Most leaders don’t see how to employ HR as a strategic pillar of the business and this leaves a lot of professionals feeling somewhat frustrated.

In this interview series, we talk to HR professionals, business leaders, and anyone who is an authority on HR who can share what companies can gain by having HR in the boardroom and why and how HR should help drive company decisions.

Michael Kniermin is a Senior Human Resources Executive who spent 27 years at Roche Pharmaceuticals working in HR, Finance, and Quality. He led HR  globally for the Pharma Division in over 110 countries for over 10 years.

Michael currently works as a senior advisor to Florens, a purpose-driven organization on a mission to bring qualitative and quantitative science-backed well-being interventions to organizations so people can flourish.

Hi Michael, welcome to the series! Before we drive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Like a lot of people, after finishing college I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. My father was in sales, so I decided to pursue a similar path. Initially, I worked for a small company called Microstar selling medical software. 

After a year, I wanted to really learn business, so I moved to Williams & Watts, a materials management and purchasing company. They had a management trainee program where new hires rotated to every part of the business.

From there, I decided to focus on moving into the Pharmaceutical industry. New Jersey was the “hotbed” of Pharma at the time, so I thought this would be a good career move. 

I wrote letters to all of the major Pharma companies and, in less than 2 weeks, I had an interview with the CFO of Roche Pharma for a support role introducing total quality management into the US affiliate. I joined and stayed 27 years!  

During that time, I had the opportunity to work with almost every part of the organization working in HR, Finance, and Operations.

I also had the opportunity to move to Europe to help globalize HR. During that time, I was the first Global Head of HR for Strategic Marketing & Licensing, the first Regional HR Head for Europe, and, eventually, the Global Head of HR for Commercial Operations.

Once Roche acquired Genentech, I was named the Head of HR for the Pharma Division where I had the pleasure to lead the most incredible leadership team for over 10 years.  

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I started my first job, I was working as a sales representative. I had a Ford Escort that didn’t have Air Conditioning. I started my job in June and was visiting doctors’ offices by July in the heat of the summer when it was extremely hot and humid.  

I was consistently sweating profusely so much that I kept a small towel in my car to wipe the sweat off my face before I went into each office. I also kept a bottle of cheap cologne to ensure I didn’t smell bad!  

I learned during my first job that you need to consider ALL of the tools you need to be successful. In this case, a car with air conditioning!!!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Early in my career, when I worked for Williams & Watts, I became close with Bill VanEtten, the President of the company. 

Bill took me “under his wing” to discuss leadership and all aspects of the business. He was a role model for what great leadership looked like in practice. 

He focused on developing talent, he consistently challenged the organization to learn and get better, and he focused heavily on creating a culture of teamwork and trust. He also created a workforce of diversity, equity, and inclusion and focused on employee wellness before it was even being discussed in corporate America.

I was put in different cross-functional roles and given stretch assignments to help me develop and truly learn the business. When the company was going through an informal Chapter 11, Bill asked me to go on the road and try and re-negotiate credit terms, essentially offering 10 cents on the dollar for what we owed our vendors.

In this role, I was traveling across the US meeting with small business owners and Finance Directors from larger companies. 

Looking back, I learned so much about the finances of the business, how to “think on my feet”, and how to connect quickly and deeply with all different people. I also learned how to present complex information in a simplistic way, as well as the importance of empathy as we were directly impacting small businesses that couldn’t afford the loss that we were negotiating with them.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life? 

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt

This quote always resonated with me. I often took many jobs or assignments I probably wasn’t qualified for but believed I could learn what I needed to and/or surround myself with people that were smarter than me and could help me be successful.

Another quote is from my father—he used to say that no one can limit how much you learn or how hard you work. This guided me on a daily basis as I did my job and took on new roles or tasks.  

Thinking back on your own career, what would you tell your younger self?

I would tell myself it’s ok to make mistakes learning something each time and to remember that 80/20 is often good enough. 

I was a perfectionist for much of my career and I spent too much time striving for perfection. As a result, I placed far too much pressure on myself and likely my teams. 

I would also tell myself to speak up and provide my perspective even if I wasn’t the expert. Every person brings a unique perspective that makes a discussion richer. 

Let’s now move to the central part of our interview about HR. Why do you think HR deserves a place in the boardroom and in high-level decision-making? Can you help articulate how a company will gain from that?

HR leaders are LEADERS first, but with expertise in human resources, and the good ones with a very strong understanding of the business.

HR Leaders often have the broadest perspective working across the entire organization on key strategic initiatives that touch all parts of the business. Most HR leaders also have a key role in shaping the culture of the organization and keeping a pulse of the organization, something every board member should care deeply about.

