables self-directed learning paths with recommendations based on job position, requirements, skills, competencies, and performance.
8 Ways to Empower Employees Through Financial Education - TalentCulture blog by contributor, Brett Farmiloe

8 Ways to Empower Employees Through Financial Education

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These days, many people are dealing with stress from all kinds of personal financial concerns. This can harm workforce wellbeing — especially when people aren’t sure how to manage these issues or who they can trust for advice. That’s why organizations are increasingly offering workforce financial education.

But which strategies are most effective in helping employees develop financial literacy — especially considering that everyone has a different level of financial knowledge and experience?

We asked HR superstars to share one recommendation from their employee benefits and DEI programs. Here are 7 of the best suggestions we received:

  • Offer Resources to Help Employees Make Informed Choices
  • Host Budgeting Workshops and One-on-One Coaching
  • Think in Terms of Financial Wellness
  • Be Sensitive to an Employee’s Financial Literacy Level
  • Keep Equity in Mind When Offering Resources
  • Add More Benefits Instead of Outsourcing
  • Leverage Employee Questions and Anecdotes

To learn more about how you can make these ideas work for your organization, read the full responses below…

7 Proven Ways to Boost Employee Financial Education

1. Offer Resources to Help Employees Make Informed Choices

Financial literacy is an important life skill that can have a major impact on an individual’s overall wellbeing. Unfortunately, many employees lack the financial knowledge and resources necessary to make informed decisions about their money. As a result, they may end up making poor choices. And those choices can lead to serious financial problems down the road.

However, there are steps HR leaders can take to help employees improve their financial literacy. For example, you can offer resources to help employees make informed financial decisions. This can include access to basic financial education courses, budgeting tools, and debt management assistance. 

By tapping into these resources, employees gain the knowledge and skills they need to make better money decisions, avoid future financial difficulties, and improve their overall wellbeing.

Teresha Aird, Chief Marketing Officer and HR Lead, Offices.net

 

2. Host Budgeting Workshops or One-on-One Coaching

At our company, we offer different levels of financial education and resources. We recognize that not everyone is comfortable discussing or learning about personal finance, so we want to ensure we provide various resources that cater to different needs and preferences.

For example, we provide budgeting workshops for employees who want to get a better handle on daily money management. And for those who prefer a more personal approach, we offer one-on-one financial coaching. We also provide resources on our intranet and website for employees who want to learn more about finance-related topics on their own time. 

By offering a variety of resources that address different interests, we hope to make it easier for all of our employees to understand and take control of their finances.

Tracey Beveridge, HR Director, Personnel Checks

 

3. Think in Terms of Financial Wellness

Some organizations approach their benefits and DEI programs from a “financial wellness” perspective. Financial wellness is about much more than money management — it’s about creating a holistic, well-rounded view of one’s financial situation and health.

A financial wellness program can address people with different levels of financial literacy in several ways. One common approach is to provide employees with a variety of financial education options and resources, depending on their needs and interests. For example, employees who are just starting out may need more basic information on topics like budgeting and saving for retirement. Those who are further along in their financial journey are likely to benefit from more advanced topics like investing and estate planning.

No matter what an employee’s level of financial literacy may be, it’s important to provide them with accurate and up-to-date information. This means employers should plan to regularly review, refresh and adjust available content, courses, tools and resources.

Linda Shaffer, Chief People Operations Officer, Checkr

 

4. Be Sensitive to an Employee’s Financial Literacy Level

It is important to provide employees with the resources they need to make informed decisions about benefits and DEI programs, without forcing them to take part in activities they are not comfortable with.

One approach is to provide employees with resources that are tailored to their level of financial literacy. For example, you could offer an online course for employees who want to learn more about personal finance. Or, you could provide a list of recommended books or websites for employees who want to learn more on their own.

Another approach is to hold workshops or seminars on various financial topics. You can tailor these events to different levels of financial literacy so all employees can benefit from the information presented.

Alysha M. Campbell, Founder and CEO, CultureShift HR

 

5. Keep Equity in Mind When Offering Resources

It’s important to understand that we all start at different places in life. While this may seem like a given, many struggle with truly understanding how this applies to financial literacy. 

Specifically, many individuals from different racial backgrounds were not privy to having a mother or father to teach them the ins and outs of financial literacy. This is why equity is so important in the workplace. Equity recognizes that giving everyone the same tools or resources isn’t effective, and instead ensures that each individual has what they need to be successful. 

Keeping equity in mind when planning and managing your employee benefits offerings is one way to ensure that each employee has what they need. Resources every employer should offer include financial coaching, legal assistance, and workshops about credit, budgeting, and the importance of investing.

