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With the right technology on our side, and taking a people-centred approach as we go, it’s time to enter the age of dexterity.

Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has become famous for his very particular views on crisis management: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste,” he said. “And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

By any objective standard, the COVID-19 global pandemic has been a crisis. It has certainly meant seismic shifts in the way we work, whether that’s remote working, virtual hiring or an even greater emphasis on the need for digital skills. We’ve all done things we thought we could never do before.

For talent leaders, it has been a challenge which brings in its wake a host of opportunities to reimagine work and to build true organisational resilience by looking to a workforce ready and able to navigate an age of uncertainty. And not just to survive. As leaders shift from the short-term ‘respond’ phase of the crisis to longer-term recovery, there’s growing evidence that thriving is at the heart of many an organisational strategy.

An experiment in changing workforce practices

It’s clear, though, that none of this is going to be easy. The pandemic is scarily open-ended: until we can rely on a much-needed vaccine, even the world’s best epidemiologists seem hard pressed to predict, with any accuracy, exactly how and where the pandemic might continue to strike. We’re simultaneously more than aware that the economic, social and cultural impacts of the virus are already significant and dramatic. And these impacts are being felt in different ways in different sectors. Compare, for example, the talent challenges of the travel and tourism industry with the continuing growth of a thriving pharma and life sciences sector.

Alain Proietti, talent lead at Danish healthcare company Novo Nordisk, speaks for many when he describes the past few months as “the biggest ever world experiment in changing workplace practices”. It’s a view mirrored by a recent article from Ravin Jesuthasan and colleagues published in Harvard Business Review, who emphasise that the pandemic’s impact is “fundamentally altering what work is performed and how we perform it”.

And this is not just a matter of those heroic clothing and fashion companies who turned their hands to producing personal protective equipment (PPE). It’s about nothing less than an extraordinary opportunity to rethink work, deploying work, skills and talent more flexibly than ever before.

I’m seeing a real move away from a culture of people needing to change employer to progress their careers.

Could it be that the crisis has provided the impetus for us to reimagine talent beyond the job description and traditional hierarchies, structures and workplaces? The gauntlet has been thrown down: the resilience we need in this unprecedented age of uncertainty can only come from making the most of the talent available to us – however and wherever it comes from. With the right tech on our side, and taking a people-centred approach as we go, it’s time to enter the age of dexterity.

Dexterity: the new agile

As COVID-19 hit, David Denyer, a professor at Cranfield School of Management, brought 20 years’ worth of research into risk and resilience to bear in an article that asks how organisations can improve their chances of weathering a “high-velocity crisis”. Denyer identifies two sets of opposing approaches that leaders tend to adopt in crisis situations: defensive vs progressive and consistent vs flexible.

He argues that successful organisational resilience strategies require leaders to adopt elements of all four approaches, with the balance shifting as the crisis develops. But they must avoid at all costs the “threat-rigidity effect” – the tendency to retrench into defensive mode so far that their organisations lose their capability to adapt to new opportunities. “Waiting out the storm” is not a viable option.

There’s plenty of evidence that the talent community is tackling this challenge head on, building on response-phase crisis management by embracing progressive, flexible strategies to build longer-term resilience.

Graeme Marshall, head of talent acquisition at energy tech company Baker Hughes, has a neat shorthand for the strategic workforce planning which underpins so much of the dexterity agenda: his company “buys, borrows and grows” talent as the demands of the business change.

With ‘buying’ less on the agenda as the business has retrenched, COVID has provided the opportunity to take stock, to create the internal fitness they know they’re going to need when the time comes to scale up again. On the ‘borrow’ side, Marshall’s contingent workforce programme lead creates the policies, manages the data and runs a cross-functional steering committee which brings together all relevant departments – HR, sourcing and procurement, legal – to compete in the contingent market. Redeployment has always been a reality for a company based on shifting product lines across regions and projects, and the learning team has deployed a suite of new tools to keep skills up to date, to keep the ‘grow’ side of the equation in balance.

Add in the realisation that remote working is a very real option for teams that need physical meeting space rather than permanent offices, and that the pandemic has had the perhaps unexpected effect of breaking down traditional hierarchies, with senior executives travelling less and engaging with staff more, and the groundwork for a flexible future looks to be in place.

For Noel Brown, senior director for global talent attraction and acquisition at Thermo Fisher Scientific, the crisis has been an evolution rather than a revolution, maximising the company’s total talent philosophy at a time when key areas of the business – on the frontline of testing, personal protective equipment, and the development and production of vaccines, antivirals and treatments – have been rapidly expanding (see p9).

Internal talent has been their starting point. Brown has a dedicated internal talent team and mobility systems that have created an internal market for jobs and career development.

Organisations have been able to muster considerable reserves of humanity during the pandemic.

Internal first

Internal first also seems to be a strategy of choice for companies in retrenchment as a result of the virus, or with a more stable workforce adapting to the realities of mass remote working.

Katie Calhoun, Alexander Mann Solutions’ head of client services, has seen this with a client in the travel industry, for whom large-scale redundancy is in the offing and, for the foreseeable future, business- critical hiring will be internal only for the most part. Not knowing exactly where those redundancies will hit requires considerable dexterity,

redeploying, reskilling and upskilling talent to fill gaps as they arise. Models that include resource augmentation are likely to be needed, as well as contingent workers, during the transition period, to allow for more flexibility, should the pandemic result in a second wave of redundancies.

Although this situation is not optimal, it does provide new avenues through which Calhoun can support her client. For her, the crisis has “accelerated opportunities for existing staff, and shone a light on the need for succession planning and internal mobility”. As the company works through recovery and rebuilding, these are strategies that will build resilience for the future.

Other companies have traded a commitment to no redundancies for changes in working practices – including redeployment and changes to roles and functions. Michelle Hainsworth, global head of client services at Alexander Mann Solutions, sees clients looking beyond traditional job descriptions, reskilling and redeploying talent to create nimbler teams as they enter the next phase of the pandemic – while preparing for potential aftershocks.