HR is also uniquely positioned to be fully objective for priorities or people being discussed and decided by the Board.  

From your experience, how can HR people and culture professionals ensure they’re involved in strategic planning processes? 

Ideally, the HR Strategy is incorporated into the business plan. At a minimum, the HR Strategy must be fully aligned with the business strategy. 

In either case, HR should be working hand in hand with the business discussing structure, systems, culture, and capabilities. Workforce planning is part of a robust strategic planning process that HR can play a key role in.

A lot of folks believe that CHROs would make great CEOs, but often they’re overlooked. Why do you think that is?

I believe this is often a result of many HR Professionals coming up through HR without experience outside of the function.

I believe HR leaders should rotate through the business and business leaders should rotate through HR. Ultimately, we want well-rounded leaders who have a deep and broad understanding of the business, the culture, and how to best develop our people.

What skills can HR folks work on to become more effective business partners?

It’s difficult to make a broad-sweeping statement about all HR professionals. From my experience, I have found many HR professionals would benefit from greater financial and business acumen and gaining a deeper understanding of the external customer. 

I am a big believer that HR professionals would become better business leaders by gaining experience outside of HR in the business.

Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important ways that HR can help drive company decisions?

1. Ask questions that consider the long-term implications of key decisions

HR often plays a critical role to ensure key decisions are being looked at as broadly as possible, especially considering the impact on people and culture.  

This means asking questions considering the long-term implications of key decisions that have lasting impact on the organization.

I have been involved with multiple acquisitions and company integrations and these can either can go well or terribly wrong! 

One of the important roles I played was to continuously raise questions about the uniqueness of each company’s culture, what was important to employees, and how that contributed to the success of each organization. Keeping this perspective helped ensure we made thoughtful decisions that ultimately impacted employee retention and satisfaction. 

When Roche acquired Genentech, it was critical we retained the scientists in R&D, the lifeblood of the company. One of the most important things to these employees was to retain a long-standing sabbatical program they had in place. Without probing all aspects of the culture, this could have easily been ignored with significant negative implications.   

2. Resourcing for future growth

HR should be developing an HR Strategy aligned to the business strategy that includes robust workforce planning.  

This starts with understanding the growth drivers for the business and partnering with the leaders to identify the skills, capabilities, and resources needed, and the timing. The importance of this was evident early in my career.   

I insisted on partnering with business leaders in Informatics to develop a workforce plan. HR had not been involved previously in business planning discussions. As we worked through the three-year plan, we identified specific new skills and capabilities that would be needed to execute the business plan.

It became clear we needed new capabilities and more resources than had been initially anticipated and we didn’t have the skills internally. By asking the right questions and challenging the business leader, we identified significant gaps, including the skills that were necessary for the future

3.  Great decisions are most often made by great leaders.

HR plays a key role in the identification, development, and selection of talent. I have always believed this is one of HR’s most important roles to ensure we have the absolute best leaders in place.

When I was at Roche, I was part of the selection process for the most senior leaders in the Pharma Division. I was also in discussions about each one of the senior leaders and “High Potentials” development including career steps.  

HR plays a critical role to ensure an organization is developing talent to fill key roles and making the absolute best hiring decisions. This means exchanging ideas on the needs of the role and potential candidates, as well as challenging line managers on the development plans they are creating or on hiring decisions they are considering.

I can think of many times challenging hiring decisions of leaders that wanted to “settle” for an internal candidate because it was faster or more convenient than finding the best candidate available from the wider market.  

A number of years ago, one of the business leaders I was working with was planning to appoint a senior leader to head up one of our largest affiliates. 

In fact, he had already offered him the role but it had not been announced. Prior to the announcement, I (his HR Business Partner) called the hiring manager and told him I thought this was a very serious mistake that could have a significant negative impact on the company. 

While I had tremendous respect for the candidate, I knew from many discussions with business leaders that this candidate was not going to be accepted and didn’t have an understanding or appreciation for the culture of the company.

Over the weekend, the hiring manager and I had many discussions and ultimately agreed to appoint a different candidate. The leader selected had an outstanding career.

4. Consider the health and engagement of the workforce

While I believe every leader should care deeply and be accountable for employees within their organizations, many leaders neglect to consider the health or engagement of their workforce.  

Having healthy and engaged employees impacts the bottom line of every company. HR can help leaders by providing clear facts and data to help them identify where to focus and then partner with them on the action plans that are developed.  

Organizations need to have a clear understanding of what’s working well in an organization and where there are changes that need to be made. For example, HR can help leaders identify the root causes of issues identified and to help them to prioritize 2 to 3 things that would have the greatest impact.  

HR can also play an important role as the sounding board or sparring partner to ensure the most important priorities are being tackled eg., stress, workload, poor managers, etc.