Tawanda Johnson, HR Leader, Sporting Smiles

 

6. Add More Benefits Instead of Outsourcing

Our employee benefits are managed through another company, so we aren’t able to decide what most of the options are. However, this past year, the benefit premiums increased. Still, the company could add more benefits to make the overall package more robust and attractive to current and new employees. Adding these incremental benefits could help offset the premium increase.

Lindsey Hight, HR Professional, Sporting Smiles

 

7. Leverage Participant Questions and Anecdotes

When addressing financial topics in DEI programs where attendees have different financial literacy levels, we want to help participants understand the benefits of concepts like retirement plans, debt management, and budgeting. Then we explain the fundamentals of these subjects.

An excellent way to explain these concepts is by welcoming questions from attendees. Then we use real-world examples to make the topics clear enough for individuals, no matter what their financial literacy level may be.

Grace He, People and Culture Director, teambuilding.com

Employee Development - 5 Flexible Approaches that Work

Employee Development: 5 Flexible Approaches That Work

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Over the last three years, flexible and agile work models have been at the forefront of workplace disruption. Emboldened by work-from-home standards enforced during the pandemic, companies across numerous industries stopped requiring employees to be present at the office everyday. Now, many of these organizations are enjoying improved productivity and performance. But how does employee development fit into these new work scenarios?

Recognizing it’s time for large-scale change, more business leaders are willing to try new work methods, tools and solutions. With agility and flexibility at the heart of this ongoing workplace transformation, an increasing number of firms are now turning to flexible development strategies, so they can help members of their workforce realize their full potential.

With widespread talent shortages still posing recruitment obstacles, personal and professional development has become a strategic priority. But organizations that embed flexibility and adaptability into their development process will fare better at retaining people and equipping them for the future.

The Case for Flexible Development

Flexible employee development makes it possible to combine diverse learning methods that meet individual and organizational needs. This is gaining traction for several reasons:

1. More organizations are embracing inclusion as a core value. As a result, respect for individual needs and preferences is being reflected in business practices of all types. For development, this translates into personalized training and resources that accommodate diverse learning habits, skill requirements, and professional interests.

2. Key characteristics of the Industry 4.0 era include broader skill gaps, increasing automation, shifting workforce demographics, hybrid jobs and the rise of non-linear careers. A one-size-fits-all approach to employee development doesn’t address these factors.

Indeed, within modern work environments, rigid development paths are counterintuitive. They leave people feeling bored, disengaged, and ultimately excluded. In contrast, flexible learning options are the most effective way to enhance the value of every employee.

Ideas for Implementing Flexible Development

Over the last 12 months, we have been watching the various ways companies in different sectors are implementing flexible employee development, as well as its impact on talent acquisition, retention, and performance. Below are several noteworthy examples:

1. Design an EVP for Every Discipline

It’s easy to find companies that rely on a generic Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to recruit and retain top talent. But smart employers know this isn’t sufficient. Instead, define compelling career pathways and clearly communicate how employees actually grow and progress within your organization. Also, keep in mind that employee motivations often vary across different professional disciplines.

This was the strategy of Atom Bank – the UK’s first digital bank – during its campaign to hire more senior engineers to deliver core services. In the highly competitive tech talent market, a unique EVP enabled the business to stand out from the crowd and attract highly qualified people.

2. Build Depth Across Functional Roles

The ideal way to expand anyone’s capabilities is to challenge them to complete tasks and projects outside of their standard responsibilities. The objectives are twofold:

  • Offer experiences that help individuals add desired skills that align with their career aspirations.
  • Fill organizational talent gaps and ensure operational continuity.

In the beverage manufacturing industry, for example, Coca-Cola identified an HR staff member’s interest in manufacturing operations and created a hybrid HR/plant management role in response. The outcome was so successful, it became a catalyst for broader implementation. The company began moving more employees into different roles and establishing lines of progression for other career opportunities across the local business unit.

3. Offer Job Rotations and Stretch Assignments

Employees in similar functional areas can learn new skills by rotating jobs and tasks. This method is popular in food manufacturing. For instance, at Nomad Foods, plant managers encourage production workers to gain engineering skills so they can perform basic machine maintenance. Nomad says it not only helps people build new skills, but also improves cross-functional teamwork.

At more senior levels, stretch assignments are a highly effective way to help employees push the boundaries of their current role, so they can improve and expand their professional skills and become better prepared for next steps. In the tech industry, for example, organizations are challenging developers to step out of their comfort zone and take on project management and other client-facing responsibilities.

4. Support Academic Learning

Often, employers lose strong talent when younger workers resign to continue academic studies on a full-time basis. Employers are responding with a variety of attractive alternatives. For instance, some companies pay educational expenses for people who remain onboard. They may also reduce an employee’s work hours. And some employers are offering these options even if people are seeking qualifications that don’t directly relate to their current role.