“I’m seeing a real move away from a culture of people needing to change employer to progress their careers,” she says. “We’re definitely in the era of internal headhunting and internal first.” The trend is towards transferable skills, encouraging people to view their roles in more flexible ways.

Widening the talent pool

Dexterity is also about viewing your talent pool in new ways. Alain Proietti at Novo Nordisk knows that great talent is sitting all over the world. These people have employment choices. “If we’re too rigid in our approach, they have options to go elsewhere,” he warns. His bosses may have raised their eyebrows when Proietti employed a manager based in Finland a couple of years ago, but the relationship has worked, and he perceives that COVID has already changed attitudes to geographical talent boundaries.

In their article, Jesuthasan and colleagues also reference what they call “cross-industry talent exchanges” – sharing employees between high- and low-demand sectors, equivalent of a sports team player loan. It’s also not surprising that, with sectors hit in different ways, companies experiencing growth are attracting talent from outside their usual talent pool.

At Thermo Fisher Scientific, Noel Brown has seen an increase in candidates from outside the life sciences sector. “Life science companies have inevitably been in the news during the pandemic, so our reach has broadened in ways we couldn’t otherwise pay for,” he explains. “Add in retrenchment elsewhere, and we’ve been attracting several thousand candidates for a single marketing role. Curiosity has led to engagement.”

Being human

These more open and flexible approaches to talent are not, of course, without their own challenges. While many people are happy to engage with these new opportunities, others may feel threatened or abandoned. Flexible, remote working has been a revelation for many, while others crave a return to the office. Many have, and will, lose their livelihoods, while ‘flexibility’ for others translates to increased workloads and pressure. Another thing we’ve definitely learned in recent months is that dexterity also needs to have a human face.

Insight from Deloitte suggests that companies at the cutting edge of “future of work practices” are likely to be well-positioned to meet the challenges of the pandemic – and beyond. It anticipates digital-savvy organisations made up of many types of worker and partners based anywhere in the world. As automation

bites, agile-minded humans will focus more on innovation, creativity and problem-solving. Workplaces will blend physical and virtual environments. Organisations will “value adaptability over procedure”.

Crucially, this vision of our brave new world also speaks to some very human talent challenges:

the need for continuous learning to support upskilling and address continuing talent shortages
the need to deliver a “consistent employer identity” to all types of employee, contractor and other stakeholder
the need for “personalised” experiences to “empower people to be their best, balanced selves”.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a resilience baptism of fire.

A focus on learning

The need for continuous learning and upskilling is far from a new idea in talent management, and the pandemic has only accelerated the need to equip people to meet the challenges they’re facing. Witness, for example, the changing face of management training to deal with mass remote working, or training to support redeployment.

Client and customer-facing organisations are also facing a complete rethink when it comes to handling customer relationships. It has been a disruptive time for sales and business-development functions, which have traditionally carried out business face to face. Cultural differences can impact here too; for example, the personal touch has always been seen as essential for selling into the Italian medical profession. Lawyers and business consultants have had to operate without those relationship- building lunches and networking events. Using multiple channels to interact with the external world is now a reality – and people need to be supported to adjust.

Cultures of learning will be a crucial underpinning for any dexterity-led organisation in future.

Communication, culture and consistency

There is plenty of evidence that organisations have been able to muster considerable reserves of humanity during the pandemic. Calhoun talks of “more kindness, caring and empathy” with “communication and care” at the core. There’s been plenty of intentionality in this space: managers checking in more regularly, daily company-wide coffee and chat sessions, shared Spotify playlists, even virtual meditation. Seeing our most senior colleagues communicating from their homes has created an unprecedented we’re-all-in-this-together bonhomie.

And, by and large, cutting people some slack and deploying more trust and compassion seems to have been repaid, with productivity and engagement holding up. The question now is: how can that people-centred focus be retained and enhanced? Is it sustainable?

Mutual life insurance, pensions and investments company Royal London’s initial response to the crisis led to 98% of its workforce operating remotely within six days of lockdown, even in roles that had previously never been performed this way.

For Victoria Wilson, head of people experience, this initial phase was all about providing practical help for staff as they moved to new ways of working (including a dedicated intranet site, toolkits to support remote working and support for all people leaders), while maintaining great service for their customers, keeping communication channels open and sustaining a sense of community. As a result, some customer satisfaction metrics have never been higher and engagement is strong.

Now, the challenge is to build on this momentum: “From a people- experience perspective, it’s important that our colleagues feel supported to continue to balance work and personal commitments,” says Wilson. “Providing true flexibility about where, when and how our people work is key to our future success.”

She is in no doubt that the company’s strong sense of values has been an asset. “The ‘spirit of Royal London’ is at the heart of our organisation,” she says. “We put our culture and our people’s health and wellbeing at the core of everything we do.”

Proietti similarly aspires to a more ‘flex-able’ organisation, where people work in a way that maximises their engagement and happiness as well as their productivity. But these kinds of hybrid model, with some staff working remotely and others in the office, need careful thought. New norms about flexible working must be clear and implemented equably across organisations.

Proietti gives the example of a recent meeting where some participants were back in the office and others still working remotely. Inevitably, the remote workers felt they were missing out on the informal chat that’s part of face-to-face interaction. Now, all meetings are conducted via screens to level the playing field.

Consistent and fair approaches to people who work in different ways will be essential. In any hybrid remote office-based model, for example, there’ll need to be even more of a focus on outputs. Harnessing the trust and humanity we’ve shown in crisis is a good starting point.

Partnership and preference

In a recent article, Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi looked at how best to motivate employees remotely. While, overall, their research suggests that people might be less motivated when working from home, a key factor relates to how much choice people have when it comes to where and how they work. Being able to express a preference, have some agency, matters.

At Royal London, Wilson is clear that the company’s future workplace strategy will be based around a partnership with its staff. She is using tools such as continuous engagement surveys and return-to-workplace working groups to plot a way through to the new reality. This sense of partnership and preference is part of Royal London’s goal to be an “inclusive, responsible and fulfilling” place to work.