It’s often too easy for managers to focus on the low-hanging fruit instead of the biggest pain points.   

5.  Partner with line managers to architect the org

As organizations need to adapt and reinvent themselves, HR can play a vital role to partner with line managers on the architecture of their organization.   

HR usually has a deep understanding of the organization’s structure and core business processes. They often have vast experience working with other companies, functions, or departments, and they can help managers think outside the box and create different options. 

Often, line managers can get stuck on “one way” to set things up. This became evident very early in my career when I was working with the Finance organization on a reorganization. The leadership team had quickly aligned on a new structure without carefully considering the full impact of the decision. I was able to probe, challenge and help them consider alternatives which ultimately lead to a better decision.

Finally, a great HR Business Partner is fully immersed in the business and can play the role of coach, sounding board, sparring partner, and confidant with the business leader they are supporting. This trusted relationship can create the possibility for leaders to explore multiple possibilities and ultimately make the best decisions.  

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen businesses make when faced with hard decisions? What should one keep in mind to avoid that? 

1. Shying away from difficult performance decisions

The most common mistake I have seen is leaders are reluctant to have the hard performance discussions throughout the year, which often leads to over-inflated performance ratings. 

Many leaders like to be liked and want to avoid confrontation. In the end, this limits the development of the individual, creates inequality for peers, and limits the potential performance of the team.  

2. Keeping leaders in roles for too long

Business leaders too often keep leaders in roles even when they know in their hearts it’s not going to work.

I have too often seen leaders try and salvage a bad situation year after year. In the end, you know the kindest thing you can do is to help that person move to a different role or leave the organization.

As I look back, it’s one of the worst mistakes I ever made early in my career. I waited too long to make the hard decision and, after I finally did, the leader was actually relieved.

He knew he was not succeeding in the role and he was afraid to quit as he didn’t want to disappoint me. On top of that, after this leader left, I heard from many people on his team that they were waiting for him to go. 

3. Not striving for diversity

I have often seen leaders hire people they like and can relate to rather than striving for greater diversity on their teams.  

This could be diversity of thought, experience, gender, race, sexual orientation, or any other form of diversity that can create a more rich perspective that would benefit the team.  

Looking back, one of my best hires was a woman from Australia who could not have been any more different than me. She brought unique ideas and a very different energy to my team.  

While we often disagreed about many things, she knew how much I valued her and we often tried things she was advocating for and she made my team even better.   

4. Leverage the different perspectives on your team

Staying on the topic of diversity and inclusion, often leaders don’t focus enough on leveraging all the perspectives in their team.

I have often observed the same few people that speak up first shape the discussion and ultimately many of the decisions. 

Leaders need to know their team members well and understand how to best bring them into discussions to ensure their knowledge and experience are being leveraged. Inclusion matters a lot!

5.  Identifying who the best person is to make a decision. 

Leaders often feel that the most senior person on a team should make key decisions. I don’t believe that seniority is always or even often the best solution. I believe decision-making should be pushed down to the person that is closest to the impact of the decision and has the best knowledge to make the decision. 

Taking it a step further, the decision maker has the responsibility to seek input from key stakeholders and they are ultimately accountable for the quality of the decision.  

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why?

Such an interesting question! I would love to have lunch with Elon Musk. From what I have heard and read, we look at the world completely differently.  

I’d love to understand how he sees his leadership style, how he takes decisions, and understand the culture he is trying to create on Twitter and the role the CHRO plays with him and the organization. I would also take the opportunity to try and influence some of the things he is doing and coach him to become a better leader!

If I had a second choice, it would be to meet Stephen Curry. I’m a huge Warriors fan and in awe of what he has accomplished while staying grounded and supportive of his community.  He also just seems like he would be a fun guy to hang out with!

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After 12+ years in the L&D industry, I’d venture to say that less than 10% of teams are using learning and development metrics effectively. This is in direct opposition to the 91% of learning leaders who see the need to measure their training outcomes properly.

Why such a gap? A variety of reasons, of course, but much of it comes down to either looking at the wrong metrics or looking at the right ones without the right data to support it. 

In the second half of my L&D career, I’ve become particularly passionate about learning and development metrics and data. So much so that I’ve found myself on a four-year path to getting a Masters in Analytics, which meant I had to go review statistics and calculus content that I hadn’t learned since high school. Yikes.

I did this because I saw the lack of data-forwardness as a real handicap to getting the kind of learning programs spun up and approved that I knew were beneficial. 

The problem was that my business leaders didn’t know this the way I did, and, without data, I lacked a proper tool to be able to show them. I wanted to change that forever.