Here’s how this is working at consumer goods retailer, Iceland. A recent job share arrangement made it possible for two staff members to work reduced hours, so one could return from maternity leave and another could continue university studies. Building flexibility like this into the employee experience demonstrates a serious commitment to employee wellbeing and ongoing development.

5. Emphasize Shared Leadership and Mutual Accountability

Shared leadership and accountability can help different divisions work together more effectively. With this approach, organizations assign common objectives to separate functions or business units, and then measure their collective impact. This enables division heads to gain important skills, knowledge, and experiences that help them become more agile leaders.

Nomad Foods firmly believes in encouraging different division heads to work together, while giving them flexibility in how they achieve mutual objectives. According to Nomad, expanding a leader’s influence in this way tends to drive employees’ overall willingness to take ownership and accountability for outcomes.

Conclusion

These examples are only some of the ways organizations are successfully introducing more flexibility into their employee development strategies. If you’re just starting to implement these methods, first try a limited test case or pilot program and evaluate its impact before committing to wide-scale change.

Regardless, it’s important to recognize that organizations are moving aggressively in this direction. So, the sooner you can identify flexible alternatives that will enhance your classic development offerings, the better.

Strategic Learning 9 ways to prepare for the future of work

9 Strategic Learning Moves to Prepare for the Future of Work

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In HR circles, we talk a lot about employee development. Often, we focus on its role in improving workforce engagement and retention. But strategic learning is about much more than that.

No question, when employees have an opportunity to add new work skills to their portfolio, they become more motivated and involved in their professional growth. It may well spark a desire to stick around, earn a certificate, and aim for further advancement.

Research certainly supports this assumption. For instance, 76% of employees are more likely to stay with a company that offers continuous training, according to a recent survey by TalentLMS and The Society for Human Resource Management. But these days, we need to recognize the power of learning and development as a strategic business move.

The Value of Strategic Learning

Certainly, employees need the right knowledge and skills to perform well in their current roles. But are you preparing them for tomorrow? Strategic learning looks ahead and introduces new practices, approaches, technologies, and solutions that will drive business success, going forward.

The future of work is unquestionably complex. It will be transformed by automation and furthered by machine learning and AI. If people don’t have the means to evolve and expand their capabilities, we’ll all be held back as the workplace enters uncharted territory.

More Than Just New Skills

Effective learning and development is not just about helping employees acquire new skills. It’s also about embracing learning as a strategic imperative. Over the years, I’ve discussed the importance of this perspective with numerous experts. In particular, one previous conversation stands out.

In 2020, I invited Dickens Aubourg to join me for a #WorkTrends podcast interview. Dickens is a learning and development expert who, at the time, was Director of Client Learning at Paycom:

9 Ways to Elevate Your Learning Agenda

In this interview, we explored Dickens’ perspective on strategic learning — and the 9 points we covered still resonate:

1. Treat employee training as a key business strategy that integrates retraining, reskilling, and upskilling. Ultimately, the goal should be to gain and sustain a competitive advantage through workforce readiness, competence and innovation.

2. In most organizations, learning and development isn’t sufficiently supported. Nor is it defined correctly. Learning isn’t an isolated act of class attendance or content consumption. It’s actually part of the daily employee experience. A mix of ongoing formal and informal learning is essential for effective professional development and performance support — including opportunities for social and collaborative learning.

3. We need to value informal learning for bringing context and relevance to work. It’s a way to improve connection and collaboration within teams and across the workforce, in general.

4. Quantifying and recognizing both formal and informal learning creates experiences that help leaders drive meaningful business impact and results.

5. The shift to remote and hybrid work enables organizations to more easily develop people from within. This is critical in modern work environments.

6. HR products and platforms that focus on learning will be an increasingly important component of the HR tech ecosystem. We won’t be separating learning from other people functions, nor should we.

7. It’s important to remember that, while training is not the only form of learning, it is central to employee development. Training on new tools and processes can be woven into an overall learning program that offers other development opportunities, giving employees a sense of growth and accomplishment, as well as the potential to reach new horizons.

8. Leaders will benefit from a better understanding of upskilling. The best way to do that? Start upskilling high-level managers and others in leadership positions. Ask them to identify gaps in their capabilities and offer pathways for professional growth. Targeting only lower-level employees for upskilling isn’t fair, and it’s actually short-sighted.

9. Continuous learning breeds a more nimble, agile workforce, which is what the new world of work requires. Organizations are constantly incorporating new technology and tools. We saw it during the pandemic, but it’s accelerating now. Individuals and teams must keep pace. A culture of learning supports this.

Top Takeaway: Strategic Learning is About Optimism

Employers can no longer afford to hold back on training, development, educational resources, and a commitment to workforce learning. Not only does strategic learning contribute to HR goals, but it also is essential in helping organizations achieve key business objectives. So, for individuals and employers, alike, this means learning is an act of optimism.