More widely, it seems almost impossible that organisations will be able to ignore a wealth of survey data suggesting that flexibility is popular with a large percentage of the workforce. A more balanced approach between remote working and the interpersonal interaction most people want – some, if not all, of the time – looks likely. It could be that dexterity also means the decline of the one-size-fits-all workplace, with all that implies.

Cranfield’s Denyer defines organisational resilience as “an ability to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to and learn from challenges and disruptions in order to survive and prosper”. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a resilience baptism of fire. When we ask ourselves “what next?”, we need to mind what we’ve learned, double down on those opportunities to change and reimagine the workplace in terms of the dexterity we all need to face an uncertain future.

Originally published in Catalyst Magazine The 'Dexterity' Issue.

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When Black Lives Matter hit the news again this year, Alexander Mann Solutions’ diversity and inclusion team revitalised the company’s approach to discrimination, writes Paul Modley.

Business cannot and does not exist in a bubble. There are some moments in history which define us, offer a step-change to how we view the world and see each other, whether at work or beyond. When #MeToo went viral in 2017, we knew we could no longer ignore the blight of sexual harassment and abuse. When images of a Minnesota policeman kneeling on George Floyd’s neck stunned the world in May this year, there was a sense that something must be done; that enough was enough when it came to racism and discrimination.

The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been a defining moment of 2020, the effects of which have reached so many of us. As the guardians of diversity and inclusion (D&I) at Alexander Mann Solutions, we’ve been at the forefront of equality, diversity and inclusion for many years. We pride ourselves on the progress made with a whole range of traditionally under-represented groups: offering inclusion-enabling work practices for working mothers, championing social mobility and providing opportunities for people with disabilities. BLM has provided an immediate and urgent imperative to do more about our lack of ethnic diversity.

We need to continue to see people as individuals, with unique backgrounds and experiences, and recognise this when it comes to work design and culture.

Importantly, much of that impetus has come from our minority colleagues themselves. They have felt empowered by the protests to speak up and be more candid about the change they want to see. The ability to have frank conversations about racism has been a game changer. Anti-racism is now part of the company’s vocabulary in a way it hasn’t been before. People are not just expressing their feelings, but also making specific requests about greater visibility and the need for a proper plan. They want to see a commitment.

As a result, we are revisiting demographic data so that we can put in place the right plans to increase diversity at all levels of our business via a comprehensive set of talent acquisition and development actions. We’re also refreshing our training around conscious inclusion for everyone from our senior leaders down, and developing a strategic plan to keep the progress made to the fore and sustainable. Visible buy-in from the very top has been really important, too.

Ensuring psychological safety

We know this is just the start. We need to continue to provide the platforms for people to talk – and, crucially, we need to listen. We need to create the psychological safety to allow people to open up and to have those uncomfortable conversations around racism. We need to be sensitive about the use of language, but not to the extent that we use this as an excuse for not having those conversations at all. We’ve learned from our minority colleagues that “it’s better to say something not quite right than not say anything at all” – provided the positive intent is there.

More than ever, we need to continue to see people as individuals, with unique backgrounds and experiences, and recognise this when it comes to work design and culture. Our regular pulse surveys will measure sentiment around inclusion and belonging, broken down by demographics to allow for finer analysis.

Coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, BLM has made us even more aware of how important it is to articulate our purpose, vision and values. It’s made us think carefully about our leadership behaviours and what we stand for. We’re learning that the people with whom we work want to experience our values at every touch point.

We need to continue our journey to place people and culture – rather than process – are the core of everything we do. BLM has made us more thoughtful and intentional about ethnic diversity, but it’s also reinforced that wider change, one that will make us a better business for the future.

Originally published in Catalyst Magazine The Diversity Issue.

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23 October 2020 — While there may be the odd glimmer of hope for businesses as some global locations ease parts of the restrictions implemented under lockdown measures, we are still very much in the midst of a scenario the like of which we have never seen before. The events that have unfolded this year have been unquestionably challenging, at times dis-heartening, and regularly frustrating. And yet, with all the hardship, some positives have emerged, the most obvious of which has been the acceleration of the transition to remote and flexible working on a global scale. The fact that everyone has had to adapt at the same time has certainly helped build empathy, flexibility and understanding.

As CEO of a global business that supports international firms with talent acquisition and management strategies, I have the privilege of working with teams that have great visibility into the operations of a diverse array of organisations that cover all sectors and geographies. With this valuable insight, we can start to see commonalities in how organisations are thinking about their futures and the impact on the world of work. Here are the key learnings we’ve witnessed both within Alexander Mann Solutions and the companies we partner with.

Think “back to basics”, not “back to normal”

A trend we’ve certainly noted is the number of businesses going “back to basics”. The corporate world as we know it today is not in a position to return to the way things were before. The knee-jerk reaction as restrictions ease may be to reinstate business as usual as quickly as possible to mitigate the impact the global crisis is having, but in the longer term this may prove counter-productive. It’s tempting to fall into the trap of making swift assumptions about how the world of work has changed, but the truth is that we may not yet know. It will take time to know what “normal” now is. As much as we are craving optimism and stability, financial experts believe the volatility in today’s markets will continue throughout the rest of this year and into next. However, as the last six months have shown, things can change at a moment’s notice, so this prediction may as well. And, of course, we can’t overlook the fact that the pace of recovery will be different depending on the local response to the crisis.

No matter the size of your business, now is truly the time to go back to the drawing board and honestly review what your company looks like. Only once this is clearly defined can leaders assess what they want the organisation to be known for in the future—rest assured, it probably won’t follow the same path you had envisaged 12 months ago. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

This re-evaluation mode will strip many business plans right back to a simpler focus, but I’d argue that simplicity is key during these uncertain times. We all need to be really clear about the true value that our organisations can offer to our customers and not over-complicate. With that simple and clear focus, we can more effectively align our organisations to what is required in the future to be as value enhancing for our customers as possible.