Looking broadly, too often the L&D community finds itself measured as a cost rather than as a benefit. Or, if we’re seen as a benefit, it’s a loosely measured and understood one. Proper use of data and learning and development metrics is the salve for this. 

But it’s not an easy step forward. I read so many articles that illuminate a bunch of metrics you can track, but half of which are absolutely meaningless. I’ll get to why in this article, but, when it comes to metrics, my main question is always: would the CEO care about this? 

Here’s an example: would my CEO care about the average test score of one of my assessments? Maybe, but if they were an astute business leader they might ask who made that assessment and what was on it.

If most people are getting >95% on it, it’s probably too easy. If the scores are all over the place, the right question from a leader would be: what does that tell us about how well people can do their job?

Ahh, and there lies the real metric. An assessment score is only important if it tells you more about something. 

It can tell you how difficult an assessment was or how good or bad your content was (relevant to you but not likely your CEO). Or, at its best, it can give you a signal of how well someone might know how to do something relevant to their job or role.

Let’s dive in more on meaningful metrics, then. My list isn’t going to include your total number of learners or assessment data or common things like that. We’ll focus on more difficult metrics, but ones that, if you capture them, should put your L&D function miles ahead of others.

I’ll start with the ‘Gold’ standard and move down from there in order of ambition.

The Gold: Whatever The Business Needs

The first and best metric that you can track as a learning and development team and leader is whatever the business (and/or leaders of that business) tell you they want to be tracked. It’s as simple as that. And as complex.

I was in a training session one time when the facilitator said that all business decisions come down to one of three desired outcomes:

• More Revenue
• Less Cost
• Mitigated Risk

So, if you’re making a measurement from your learning program on a metric the business needs, it’s going to roll up into one of these.

Examples here include helping people be more productive (less cost), selling more or getting more renewals (more revenue), or knowing what they can and cannot do in certain situations (mitigated risk).

Of course, there are other examples, but I think of those three desired outcomes all the time. 

Why track it?

This is the ticket to proving a return on investment from your L&D program. It’s the way you prove that you’ve hit business-level KPIs and training effectiveness expectations.

The only way to do these in an unquestionable manner is to aim your measurements at what the business wants to get out of your programs. This removes your work from the silo and into the broader business strategy. Any self-designed L&D metrics or outputs can always be set aside as a siloed measurement.

In short, the why is the whole game here. Our goals as L&D professionals should be business goals. We are meant to be service providers and enablers. Proving this through the gold standard is what remains elusive in our industry.

How to track it?

Herein lies some difficulty. These metrics are notoriously hard to track. There are several reasons for that and I’ll talk about a few here.

But, before I do that, let me say that I think a healthy organization would be one where this happens collaboratively. An L&D team may not have the right access to the data it is looking to measure or that data might be difficult to obtain because of its messiness.

While I think a learning and development team running a training that’s tied to a proper business-focused outcome metric should be responsible for driving that metric, it cannot be totally responsible for also tracking and having tracked that metric. That should come with help from an operations team, analysts, or an internal data team.

And, when you work with these teams, hopefully, they can explain why it may be difficult to truly capture the metric you’re looking for. Because human-based experimentation is hard. To truly track a change, you’d want to have two performance groups: a control group and a test or treatment group. And these groups need to line up as closely as they can to one another.

But with people they rarely do. Employees may differ in tenure, salary, level, experience, etc. They may even just have a bad day or week or may only be participating half-awake due to personal matters.

So comparing two groups is seldom apples to apples. Ask most folks that work with data every day and they’ll tell you that groups of people seldom are. Don’t let it throw your experiment off. You can still use the scientific method in your approach and develop a hypothesis that one group will do something different than another (better or worse).

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good! Because you still want to show, as best as you’re able, that your training initiative drove a business metric, even if it can’t be measured to absolute perfection.

If you know that your measurement is done on a stable group, even if part of it can be picked apart, leadership will see that your work has driven a positive impact on the business and that learning is a worthwhile investment of business capital.

This is the gold standard of what we’re doing with internal L&D teams. It’s where the value exists that we provide to our organizations. So how do you overcome the data challenges above?

• Run sessions with a few different groups
  • A best practice would be to run this with totally random groups to help with hypothesis testing. A truly random segment may not be possible, and if it’s not be sure to compare it with a “control” segment that’s as closely aligned as possible 
• Track outliers and reasons that a group may not be totally random
  • These may include items like tenure, previous experience, or previous experiments a person may have been a part of. As a data principle, you want to call out as many of these outlier details as possible.
• Have enough students that you can rule a few out when the measurement comes.
  • Test with groups greater than 10 if you can. If two or three folks drop out, you should still have enough folks and data to report on
• At the end of it, remember to factor in the cost of training as well (you can bet your business leaders are thinking about that).