I’ve witnessed this firsthand recently at partner companies that are turning to new approaches and processes for growth and improvement. And as a result, they’re thriving.

So here’s the lesson: Tapping into everyone’s potential for growth is not just wishful thinking. It’s an opportunity to strengthen the employee experience and improve performance, while advancing your business agenda. The sum total? We all win.

How to build a learning culture from the ground up - talentculture

How to Build a Learning Culture From the Ground Up

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The great resignation, the rise of hybrid work, and the fear of recession are making one thing certain — today’s talent must be agile and adapt quickly. A culture of learning is vital now because it helps organizations thrive when moving through change. But this kind of culture doesn’t happen spontaneously. It requires intentional effort. This article offers guidance for leaders who need to build a culture of learning that will stand the test of time.

What is a Learning Culture?

Culture is the combination of beliefs and values that drive organizational behavior. In other words, “how stuff gets done around here.” When you center beliefs and values on behaviors that encourage continuous growth and development, you can create a foundation for ongoing innovation and improvement.

A strong learning culture encourages and rewards both individual and organizational growth. It takes time and dedication to build a learning culture, but the outcomes can be transformational. What else does this process require? Focus on these factors:

8 Steps to Build a Learning Culture

1. Plan Effectively

Start by assessing your organization’s recruiting and hiring practices to be sure you’re attracting talent with a growth mindset. This should include a careful analysis of your onboarding process. Do you emphasize the importance of learning? Onboarding often focuses on what employees need to learn. But new employees also need to know who they should learn from and with.

Also, examine your approach to upskilling, reskilling, and cross-skilling current employees. This will give you better insight into how prepared your organization is to support future needs. 

Use these findings to plan for retention. Keeping employees onboard is critical now. According to The New York Times, “The rise in turnover since the pandemic started has a cost in productivity: It’s taking longer to get stuff out the door.”

Meanwhile, the talent pool remains limited. Currently, for every person seeking a job, 1.7  positions are available. In today’s competitive environment, employers can’t afford to lose top talent. And one of the most powerful ways to keep people committed is through a culture that supports learning and growth.

In a recent report about what we call Work 3.0, we explain how some talent models are more effective than others at achieving these outcomes. For example, organizations with remote and hybrid work models must be careful to ensure that learning opportunities are inclusive and equitable.

Smart leaders rely on the planning process to guide their decisions about learning priorities. This includes careful data gathering and analysis to verify the organization’s current state, define its future goals, and establish a strategic roadmap to bridge this gap. 

2. Ensure a Receptive Environment

Successful learning cultures begin with psychological safety. In a workplace where this is high, people feel comfortable asking questions, voicing their opinions, and taking responsibility for their mistakes.

In fact, after studying nearly 300 leaders over 2.5 years, we found that teams with high degrees of psychological safety had higher performance outcomes and lower interpersonal conflict. This kind of environment encourages employees to learn more fully from their mistakes and from one another.

3. Align Learning With Business Imperatives

What matters most to your organization? This should inform your culture. The most effective learning strategies align with business priorities. Alignment helps scale learning while keeping it relevant, meaningful, and applicable.

Environments that welcome open, honest discussions (including respectful disagreements) are more likely to align learning with the organization’s vision, mission, and goals.

You’ll want to emphasize opportunities to develop mindsets and behaviors that move your agenda forward. This should include incentives and rewards for employees who embrace desired growth.

4. Model the Change You Want to See

It’s essential to recognize continuous learning as a key to better business results. Because culture is shaped by leadership behavior, it’s critical to exhibit the actions you want to see in others. Leaders who exhibit an interest in learning and in rewarding others for their growth will inspire employees to focus on these activities.

Leaders play a significant role here by communicating expectations and modeling behaviors they want to see. For example, it’s important to regularly express curiosity, offer feedback, admit mistakes, and share knowledge.

Effective communication and storytelling by leaders can also help your workforce understand what’s expected and why it’s important for everyone in your culture. This includes engaging in authentic conversations, sharing personal learning experiences, and proactively seeking feedback.

5. Integrate Accessibility Into the Process

It’s vital to scale development opportunities so learning is accessible to everyone, not just high-potential individuals. This is particularly important in today’s environment, where employees don’t necessarily work onsite in a central location.

To improve accessibility, offer development through a variety of modalities. This can include a mix of formal in-person training, virtual courses, asynchronous informal learning, micro-learning, experiential learning, self-paced e-learning content, as well as social and collaborative learning options.

Offering a library of resources can also help keep workforce knowledge and skills up-to-date. For example, you can provide resources such as books, articles, podcasts, and videos through a central digital repository.

A learning management system (LMS) or learning experience platform (LXP) with enterprise licensing can help you scale this kind of learning content. This also makes it possible to track consumption and tie learning to individual and team performance.