When change is inevitable, embrace it

No matter what industry your business operates in, at a time of crisis the lessons of other sectors should factor in to your survival plans. There’s absolutely no question, of course, that some sectors have fared better than others. The food, hospitality and airline sectors have experienced the greatest setback financially as many companies were forced to downsize or close, and these businesses may take years to rebound. In comparison, many pharmaceutical companies have benefitted, especially in countries that are ramping up efforts to create a vaccine. And with so many people working from home, internet usage has spiked considerably, benefiting some of the high-quality growth companies in the technology space, particularly virtual communications firms.

What all sectors have noted, however, is the increased digitisation of services. While this might have been a previous trend, its pace has certainly accelerated out of simple necessity over the last few months. Across life sciences, for example, many aspects of businesses are being digitised, from research and development through to sales and patient care. And brands are repositioning themselves in line with this. Take our client, Baker Hughes, as a case in point. The business has repositioned itself as an “energy technology company” to adapt to the evolving market.

It’s clear that those that have been able to adapt their day-to-day operations through technology and embrace digitisation as an enabler of change for their firm have fared the best. While every sector is different and this is not feasible for all, those that can should be looking at how tech can improve their efficiency.

Accepting the new face of the workforce

One of the most notable changes that this landscape is creating lies in our talent bases. The pandemic has accelerated some trends that we were already seeing in the talent acquisition space. The convergence of permanent and contingent talent strategies, for example, or the need for organisations to invest in the development of new skill-sets for their workforces. For effective Workforce Flexibility and Compliance, explore our solutions. This latter point will be particularly pertinent as people find themselves facing bleak career prospects and even unemployment. More candidates will be looking beyond their area of expertise for work, and this presents both an opportunity and a challenge for organisations.

As the world adjusts to the rapid changes brought about by Covid-19 the pace of digital transformation is only going to accelerate. Bearing in mind there was a technology and digital skills shortage before the pandemic, demand is likely to surge in the near future. Those businesses that are currently still able to grow and invest can capitalise on the current situation where layoffs, uncertainty and candidates seeking greater security has created a temporary opportunity to find and hire fantastic talent that may have been a real challenge just a few months ago.

But when the next “normal” arrives, it’s likely that competition for digital talent will increase. Identifying new hires based on potential and adaptability, rather than necessarily having the technical skills on ‘day one’, will become an increasing trend—one that will see more organisations having to invest in effective assessment tools.

Diversify talent pools

It’s clear as well that for some businesses to adapt, they are likely to have to diversify to either re-build lost revenues, move back to growth, or even survive. The key tool and proof of that diversification will be bringing people with different experience and skills into those organisations. And with the mass introduction of flexible and remote working practices, employers are no longer limited by geography when it comes to finding these people. What they will face, however, is a struggle to engage individuals who would not previously have contemplated those employer brands.

In the longer term, candidates will apply very different lenses to the businesses they decide to work for. If I were looking to choose my next employer today, I might consider how they treated their staff during this crisis, the likely volatility of their sector, their approach to flexible and remote working and how they view office environmental safety. As a result, organisations are going to need to re-think their messaging to the market, and position themselves carefully against what candidate pools prioritise in terms of importance.

Dexterity: the future of business success

The global crisis has certainly diversified the world of work as we know it and the workforce of the future looks set to be more fluid than ever. We’ve arguably moved beyond agility as a success factor for future-proof businesses, to dexterity, where entire segments of the workforce will be multi-skilled and regularly flex and shape-shift to capitalise on opportunities. And while we await the arrival of the new normal, the focus for business leaders should be on ensuring their organisations are thinking clearly and logically about the path ahead, aligning their talent strategies and building, re-shaping and optimising differentiated, agile and diverse workforces to drive their future businesses. That may indeed be what differentiates the next decade’s winners from those that don’t survive.

Originally posted 23 October 2020 in Business Express

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To create nimble, responsive and resilient organisations, we must reframe talent management as talent liberation, writes Maggi Evans.

We’re all familiar with the emerging changes in the workplace – the so- called Fourth Industrial Revolution, the digital age. This is bringing fundamental shifts in the nature of work and working life, with many organisations transforming their operating models, building agility into their structures, localising decision making and simplifying processes.

It certainly brings a challenge for HR: having spent decades driving efficiency through consistency and planning, we are having to rethink and reimagine how we can add value to a different kind of organisation. Central to this is finding ways to balance the need for responsive, short- term tactics with the need for long-term strategy and planning.

It’s a classic wicked problem; there is no one right answer, no clear starting point and many separate issues are intertwined or contradictory, making it difficult to know where to start. Talent management is perhaps at the epicentre of this wicked problem – trying to resource rapidly changing current needs while also developing the capability for a shifting future (all within a limited budget).

We need to develop adaptive talent strategies.

Stuck in a time warp

Many of our current talent tools have their roots in the 1950s, a period with greater predictability; a time when five-year succession plans made as much sense as 10-year strategic plans. The way most organisations ‘do’ talent management is stuck in this time warp and is not fit for purpose in the current age. We therefore need to overhaul our short- and long-term talent processes, and the way we perceive talent management. We need to think about ‘talent liberation’ instead of talent management. So, what can we do?

In the short term, we need to develop adaptive talent strategies. These are approaches with sufficient flexibility to enable us to respond to immediate needs, to scale up or down, to redeploy and refocus. This is something we’ve become more skilled at with the onset of furlough and other government schemes to support employment during the coronavirus pandemic.

There are four elements to this:

visibility of short-term available talent (within the organisation and outside it)
rapid reporting to track business needs and identify gaps
simple processes to fill gaps, reskill, upskill, redeploy
a cultural element that embraces flexible resourcing and encourages the transparency and collaboration required for success

This ‘real-time’ responsive approach is a challenge to many of our traditional methods of workforce planning, particularly in large and complex organisations. However, the model used in professional services is one from which many organisations can learn. These firms are used to operating in an uncertain world, unsure which contracts will be secured and exactly which skill sets will be in demand.

They have flexible team structures, set up for each project, with the people-management role separated from the task-management role. People are a shared, business-wide resource rather than ‘belonging’ within specific structures, so are free to move between geographies, customers or business areas.