If you’re interested in seeing more, I posted a (redacted) example of a training report seeking to show success in this framework. You can find that here.

The Silver: Learner Behaviors and Behavioral Correlations

Next up we have a measurement of changed or altered behaviors (hopefully for the positive) and measurements of the correlation between training initiatives and performance.

I’ll start with behaviors. What most L&D programs attempt to do is teach, skill, train, or alter. I’m sure there’s more. Bottom line is that we want to improve someone’s capacity to do something. 

It may be a specific tool (Excel), language (SQL), or skill (empathy), but it’s something. Therefore, the metric we want to capture is to see if we did in fact change or improve that skill. We may not be able to tie it into a business metric (‘The Gold’ above) but we can see that something’s changed.

Here’s an example: we had a “help desk” type function at one of my previous companies. We could see who was using the help desk, and how often, but we wanted to try and help employees do things on their own instead of relying on it (we didn’t have cost associated with this otherwise we could have fit it into a better business metric).

So we worked with the “power” users of the function—those who used it the most—to see if we could.

We split the power users into three groups: 

(1) A treatment group we sent an e-learning module about finding resources on their own

(2) A group we ran a short, in-person training to understand why they used the help desk so often and then followed up with resources (including e-learning)

(3) A control group we did nothing with.

Guess what happened? Both treatment groups (1 and 2) decreased their use of the help desk (we didn’t ask them to or tell them that was the goal) compared to the control group (3). But Group 2, which had a direct behavior understanding and follow through had a much larger, longer-term reduction in use.

This on its own was a great success. We had no way to discuss the cost savings at that company of such a change so, we settled for this “Silver” level metric instead of the “Gold”, but we proved we could adjust behaviors from our audience.

Why track it?

Because tracking behaviors helps you understand skill gaps and areas of opportunities. It also helps you identify where to put learning and development team resources to drive goals your company may have (eventually getting to ‘Gold’ level measurement). 

It means better managers that coach employees to move up faster (internal mobility) or stay with the company longer (employee retention). It means getting people more committed to the company’s mission or values (employee engagement). 

It also probably starts to put your learning strategy and design into the limelight. It may not have the topline business impact that ‘Gold’ metrics do, but it will help show that your learning program is capable of moving the needle it sets out to influence.

How to track it?

You’ll need another data set to track this properly. Likely this will be some kind of historical data on employee performance or performance ratings or reviews. Depending on your organization, this may be difficult to get, but it’s imperative in showing growth or value.

Here’s a tip: ask your HR teams for a version of this data that has had personal information wiped away from it. Ask them to help you connect your learning data with employee performance data and return it back to you.

You now have an anonymous data set to look at historical changes and/or correlations. Find a good analyst and run some regression models on the variables you now have!

The Bronze: Learner Knowledge and Abilities

This is where most L&D programs top out. And that’s fine. Being able to show that learners gained knowledge or closed skill gaps is admirable and should keep investment for employee training and development programs chugging along.

Why track it?

You should track this because it proves that the learning experience was worth something and that it had an effect on employees.

Increasing someone’s knowledge or abilities is important and we know it helps with people performance metrics like employee engagement and retention.

How to track it?

Assessment scores come in here but they must be meaningful. For example, if you write a whole e-learning module, and then write an assessment just based on that e-learning, what does a passing score prove?

It proves they understand what you wrote, but will they remember the content from the modules? Probably not. Will passing it mean they will do something at their job better? Maybe (see above).

Tracking changes in knowledge and ability is really important but it has to be done in the right way. Some good ways include analyzing pre and post-assessments and looking for improvement.

Better yet, do both of those and then do another assessment 60 later, or throw an assessment question into a different training and see how many people get it right. 

You can also ask managers to track any changes you’ve set out to see from training in an employee’s working day and get back to you. This is somewhat subjective but it’s subjectively pointed at the right person: their manager. 

Depending on the number of employees (or your test groups), there are all sorts of creative ways to look at this, just be thoughtful of time and how much you’re asking of managers. 

Another Bronze: Return Learning and Learning Pace

I assume that most teams are keeping track of who is learning and how many people are learning in a given time (week/month/quarter).

Those are important metrics but they’re just records of activity. Turning those into something meaningful—even if you aren’t able to accomplish some of the metrics above—is important to show the health of your learning culture.

And there’s good reason to show your leadership that a healthy learning culture is imperative. According to McKinsey, companies that offer comprehensive training programs have higher income per employee by as much as 200%.

Why track it?

A return learning metric shows how often learners are coming back to whatever learning platform or program you’re hosting. 

You don’t want to see one-timers, you want to see folks that are committing and re-committing to upskilling and you want to measure this.