6. Invest in the Right Tools and Support

A strong learning culture naturally emerges when development becomes integrated into daily work habits. Leaders can play an important role here, by regularly encouraging staff to devote sufficient time to absorb, practice, share, and apply whatever they learn.

One standard is based on the 70-20-10 rule: This approach suggests that 70% of learning comes from working through challenging assignments and experiences, while 20% comes from developmental relationships, and 10% from formal training and coursework. The process is reinforced when employees take time to reflect on their learning endeavors. You can support this reinforcement phase through mentoring as well as “reverse mentoring.”

7. Customize Appropriately

Today’s employees — especially those in remote and hybrid work settings — prefer development opportunities tailored to their needs. When considering how to elevate your learning culture, be sure to ask employees what they want to learn and how they prefer to engage in learning. Then consider how to provide “core” learning opportunities for all, combined with various options that any individual can pursue. 

Ideally, a customized approach delivers learning experiences that address each employee’s unique needs and interests over time. Research shows that offering various delivery methods tends to boost learner engagement and knowledge retention. Ultimately, that can improve job performance, satisfaction, and commitment.

8. Measure Effectively

Finally, plan to measure your progress and use that intelligence to improve on a continuous basis. 

Formal evaluations can help you track trends, learn from the data, and adjust accordingly. Less formal options, such as the agile review methodology of, “Liked, Lacked, Learned, Longed For” can give you immediate feedback while also changing mindsets.

Strive to make after-action reviews a natural part of work routines. Regularly ask for feedback and use pulse surveys. Also, don’t forget to establish metrics that help you determine how well leaders are advancing the overall learning agenda.

Conclusion

When you build a learning culture, you’ll see how all of these elements are interconnected. If the atmosphere is hostile or complacent, or if content isn’t accessible to all, your mission is likely to fail. If you don’t understand your objectives, measuring progress will be impossible.

Recognize that changing any aspect of an organization’s culture is easier said than done. Progress takes time, patience, support, and persistence — especially from leaders and managers. To secure buy-in, tie improvement metrics to each leader’s performance objectives. Also, to keep learning top-of-mind, publicly celebrate early wins, and keep the cadence rolling.

Eventually, any organization can lead with learning. But it won’t happen until you invest in thoughtful planning and consistent implementation. Remember, it’s a process.

Should You Cut Your Learning Budget During a Business Downturn?

Should You Cut Your Learning Budget in a Downturn?

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At some point, every organization will face an economic downturn. It could be a global recession or a serious slump in one of the industries you serve. Regardless, too many organizations jump to the wrong conclusions too quickly. They slash investment in employee development to save on variable expenses. But cutting a learning budget in haste can lead to much more severe business damage over time.

That’s why smart leaders embrace a long-term growth mindset before, during, and after a downturn. It’s why they double down on developing their people, even when times are tough. And as a result, these organizations don’t just survive. They thrive.

Learning: Strength in a Downturn

Wondering how some businesses actually flourish during difficult economic times? Take a look at the research. During the recessions of 1980, 1990, and 2000, a small minority of companies (9%) showed strong performance. In fact, they outperformed competitors by at least 10% in sales and profit growth.

What was their secret? In part, they invested in helping employees make better-informed decisions, improve their responsiveness, and adapt more quickly. What was the common denominator beneath these improvements? Learning. People needed the right knowledge and skills to pursue new roles, embrace new tasks, work more resourcefully, and make more effective decisions.

That’s why organizational learning is critical during a downturn. Yet ironically, L&D is often among the first departments that suffer when budgets are cut. It’s time for learning leaders to challenge this practice. Because employee development is not just a nice-to-have option when times are good. It is actually a powerful way to increase productivity, retention, and competitiveness — especially during uncertain economic times.

Flip Your Perspective

A downturn often brings uncertainty and fear. But seeing it instead as an opportunity for growth and differentiation can help your organization position itself as a market leader when recovery eventually comes. Preserving your learning investment can help your people do exactly that. If you cut back your learning budget now, you will hinder your future success.

I might be preaching to the L&D choir. But this is a vital message to spread far and wide across your senior stakeholders. Why? Chances are, the learning budget has already been slashed in each of your competitors’ organizations. If so, you can plant seeds now that can eventually grow into a competitive advantage.

Build the Case for a Sustained Learning Budget

To communicate effectively with executive stakeholders and colleagues, focus on understanding their unique priorities, fears, and challenges. For example, issues that matter to your CFO won’t necessarily be what keeps your CHRO up at night.

Department heads can be a goldmine of insight into high-priority projects, as well as the skills needed for successful outcomes. Partnering with these leaders increases buy-in. And with more voices supporting you, the less likely your learning budget will be cut.