Leaders and managers have the skills to inspire, motivate and develop people in frequently changing teams. If they don’t have enough people on the ‘bench’ for a project, they will resource externally, or rapidly develop internal people to fill the gaps. Similarly, retail has, for many years, had flexible resourcing, with weekly sales and seasonal trend data driving decisions about rotas and shifts. For professional services firms and retailers, this flexibility is an essential element of their business model – and it’s a feature from which many other organisations can learn as they explore how to develop greater agility.

As soon as we plan for just one future, we limit our preparation for the unexpected and with it, our ability to flex.

Considering all the possible scenarios

Looking through the long-term lens, we must start by considering the strategic aims of the organisation and possible scenarios for how the organisation might evolve and grow. For each scenario, it is possible to identify potential organisational priorities and risks that the talent strategy needs to address; for example, how to ensure access to critical technology skills, how to resource expansion into new geographies, how to acquire and integrate new businesses successfully.

A strategy can then be built to show how to respond to each scenario – factoring in possible changes in technology which may mean that some roles are more/less important. Inevitably, this is based on a series of ‘best guesses’. But as energy company Shell found through its groundbreaking work on scenario planning in the 1960s, the value comes less from predicting an actual future and more from recognising that the future is not set, from being prepared to succeed in a range of possible futures.

As soon as we plan for just one future, we limit our preparation for the unexpected and with it, our ability to flex. As with the short-term talent approach, organisations will only succeed in this if they look at culture as well as process. There are four particularly important cultural themes.

Organisations need to recognise the value of diverse skills and experience. This might even mean bringing in ‘disruptive talent’. Firms require access to fresh perspectives. An organisation of clones is unlikely to be able to respond or adapt well to change.

Greater transparency is essential. This means having open conversations about possible scenarios and about the skills and experiences that will be most valued, involving feedback and support to enable people to develop these skills.

Businesses must work in partnership with talented people, whether staff are employed, ‘borrowed’, temporary or permanent. We need to engage with our people to find the ‘sweet spot’ between their wants and needs and those of the organisation. This requires thinking about them as stakeholders within the talent agenda. Instead of leaving their voice out of talent plans and decisions, we should be educating and empower our people to be proactive in managing their own careers, encouraging job crafting, motivating and supporting them to be their personal best. Through this, we can help everyone to perform well and thrive, attracting and accessing the broad range of talented people we need to safeguard success.

The approach must be owned by the HR function. These are business-critical issues and all leaders need to lean in, building new skills, challenging current approaches and embracing agility in how work happens.

A fundamental overhaul

These ways of thinking represent a fundamental overhaul of talent management. As HR professionals, we need to let go of our historical approaches and reshape the conversation, finding new ways to drive competitive advantage and manage risk, and so creating organisations that are nimble, responsive and resilient – where talent is liberated rather than managed.

In my experience, leaders are open to this change; they can see that current approaches are not bringing the benefits they need. Now is an ideal time to introduce new language into our talent conversations, to ask about future scenarios, to challenge established practices around secrecy and to invest time in developing a positive talent culture fit for the future.

Originally published in Catalyst Magazine The 'Dexterity' Issue.

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How to modernize Talent Acquisition Services

Modern talent acquisition services help organizations use AI, improve recruitment processes and equip recruiters for changing workforce needs while keeping human judgment at the center.

20 October 2020 — If 2020 has proven anything, it’s that “just in time” recruiting no longer works – for a lot of reasons. Back in early April, LinkedIn wrote about the biggest challenges that talent acquisition faced during coronavirus. And while they correctly identified a few, there was simply no way to predict where the world would be more than six months later.

Coming into this year, employers already knew that they couldn’t post a job description and pray the right candidate would magically appear – evidenced further under pandemic conditions. Coupled with frequently evolving business conditions, the continued call to social distance, the ongoing challenges of managing a hybrid workforce, and a growing desire to “do more with less,” and it comes as no surprise that employers need an altogether different – more strategic – approach to hiring. Particularly for contingent workers.

What Is It?

Branded direct sourcing has been popular in the U.K. and Europe for the last two decades and is now seeing increased adoption across the U.S. In practice, this type of sourcing uses an organization’s existing brand to build loyalty, develop talent pools, and source workers on a contingent basis.

Branded direct sourcing aims to remove siloes from the recruiting process in order to ensure the consistent cultivation of available talent. Rather than source periodically or as needed, organizations source continually to develop a robust pipeline of workers.

Once in place, the organization can tap this pipeline as staffing requirements change. In turn, positions remain filled, rather than sitting open for weeks or months on end.

To implement branded direct sourcing, organizations must create a strategy that builds sourcing into the talent acquisition lifecycle to reinforce its contingent infrastructure. Instead of disconnecting after an assignment, workers remain engaged with the organization through frequent contact, ongoing communication, and the promise of new opportunities.

At the same time, talent teams keep full visibility into current as well as former contractors, employees turned alumni, and new applicants, able to job match accordingly.

Why Do I Need It?
With branded direct sourcing in place, organizations gain the flexibility and agility needed to weather dynamic circumstances, such as those experienced under COVID-19. By focusing on the resources at hand, rather than always looking for new candidates, branded direct sourcing underscores the value of talent to the organization and vice versa.

The initial evaluation, paired with the continued development of contingent workers, helps eliminate decentralized processes and carve out a competitive advantage.

Able to self-sustain based on its internal talent market, the organization will reduce its reliance on external providers and exert greater control over their contingent workforce program. In turn, quality remains paramount, while both time-to-fill and cost-per-hire decrease, leading to significant multi-million dollar savings, echoing industry analyst Madeline Laurano’s thinking, “The art of sourcing includes relationship-building activities, and the science of sourcing involves measuring and evaluating the most effective source of hire.”

How Do I Make It a Reality?
Branded direct sourcing starts with thinking differently about talent, viewing contingent workers as an asset above all else. Put otherwise: brand first. These workers should be treated like customers, through high touch, high-value experiences that emphasize how important they are to the organization. Maintaining the attraction and engagement of contingent workers is critical to lasting success.

While most organizations have an employee value proposition, branded direct sourcing necessitates the promotion of a contractor value proposition. No one message will motivate all talent, and as such, the organization needs to recognize and celebrate contingent workers as a unique entity.