The caveat here is that, even in a healthy working environment, people are busy. A returning learner rate per month (those that come more than once) above 20% is good, and above 40% is really good.

Learning pace will help measure how often learners are returning to the platform—or how often learners are opting into learning programs from when they started. 

This can tell you if people are averaging one or two trips per month to a learning platform or if most return after 40 days. Where it starts to get really meaningful, though, is what type of training may drive a faster pace?

For example, is your manager training so good that people are coming back for more every week? Do people really love your third-party content offerings? Track this and look at trends month or month or quarter over quarter. 

How to track and an example

Learning analytics leader Peter Meerman has started to put together some of these into simple dashboards that I believe many teams can use. You can see some of his work here—and a dashboard that combines Active Learners, Average Hours Per Learner, and broken-out items like Average Spend per Learner. 

These are all imperative to understand a topline “health” score of a learning culture, but be careful what you wish for here, and be even more careful with how you present this data. 

Always set expectations with stakeholders of what “good” looks like when it comes to how many learners visit your platform or LMS each month. 

For big organizations, anything north of 50% per month is really good. If you’re using a learning vendor for content or software, ask them for benchmark metrics. 

Training Metrics To Consider Not Tracking

You may notice a common metric that many L&D teams use is missing from this article. And that’s customer satisfaction scores (cSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), or any kind of score in which a learner tells you how much they enjoyed or would recommend a course. Another is the simple metric of course completion rates.

The reason I’ve omitted them is because I simply don’t see much value. If you can report on return learners and learning pace as I described above, you have a harder and more meaningful metric and data set than the subjective answers you’ll get to questions like “How much did you enjoy this training?”

If you see learners coming back for more (and doing so quickly) that should be enough signal to know they liked your training, intend on finishing what they started, and probably see the value in it for them.

If you’re specifically looking to understand how your training could be improved, then you should ask that question directly. Asking about enjoyment, or how likely they’d be to share, are metrics seeking to be meaningful when they really aren’t.

Data Warehousing

A common question I get asked when talking about these points is “Where all this data can be found?”. 

A lot of it should exist in your learning management system. Anything related to learner activity (the bronze metrics) can be found there and may require a download and some work in Excel or Sheets to find conclusions. You may need a helping hand in matching names or employee IDs to training dates in a large file.

Your LMS should also have a working API, or a way to transfer its own data to another place. If you’re able, working with folks inside your organization to get this data into a proper data warehousing tool (like Snowflake) can be very effective. 

This allows you to potentially compare this data (learning activity) to employee data like performance, productivity, or ratings. And, rather than doing this in a variety of Excel sheets, you could potentially do it (likely with the help of a data analyst) in the same tool with a SQL query. 

There are other ways to do this, too. Cognota is an L&D platform that is working to house all of this info in one place and might be worth taking a look at. Tools like Tableau or Google Data Studio can help make nice-looking dashboards from spreadsheet inputs, so if you can find a way to get raw data in there, you can still visualize it nicely.

Keep Up With The Changes

If you want to learn more about learning development metrics, I would suggest following a few L&D communities on LinkedIn and beyond. I’d suggest starting with L&D Shakers and Offbeat.

If you think I’m totally wrong on cSAT questions in post-learning surveys, drop me a line on LinkedIn—I’m always up for a good debate!

Some further resources to help you refine your L&D program and grow your talent:

• How To Create A Learning And Development Strategy In 7 Steps
• How To Create A Thriving Culture Of Learning
• 10 Best Learning Management Systems (LMS) For Employee Training

Subscribe to the People Manage People newsletter to receive regular articles to improve learning and development and other people function in your org.

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The hype surrounding AI has created various myths about its potential to transform society. Some believe it will take over the world, while others think it is nothing more than a buzzword.

AI is not only being used to replace mundane jobs; it is also being used to create new business opportunities. IT leaders must create value by developing practical applications of the technology that can help them improve their operations and reduce costs.

Here are some of the most popular myths surrounding Artificial intelligence – and why they’re wrong.

Myth: AI and Machine Learning are the Same Thing

Machine learning is a subset of AI that requires a well-thought-out strategy for acquiring and training data. On the other hand, AI is a broad term that refers to various techniques such as natural language processing and rule-based systems.

Myth: It’ll Take All Our Jobs

One of the most popular AI theories is that it will replace human labor with cheap and advanced technology. This theory claims that AI will be so advanced that it will be able to perform the same job roles as humans without requiring a lot of training or experience.

AI can be used to augment existing jobs, but it can also replace low-level positions. Workers will have to be upskilled to take advantage of the technology.

Myth: AIs Can Only Lead to Death and Destruction

You can thank pop culture for this myth (looking at you, Matrix). It’s unlikely that anyone would build or deploy an autonomous machine that could intentionally harm or turn against its human creators.