Internal partners can also help you define learning programs that will have a deeper impact on your business. For example, when Capital One implemented a new cloud-based digital transformation, senior learning leadership worked closely with the CIO to define and develop required skills, assignments, and content.

Align Learning With Business Success Metrics

During a downturn, leaders are laser-focused on return on investment (ROI). To avoid seeing your budget hit the cutting room floor, L&D should focus on business metrics that show how learning contributes to the top and bottom line. When you show evidence that learning boosts performance, productivity, and operational efficiency, your C-Suite will think twice about trimming your funding.

Again, partnering with other departments can help uncover relevant data that may not be available in your learning system. For instance, you could link learning behavior with business data such as sales leads, onboarding time, or customer satisfaction scores.

The more directly you tie learning content and consumption patterns with business readiness and productivity metrics, the better. It’s even better if you can prove your learning strategy delivers a tangible business impact at a lower cost than a legacy learning system or process.

Make Every Dollar Count

Ericsson is a good example of this strategy in action. When investing in a new online learning system, the L&D team found that course completions rose by 62%, while the cost of operating the learning technology ecosystem fell by half.

At the same time, business units saw a 41% increase in ethical practices, with 97% of employees completing new anti-corruption training within two months of launch. This was a month faster than previous campaigns with higher completion rates.

In addition, the L&D team discovered that the number of workers who learned Ericsson’s five company-critical skills (5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning, collaboration, sales, and automation) increased by 14%.

Address Employee Uncertainty

A final point you can make to your C-Suite involves the human aspect of thriving in a recession. Make no mistake, your people are feeling very vulnerable right now. If they think their jobs and livelihoods are at risk, they cannot do their best work.

People may need to expand their workload in the wake of hiring freezes or layoffs. They may need to switch to another role, team, or project to keep your business operating smoothly. Or, they may have extra capacity when a project is canceled or delayed.

All of these situations affect employee wellbeing and performance, especially if people don’t feel equipped to perform well. In fact, nearly 60% of workers say a lack of confidence in their skills makes their job more stressful, and nearly 40% believe their mental health suffers as a result.

Offering a tailored learning plan with clear career growth opportunities that extend beyond the immediate downturn can have a huge influence on an employee’s perception of job security.

The Marketplace Values Skilled People

Companies that treat their people well during a downturn are building lasting loyalty and a strong employer brand that can pay off over time. For L&D, actions you take now to preserve your learning budget can directly influence your organization’s ability to attract and retain talent in the future.

This is also a strong confidence signal to those outside of your company. It shows prospective customers, analysts, influencers, and investors that you understand this is just a moment in your business lifecycle, and that you’re preparing your workforce for the inevitable upturn.

After all, if your people aren’t prepared with the right skills when the opportunity arises, your business won’t be able to seize the day. In fact, if you wait to upskill your people when a recovery begins, you’ll be too late. Others who invested in learning during the downturn will lead.

Grow Now, Lead Later

Historically, some of the most innovative and inspiring businesses continued to grow during downturns because their leaders understood that opportunities don’t necessarily come during good times. Tough times present challenges that can force you to rethink processes, reskill your people, and develop a competitive edge while other companies may pause.

Learning is crucial in all economic climates, but especially in uncertainty. Skills are the building blocks for your future. You don’t want to cut back on them and find yourself without a springboard to success when the going gets better. For the kind of business impact that will stand the test of time, resist the temptation to cut your learning budget. Instead, double down — the sooner the better.

What should employers consider about ethical AI in talent decisions? Learn the latest in this #WorkTrends podcast episode

Transforming Talent Decisions With Ethical AI

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Sponsored by Reejig

Countless HR tools, applications, and platforms now rely on artificial intelligence in some form. Users may not even notice that AI is operating in the background — but it can fundamentally change the way we work, think, and make talent decisions.

This raises several big questions. What should we really expect from AI? And is this kind of innovation moving us in the right direction?

For example, what role should AI play in skills-related talent acquisition and workforce mobility practices? With stellar talent in short supply these days, this topic has never been more important for employers to consider. So join me as I look closer at key issues surrounding ethical AI in HR tech on this #WorkTrends podcast episode.

Meet Our Guest:  Jonathan Reyes

Today, I’m excited to talk with Jonathan Reyes, a talent advisor and futurist who has been helping technology and banking industry companies navigate hypergrowth for nearly two decades. Now, as VP of North America for Reejig, he’s on a mission to build a world with zero wasted human potential.

Defining “Zero Waste” in Humans

Jonathan, I love the phrase “zero wasted potential.” What exactly does Reejig mean by this?

We envision a world where every person has access to meaningful work — no matter their background or circumstance. In this world, employers can tap into the right skills for the right roles, whenever needed. And at the same time, society can reap the benefits of access to diverse ideas through fair and equitable work opportunity.