Digital transformation also plays into this, says Laurano, because sourcing needs to be insights-driven and enabled through platforms that help automate candidate identification and the assessment of suitability to a role. Think improved processes combined with candidate relationship management. In the long run, this empowers total talent management by bridging gaps, providing a seamless transition in and out of each assignment, and working to find the ideal blend of permanent and contract workers.

Embracing an always-on approach to sourcing means that there are candidates who meet the organization’s requirements at the ready, rather than the typical fits-and-starts associated with traditional recruiting models. When handled strategically, branded direct sourcing can keep gig workers, retirees, interns, and employees who are keen to reskill engaged with the brand and give the organization direct access to qualified and more cost-effective talent.

Originally published 20 October 2020 on Recruiting Daily

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17 October 2020 — In a world where image is everything and reputations are measured in shares, tweets, and comments, building a strong employer brand has never been more important.

Indeed, the business benefits of a robust EVP simply can’t be refuted. According to LinkedIn, companies with stronger employer brands see a 43% decrease in cost per hire, and in CEB’s study, “Branding for Influence,” it was cited that a strong EVP can raise your quality of hire by 9% and improve applicant pool quality by 54%. While it’s certainly a step in the right direction to see more employers investing in the development of a strategic employer brand, the challenge is that too many have shifted away from an authentic experience in the quest for their own version of perfection.

The barriers to a powerful EVP

As more firms recognize the value a strong employer brand has on their competitive advantage, the question “how can we develop our EVP?” has become an increasingly common part of board-level discussions. However, this has led to a level of over-complication of the process and a number of myths have emerged as a result that are preventing organizations from creating a truly authentic employer brand.

So what are the main myths that hirers need to avoid?

You can create an EVP: this is simply not the case. An authentic employer value proposition already exists within your business – trying to create one from scratch could disengage those members of staff who are fully aligned with the natural EVP that’s developed organically, but have nothing in common with the new culture that’s being forced upon the business. Consider reviewing what your employees think of your organization before starting on your external messaging.
Employer branding is for engaged applicants: The impact of your EVP doesn’t begin and end with a candidate actively applying for a role. It starts long before they’ve seen the job advert and continues into their employment.
You need something really creative and different: In some cases, the opposite is in fact true. Having an employee value proposition that’s too aspirational or isn’t an authentic representation of your culture won’t help attract or retain top talent. Being true to your culture will have a much greater impact than being creative or bold in your approach.
Getting it right requires financial backing: Uncovering your EVP and developing your employer brand doesn’t need to be a costly and time-consuming process. In most cases, the basics are already there –your employees’ experiences and corporate brand and culture just need to be brought to life in a way that can engage your target audiences

Where to begin

If we accept that the above are myths that prevent the successful growth of a strong employer brand then we can agree that uncovering and nurturing your EVP doesn’t need to be costly or time-consuming. With this in mind, the first and most crucial step is arguably simple: talk to your people. How you do this is up to you – whether it be through engagement surveys or one-to-one management meetings – but the real storytelling begins with an open and honest dialogue about your employees’ experience. The added value of this process is that it not only gives you valuable insight into what makes your employer brand competitive but also provides nuggets of content to share while also reminding your employees why they joined the business in the first place.

It’s also important to ensure you’re balancing your present-day employment offering with your aspirational brand positioning to align it with your long-term strategy. This will help give future and current employees a greater insight into where the company is heading and what their involvement will be in this development.

With global skills shortages continuing to drive the war for talent and the high cost of staff turnover meaning companies simply can’t afford to be inadvertently driving out their high-performers, having a strong employer brand is a competitive advantage firm can’t ignore. Taking the more holistic view mentioned above will ensure employers are in the best possible position to not only attract but also retain, the best talent.

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25 September 2020 — Digital transformation is certainly a keyword in today’s Covid-hit environment. Prior to the pandemic we were already seeing a greater reliance on virtual, AI-enabled or online recruitment technologies. But this years’ global lockdowns have led to a real shift towards employers and recruiters alike truly accepting that a digital approach is needed not just to attract tech talent, but also to enable candidates and hiring managers to connect and evaluate each other, even when they can no longer meet face to face.

However, digital transformation is complex and requires a tailored approach for every business. It’s not something that can simply be managed through investing in an off-the-shelf software package. It requires a shift in mindset as well as a revamp of candidate engagement and recruitment strategies. The challenge for everyone involved in the recruitment process is knowing what will work best for their business, their candidates and, in the case of third-party recruitment firms, their clients.

Making digital work in the recruitment process

As with any change to the hiring process, digital transformation needs to be carefully planned for and it’s key to have everyone on board with the changes. Firstly, it’s important to conduct an initial audit to determine how to best source and attract the candidate personas you’re hiring for. You can then assess what changes need to be made to your employer brand to appeal to these audiences. And internally, explaining the need for change to recruiters and Hiring Managers is important, as well as providing training in how to best use new systems, so that they can confidently make accurate hiring decisions.

When implementing a new AI technology, it is also important to understand how the science behind it works. There are many new vendors and products out there, but it is important to understand how the algorithms within these solutions have been developed to ensure you do not design bias into virtual, AI or online hiring processes. Many new vendors have data scientists who have developed matching algorithms which can be very useful in ranking which candidates appear to have a strong fit for job roles, but it is important to do your due diligence to ensure that any algorithms or automated selection decision points are inclusive and fair to all of your candidates.

While digital transformation focuses on the introduction of new technology, it’s also critical not to forget about the human element that is still needed. While AI, automation and tech such as pre-recorded interviews are all designed to provide streamlined recruitment timeframes, the candidate experience needs to remain at the heart of any successful change. Providing the right balance of tech, brand, and ‘real people’ touchpoints is likely to deliver improved candidate experiences for your business. Providing a personalised experience that allows potential new hires to ‘meet’ the team online or experience the company in a virtual setting, for example, will maintain that in-person connection that builds the relationship between talent and the business.