Despite the various technological advancements that have occurred in the field of security and drones, such as the development of security robots that can neutralize threats, they have not yet been deployed.

Robots are also widely believed to develop self-preservation instincts and interpret commands to protect and preserve humans.

Myth: AI Isn’t for Everyone

AI can help companies improve their internal operations and enhance their external processes by allowing them to create new products and improve their sales. According to one study, 86% of participants stated that AI is becoming a standard technology within their organization. All companies should thoroughly implement and use AI business use cases to avoid falling behind.

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We’re passionate about the world of work and how we can make it better for everyone.

That’s we launched this interview series where we pick the brains of experienced leaders, business owners, managers, and individual contributors to get their thoughts on how we can collectively build better workplaces.

Join us in our next installment below as Susan Nolan—Chief Operating Officer at LearnUpon—shares her insights with us.

We’d love to get to know you a bit better, tell us a bit about your backstory.

I grew up in Bray in Ireland with parents who were both teachers in local schools and a brother who also chose teaching as his career. 

When I was trying to decide what to study in college to start my own career, my father shared the advice that, if he could go back and do it all over again, he would go into technology instead of teaching. 

As a result, I chose a four-year Information Technology degree at Trinity learning how to program in Java and design information systems. 

Twenty years later, I’m the COO of a technology company that provides a Learning Management System (LMS) for corporate learning at scale.

In the end, I listened to my father’s advice and landed on his dream path of combining both technology and education!

At the end of college, I knew I was capable of developing and designing information systems, but I felt a stronger passion for creating a great experience for customers using those systems. 

Because of this, I took on customer-facing roles in technology companies across various industries after college. 

In 2014 I was ready for a new challenge and, through sheer luck, I was introduced to Brendan Noud, LearnUpon’s co-founder and CEO.

LearnUpon had eight employees at the time and was looking for an operations manager to help scale the business.

After talking with Brendan, his vision to build an LMS that puts both the customer and the learner first really resonated with me.

I knew then that Brendan and his co-founder/CTO, Des Anderson, were building a fast-paced and ambitious company, with a great product vision and unique culture.

I found myself at home here at LearnUpon and on a new journey where I’ve continued to learn and grow for the past eight years. 

If we were to ask a friend to describe your personality to us, what would they say?

I asked a few friends how they would describe me before answering this question and two consistent descriptions came through: determined and strong. 

On the determined piece, when I set my focus on something, I make a plan and commit to it. 

As far as being strong goes, when I face setbacks, my resilience allows me to bounce back and adapt as needed. 

Thinking back to your career journey, what’s an interesting story that stands out? 

I’m lucky to work at a learning company and both our solution and culture reflect the view that it’s essential to always be learning. 

With this, I’m a firm believer that we should always find opportunities to learn from our own actions and the interactions we have with those around us, so, naturally, the story that came to mind here is one that impacted me along my own learning journey.

A fantastic L&D college recently shared the concept with me that “leaders control the weather in their teams,” and this story is exactly about that. 

A few years ago, I was leading our finance function here at LearnUpon and we received a customer email about their subscription that I was copied into.

I immediately went into problem-solving mode and jumped into Slack to message the dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) for that customer to offer up my thoughts on the issue and solution.

The CSM was in the office and came over to me laughing. As soon as they saw the “Susan is typing…” note in Slack they said to themselves “Please don’t be for me,” knowing that my message was likely about the customer email that just came through.

We joked about it and solved the customer issue together during a quick chat. However, upon reflection on the interaction after it happened, that one engagement delivered such a powerful insight to me.

I thought an easy solution would be quickly responding in Slack, but this may in fact have not been seen as a positive engagement to my colleague on the receiving end. 

I want all of my interactions in the workplace to be positive ones, and that day I learned the importance of taking a step back to consider my communication style and my presence in all the different forums—from personal 1:1 interactions, to group meetings, to Slacks, to emails—before delivering any type of communication. 

How I show up and engage may impact the weather for someone else, so it’s important to ensure we’re setting the right climate for each scenario. 

What’s the most impactful lesson you’ve learned over your career thus far?

The most impactful lesson of advice I’ve received in recent years was from a mentor who once said to me “Isn’t life a wonderful thing that as human beings we can reset ourselves to try again?”

I look back on tasks that I would have approached differently if I could start again, or at a conversation I wish I’d managed better, and the important thing is to take time to reflect, forgive yourself and apologize if needed, then try again.

We all make mistakes, but if we’re not recognising those mistakes then we’re not opening ourselves up to learn! 

Thanks for giving us some insight into who you are! Let’s jump into things. When you hear the phrase “build a better world of work”, what comes to mind?