The concept of sustainability is emerging in every industry. Now, sustainable human capital is becoming part of that conversation, and this is our way of expressing it.

So, with zero wasted potential, decisions aren’t based on a zero-sum game. When employers make human capital choices, individuals or society shouldn’t suffer. Instead, by focusing on talent mobility through upskilling and reskilling, we can create a new currency of work.

Workforce Intelligence Makes a Difference

Why do you feel workforce intelligence is essential for employers as they make talent decisions?

Organizations have so much human capital data. With all the workforce intelligence available, there’s no reason to hire and fire talent en masse — and then rehire many of the same individuals just months later.

Obviously, that’s an emotional and human experience for employees. But also, organizations are spending unnecessary money to find people and let them go, only to invest again in rehiring them.

Focusing instead on internal mobility is far more cost-effective.

Where Ethical AI Fits In

Many companies are unsure about AI in talent acquisition and management. What’s your take on this?

There are no universally accepted standards for ethical AI. This means vendors across industries can say technology is “ethical” based on self-assessment, without input from legal, ethical, or global experts.

But we’ve developed the world’s first independently audited, ethical talent AI. In fact, the World Economic Forum has recognized us for setting a benchmark in ethical AI.

The Impact on Internal Mobility

How do businesses benefit from shifting to a zero-wasted potential talent strategy? 

When companies manage internal mobility well, they extend employee tenure by 2x. And we know that people who stay and continue growing and developing are much more engaged.

This can create a significant downstream benefit. It’s one of the biggest reasons to invest in this kind of talent management capability.

 

For more great advice from Jonathan about why and how organizations are leveraging AI to make better talent decisions, listen to this full episode. Also, be sure to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. And to continue this conversation on social media, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

What is skillability - and why is it so important for future-minded organizations?

Skillability: Will It Solve the Talent Crunch?

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The current talent market poses numerous challenges for leaders and employees, alike. Perhaps the most disruptive force redefining the post-pandemic business landscape is persistently high employee turnover. This “Great Reshuffle” demonstrates just how quickly teams can change—even beyond the pandemic shift to remote work.

A New Business Necessity: Skillability

This fluid employment environment brings good news and bad. Employees are welcoming it as an opportunity to advance their careers. But among employers, it has given rise to the practice of talent poaching. Global companies are proactively pursuing candidates from all over the world, culling the best talent away from other, smaller businesses.

And on top of this highly competitive talent market, employers are now struggling with the effects of inflation. As the cost of living continues to increase, so do demands for higher wages. And candidates are willing to hold out when employers don’t meet their salary expectations. These dynamics can make it tough to fill openings, even for high-paying, highly-skilled roles.

At the same time, employees face a volatile economic landscape that is sending conflicting messages about how to weigh the stability of an existing job against other attractive options. Today’s sky-high inflation hasn’t done employees any favors, either. Even though individuals have more bargaining power, inflation quickly eats into any wage increases gained from a job switch. As a result, economics plays a much more active role in career choices these days.

But despite all of these issues, both employers and employees can rely on one shared secret weapon. It’s something I call skillability.

The Power of Skillability

A skill is an individual’s capacity to perform a job task or function, based on existing knowledge, ability and competence. Skillability, in contrast, is an individual’s capacity to develop proficiency in an unfamiliar skill.

The faster and more efficiently someone can develop a skill, the better. So, skillability can be measured by determining the time an employee needs to develop new skills, along with the investment needed to build those skills.

Training, alone, is not enough to improve skillability. It also requires a supportive, learning-forward work environment. Together, they can nurture professional growth and create a win-win for individuals and their employers.

It’s essential for leaders to develop key workforce skills internally. This gives them new ways to support employees in their current roles, while helping them prepare for future growth within the organization. At the same time, by proactively encouraging team skillability, leaders can uncover new growth opportunities for themselves.

For example, consider technology advancements. While new technologies may promise greater operational efficiency and profitability, they also require specific skills that existing employees may lack. Employees with a high level of skillability can help companies hedge against the uncertainty of changing technology by being adaptable and agile in the face of change.

Building Skillability Within Your Organization

Skillability may sound like a trait, but the ability to develop new skills can actually be learned. It’s all in your approach to training, development, and talent acquisition. Here are just a few ideas to help your organization move forward with this strategy:

1) Consider Candidates Who May Not Fit the Mold

Candidates who lack one or more “required” proficiencies can bring a background or experience that enables them to quickly pick up new skills, duties, and responsibilities. Don’t screen out these individuals.

This approach offers several advantages. First, it opens your organization to new, often untapped talent pools. Also, it encourages the development of existing internal talent, which can drive retention and avoid the consequences of unwanted turnover.