Getting it right: the William Hill case study

You might associate betting company William Hill with the physical shop that you’d walk past on the high street, but in recent years it has shifted to become a truly digital business. In order to do this successfully, the organisation needed to attract a new raft of digital skills into the business – a challenge for a brand that wasn’t considered a leader in tech innovation at the time.

Now, though, William Hill has digitised its recruitment process to truly appeal to the right audiences. As Mark Skinner, HR director for online and technology recently told us, if you’re going to be successful in this transition, you need to “act like a Google or an Amazon”, and that means more than just moving elements of the recruitment process online. Instead it requires re-programming the talent acquisition process to have a digital audience at the foundation of all plans.

Working with the Alexander Mann Solutions team, the betting company has successfully been able build a reputation as a good digital employer in multiple global locations through implementing a variety of new tactics, including building hackathon events into the attraction process. Arguably smaller steps such as being agile in the talent attraction process has helped the brand’s digital transformation. Being able to simply respond quickly can, in fact, add to a company’s reputation as a digital business, as Skinner explained:

“We try to give a response on the same day – it’s more akin to the Amazon model. It benefits us too because we can secure candidates before someone else makes them an offer. We’re not alone in that approach; it’s what people have come to expect because it’s a candidates’ market.”

Digital transformation is about more than technology

There’s certainly no doubt that digital transformation will change the world of recruitment in a post-Covid environment where virtual, remote and more fluid businesses becomes the norm. However, it’s crucial that any transformation is managed carefully in order to ensure it is fit for purpose and delivers true value to businesses and talent pools alike. Strategic planning and a tailored approach is key, but, as with everything in the hiring process, the people element has to remain a crucial part of any shift towards virtual recruitment.

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As recruitment stalls, there is an opportunity for employers to take stock of existing inequalities in accessing jobs and opportunities, argues Pawel Adrjan, head of EMEA research at Indeed.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected hiring trends globally?

One of the pandemic’s effects has been a rapid decline in hiring. We saw that clearly in job postings on Indeed around the world. Many businesses had to shut down, while those that continued to operate suddenly faced huge uncertainty around revenues, costs and the safety of their workforce. Job postings fell by a third or more in most of the world’s largest economies in a matter of weeks – a bigger and faster decline than during the financial crisis of 2008.

Not all countries were affected equally. Those with a higher proportion of the workforce able to work from home saw smaller declines in job postings. The severity of the lockdown and government responses to the crisis also played a role, both when the crisis first hit and now, in the recovery phase. While European governments deferred the full impact of the crisis by putting in place short-term job and wage support schemes, Canada and the US relied mainly on supporting those who became unemployed. That may also be one reason why hiring remains more subdued in Europe – where employers are more likely to be recalling former staff than advertising new jobs – than on the other side of the pond.

Which sectors saw a downturn in hiring and which have seen an uplift?

In a major health and economic crisis such as this one, it is not surprising that hiring in all sectors has been impacted in one way or another. Around the world, we saw the biggest declines in sectors most affected by lockdown restrictions, including hospitality and tourism, beauty and wellness and non-food retail. For example, hospitality and tourism job postings on Indeed were down 82% in Australia, 59% in Canada, 62% in the US and 80% in the UK relative to last year’s trend as of mid-April. These are staggering numbers.

But hiring in some sectors held up quite well. Health and social care, food retail, driving and delivery services all had to keep on going despite (or because of ) the lockdown. They saw good levels of hiring activity around the world. And some of the badly affected sectors have already recovered in some countries. For example, retail and driving job postings in the US are back to last year’s trend as of the beginning of July.

I hope employers pay special attention to those sectors of society hardest hit by the pandemic as they focus on building a diverse workforce for the future.

What are your expectations for the future?

Like most economists, I expect the labour market to remain weak for the foreseeable future. The OECD forecasts an elevated unemployment rate in many countries this year and next. For many employers, this means that the tight labour market is over, at least for now. They can expect a high number of candidates for available jobs.

At the same time, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the virus and how consumer spending and business investment will react as the crisis unfolds. Even once we know we are safe, government actions will remain key to supporting incomes, spending and the economic recovery. The economy can still surprise, both on the upside and downside.

In the longer term, I hope the crisis gives us an opportunity to take stock of existing inequalities in access to jobs and opportunities. Young people and minorities have been hit hard by the effects of the lockdown in most countries. They are more likely to be out of work and less likely to be able to work remotely. Essential workers in sectors such as social care and retail sales remain low paid, as our recent research on wages advertised in the US and UK during the pandemic shows. I hope that employers and governments pay special attention to all those sectors of society as they focus on building a diverse workforce for the future.

Originally published in Catalyst Magazine The 'Digital' Issue.

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As we move forward, organisations must look to create balanced working practices for their staff, write the London School of Economics’ Dr Will Venters and Dr Enrico Rossi.

One lesson in leadership is not to make long-term decisions based on short-term experiences – while remaining ever mindful of world events.

The past couple of months have provided amazing examples of the success of homeworking and have dispelled many criticisms. In the most part, the technology works: we can talk via Zoom and Microsoft Teams with relative ease (though we have also coined the term “Zoom-fatigue”) and most office work has continued well. But companies that see this as a tectonic shift towards a world where office space is rendered unnecessary may be disappointed. While process and transactional work seems effective, the socialising, team building, learning and networking have been drastically reduced.

Our ongoing research has been examining how a large global company’s high-level customer support staff went from being co-located in an office to all working from home. The lessons, based on numerous interviews, are stark, with some staff hoping never to return to the office (often those with caring responsibilities at home, a long commute, or extensive experience), and others desperate to get back (often those with small homes or partners also working from home, and with social or learning needs).

Learning and knowledge sharing

Two of the key changes involve learning and knowledge sharing. In offices, lots of knowledge is shared through serendipity; chance meetings in corridors or by the watercooler, on tea-breaks, or a lunchtime chat. These are crucial for generating new ideas, bringing new staff into communities of shared practice and developing their identity as team members.