Think about it. If you hire new employees for skillability and their desire to learn, you’re not just investing in their future, but in your organization’s future competitiveness, as well.

2) Build Achievable Benchmarks Into Training

Benchmarking is nothing new. Business leaders use it to determine the highest standards of performance. However, it can also be used for training and onboarding. Benchmarks and timelines can spur self-driven learning over a defined period.

Industrial technology provider, Emerson, relies on a powerful version of this model. It instills lifelong learning “DNA” in new employees to ensure that they will be skillable throughout their employee journey. This kind of approach indicates early on whether employees are likely to grow continually and take on new challenges as they arise. It also encourages the most enterprising employees to quickly distinguish themselves and demonstrate their skillability.

3) Break Employees Out of Their Comfort Zones

Sometimes, the most effective way to cultivate skillability is to nudge employees toward learning opportunities that push their existing boundaries and routines. This strategy is inspired by the fact that people learn more effectively when they’re somewhat uncomfortable as they explore new ways of thinking and doing things. 

Effective learning disrupts the status quo, so to speak. And overcoming these challenges has a way of encouraging people to continue pursuing learning opportunities for themselves. This means you’ll want to put employees in new situations that force them to challenge their thinking, expand their knowledge, test their abilities, and ignite their desire to grow and evolve in their careers. 

4) Establish a Supportive Environment

The climate you establish for new and existing employees is paramount to skillability’s success. It’s important to create a setting where fear is seen as an invitation to grow, rather than a signal to hold back.

Often, leaders inadvertently discourage growth in others because they fear negative consequences or they’re anxious about their own ability to grow. This can intimidate others and put a damper on skillability. One way to avoid this is for senior leaders to consistently and openly encourage all team members to develop skillability, and for the organization to reward people at all levels who step up to the challenge.

Final Thoughts

Employers can become so invested in hiring for a specific skill set that they fail to consider a candidate’s skillability. When you hire people, you’re already planning to involve them in training. So, why not broaden your talent options to include those with a stronger likelihood to learn much-needed skills in the future?

Even if you look within your ranks for employees with motivation and a commitment to continuous learning, you’re likely to find viable job candidates you might not have otherwise considered. It may only take a gentle push in the right direction and an environment that gives them the support they need to grow and succeed.

Skills Development

Skills Development: Now or Later?

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Podcast Sponsored by: Cornerstone

Research from PWC shows that upskilling puts companies at a great advantage. The research found that companies realize an extra 10% to 15% of the benefit of large-scale transformation initiatives and up to 40% reduction in workloads on individual roles, as well as a 5% improvement in workforce retention when they integrate upskilling. These benefits lead to more output, opportunities to reduce cost, and higher customer satisfaction

Our Guest: Katie Ballantyne

On our latest #WorkTrends podcast, I spoke with Katie Ballantyne, Cornerstone’s VP of Product and Customer Experience. She has years of experience achieving industry-leading employee engagement programs across organizations.

Katie Explains the already large gap we are seeing in skills development from 2020 to 2022

“Well,  from 2020 to 2022, what we’ve found out through research is that employee confidence that their employer is effectively developing their skills has gone down. And we found that the gap has grown wider. There’s now a 35 percentage point difference between that employer and employee confidence in skilling.

“What this really means, is that only about 55% of employees feel like their employer is effectively developing their skills.”

High Performing Organizations VS Low Performing Organizations

What differentiates these high-performing organizations from organizations that are just not excelling? Is it money? Type of employee? There has to be a definitive answer. Lets see what Katie thought:

“Here’s what we found out. The high performing organizations, they only had a nine percentage point skills confidence gap, whereas the laggard organizations had a 42 percentage point skill confidence gap.”

Katie goes further into the analysis:

“So what that means is that these laggard organizations, so the organizations that aren’t performing as well financially or with their customer retention, this means that only 18% of those employees feel like skilling and development is a high priority for their company. Let’s compare that in contrast to the high performing organizations, this was the only one with that nine percentage point gap, 88% of employees that these organizations feel like there is a priority in their development, in their learning, in their growth.”

The Lure of Learning Development

With a stat from 2021- Katie Explains:

“There was a survey that was done between Amazon and Gallup, it was back in 2021, and that survey uncovered that skills training is one of the top perks that people look for in their jobs. And with about 61% of the respondents in this study saying that upskilling opportunities are also important for staying at their jobs.”

How does technology play a role in the learning development process?

“People know that skilling is important, but sometimes they’re not quite sure where to start. This is big. It’s not like going and picking maybe eight competencies, which is still important and that’s still huge work to even do that and to narrow down that selection, but it can be really, really intimidating.”

I hope you found this recent episode of #WorkTrends informative and inspiring. To learn more about Cornerstone and Skills Development, please visit https://www.cornerstoneondemand.com/ 

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