Another form of informal efficient knowledge sharing is the ‘quick question’ where workers lean back in their office chair and ask the people around them for help – a reason financial traders sit so closely together. These two forms of informal knowledge sharing have proved hard to replicate online. However, they can also prove distracting or stressful for some people. The transition to homeworking, and the loss of informal knowledge sharing, was therefore perceived as a negative for some, but a liberation for others.

Companies that see this as a tectonic shift towards a world where office space is rendered unnecessary may be disappointed.

Given this, it was unsurprising that the very experienced staff we interviewed saw their productivity rise. One told us, “I do more work at home… my workload has gone up massively” because in the office people were always coming up to her asking for help. Another told us “I am hitting targets more… without the office distractions...”

With homeworking, this employee is able to choose which ‘Instant Messenger’ queries to answer, and disengage herself whenever she feels the need to focus. A consequence is that less-skilled staff must spend more time finding out answers to their questions from manuals and support tools which slows them down. As a junior person explained:

“[Homeworking has] pushed me to educate myself more on what I don’t know… search for the information rather than just going ‘do you know this’… It sinks in more if I have to find the knowledge myself.”

From a leadership perspective, this feels positive for fostering self- reliance, but the impact on new staff still needs managing. More effort is needed to help them become part of their work community and as online training has proved less productive and harder to deliver, more time is required for training. A sensible leadership response to this should involve mentoring and regular-checking.

Double-edged sword

Our research also revealed the double-edged nature of digital technologies: they encourage people to share problems with a wider community, beyond their local desks, but also allow workers to disengage and disconnect themselves from the wider social context by simply ignoring the chat, or putting it ‘on mute’ – free riding on others.

It is also harder for managers to keep track of staff – in particular, managers could not see the stress on people’s faces at home and so step in to help. And the lack of visibility increased pressure on some staff who felt the need to “prove something”, while others were relieved and “liberated” from being overseen.

Homeworking is a great leveller – everyone had the same access to each other, which proved a boon for staff who are usually located away from the main office. At the same time, not all workers enjoy the same conditions at home, and this can reintroduce disparities and injustices. According to our research, work was impacted by different family and personal conditions, quality of internet connection, and physical facilities such as space for a desk, amounts of light, and whether other family members were trying to work from home at the same time.

Leaders need to balance the disparity between equality of work for both office environments and homeworking. Consider, for example, the married couple we interviewed who are both now homeworking – the husband cooped up in the bedroom working for a bank, his wife downstairs in the open-plan living space. Neither could enter the room where the other was working and both worked long shifts.

It will almost certainly not be enough simply to replicate existing team and office structures online.

Creating a balance

In summary, when designing physical office space, architects consider balancing the need for efficient transactional work with socialised knowledge sharing and such design is linked to a wide range of factors including role and personality of the workers. For example, Silicon Valley technology companies favour innovation over transactional work and so invest in fun offices which foster interruption and informal gatherings and interaction.

By contrast, many call centres are physically organised to limit this kind of interaction and focus staff on processing transactional work. When planning homeworking arrangements, the same thought for architecture, team structures and support is needed. It will almost certainly not be enough simply to replicate existing team and office structures online.

In the long-term, leaders should think about how to build a complex home- working and office-working mix which maximises efficiency, equity and innovation. They will need to understand that this will vary considerably from individual to individual.

Originally published in Catalyst Magazine The 'Digital' Issue.

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4 September 2020 — Over the years, I have rarely had a conversation about challenges facing the world of talent acquisition without at least one mention of onboarding. Even at the most strategic levels, debating an organisation’s approach to attracting and harvesting the most critical talent for the future, there always seems to be a niggle about how they make their way to “day one”. It doesn’t matter how long we have worked somewhere, we all remember how it felt receiving that contract, how onerous the process of submitting any information required was, and the scars left from pre-employment screening as you struggle to remember your manager’s name at the restaurant you worked at during college.

It is a pivotal opportunity to make someone feel part of their new firm that only comes around once.

Irrespective of the process, how we felt from the point we were offered a role to the day we walked up to reception and proudly announced we had arrived, will remain with us throughout our career. Which begs the question; if we spend a tremendous amount of money, time and resources attracting, assessing and hiring the right talent, why does the next part of the journey not get the same treatment? So few organisations actually get it right.

According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, nearly 33% of new hires look for a new role within their first 6 months and the cost of turnover is estimated to be between 100% and 300% of their first-year salary. Taking that into account, you would think the business case for investing in a market-leading onboarding experience would write itself. The way a company engages and integrates someone into a new team prior to their joining can help avoid those expensive and unnecessary turnover costs. It is a pivotal opportunity to make someone feel part of their new firm that only comes around once.

The other interesting factor to consider is who owns it. Largely thought of as an HR responsibility, most large organisations have numerous points of ownership, ranging from HR shared services, Talent Acquisition, Technology, Operations, Security, Compliance, Learning and Development and not forgetting facilities – after all, there is no point getting a new job if you have nowhere to sit – even if that might be at home! Taking into account all these stakeholders can make automating onboarding daunting for some organisations and it is important for those challenger technology platforms out there to take this into consideration. Navigating the firm’s data privacy framework must remain of the highest priority to anyone interfacing with new joiner data.

I recently spoke to one client about what the key elements of a great onboarding experience might look like. We discussed a certain pizza restaurant, whose app lets you know the status of your order, when it is placed in the oven and when it is tantalisingly loaded onto the delivery driver’s bike. How can this approach be adopted for onboarding?

Choose a partner to challenge current thinking and encourage the previously impossible.

While I haven’t seen a technology yet that meets the functionality of the pizza delivery app, I have seen a few platforms leading the way in how the experience will feel to new joiners and more importantly in today’s environment, emphasizing elements that can be done virtually. My favourite feature so far is the ability to verify someone’s ID and right to work using facial recognition software.

But it isn’t all about the technology, it is about having the right objective view on what it might feel like to join your organisation. Choose a partner to challenge current thinking and encourage the previously impossible.

A thoughtful, engaging – and even virtual – onboarding solution is one that could be game-changing for an organisation committed to ensuring their talent feels as valued on day one as they did when they got that much sought-after offer.

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