When I hear the phrase “build a better world of work,” what springs to mind is cultivating diverse teams to foster collaboration.

Each one of us can do what we set our minds to. However, we’re all unique, with different experiences and perspectives, which means that we all do things differently and have varied strengths. 

Take programming for example—I learned in college that I had the skill to do this, however I had to exert more energy to do it well. 

On the other hand, interacting with customers (at LearnUpon, my customers are my fellow employees) naturally energizes me, so I prefer to focus on that aspect of our work here over programming—which is an area other colleagues of mine really excel in.

My point being, teams collaborate best when everyone brings something different to the table that complements the overall team. 

A better world of work is striving to build a diverse team where everyone shows up with different strengths and perspectives. Together, these unique backgrounds can accomplish amazing things.

For you, what’s the main blocker you see as standing in the way of building a better world of work?

While building teams, it’s possible to fall into the habit of gravitating towards people that are like us. To avoid this, it’s important to continuously assess our existing team’s capabilities to identify opportunities for new, diverse voices to complement them.

What’s one thing within our control that we can practically do to build a better world of work today? And, how do you recommend going about it?

Taking the time to really understand our fellow team members, from both a work and personal perspective, goes a long way in building a better world of work. 

As I mentioned before, we all have different preferences and come from different backgrounds, so learning about each other, including what takes more energy, what motivates us, and how we perceive praise and constructive feedback, can practically help us get there.

Can you share one thing you’ve experienced, seen, or read about that is leading us towards a better world of work?

Recently, we came together as a leadership team and did the Insights Discovery exercise where everyone completes a list of questions and receives a profile type to understand their working style, strengths, and value they bring to the team.

We had a leadership coach talk through styles with us and then we met as a group to discuss what we’re strong at, opportunities for improvement, and how all our profiles connected. 

It was interesting to learn that all of our executive team members had different profiles, and it backed up my point above that diversity of backgrounds, opinions, perspectives, and styles has the ability to build a better world of work. 

We’re better when we’re all coming with our diverse thinking and experiences and collaborating as a unique group. 

I’m curious, thinking about building a better world of work, is there a company and/or leader who stands out to you as someone we should follow? If so, what are they up to?

I really like Kim Scott and reading her book Radical Candor a few years ago and her philosophy of caring personally while challenging directly changed how I lead in the workplace.

Thanks Susan! How can our readers follow your work?

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

Add your voice to the conversation

Join our interview series and share your ideas for how we can build a better world of work!

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Let’s be honest: Event planning is notoriously stressful. Event planners have countless factors to consider when preparing and launching an event, and with so many spinning plates in the air, it’s easy to forget a critical detail and send the team into a tailspin.

Having a virtual event planning checklist can take some of the guesswork out of the planning process. I’ve crafted this one to cover the entire process – before, during, and after — and to hopefully take your blood pressure down a couple of notches too.

Virtual Event Planning Checklist

Whether you’re in the very beginning stages of virtual event planning and just dreaming up your theme, or you’re in the home stretch and about to go live, this comprehensive checklist has you covered. Let’s dive in.

Before Your Event

Establish Your Goals

Why are you hosting this event? To gather leads for a new offering? To raise awareness about your brand? To create a networking opportunity for your community? Write down between 3 and 5 main event goals that you’d like to achieve. Choose specific, measurable, realistic metrics that you can track. 

Understand Your Budget

Your event budget will influence how much you can spend on things like keynote speakers, attendee perks, and even the pricing for your virtual event technology. Know your budget up-front and stick to it to ensure a profitable virtual event.

Decide on a Type of Virtual Event 

There are many different types of virtual events, including:

• Virtual meetings
• Virtual trade shows
• Webinars
• Virtual conferences
• Live streams
• Keynotes
• Networking events
• Hybrid events (events that include digital and face-to-face elements in real-time)

When choosing the type of event that’s right for you, consider who your target audience is and how much time they’re likely to invest. To learn more about the different types of virtual events, take a look at my article covering 7 Types of Virtual Events to Host in 2023.

Connect with Sponsors

If your budget could use a little extra love, consider finding sponsors. Similar to an in-person event, sponsors have the opportunity to access your audience by creating sponsored spaces, sessions, ads, and booths at your online event. 

Develop Your Content

Now that you understand your goals, format, and budget, you can begin creating content. Some questions to ask yourself during this stage are:

• What does your target audience want to learn? What are their current pain points?
• Is your content streamlined? To keep your audience’s attention, edit down or remove anything that isn’t adding value.
• How are you involving your audience? Add gamification, polls, and surveys.
• Are you leaving time for FAQs and/or networking opportunities?

With these answers in mind, you can establish a theme and approach keynote speakers and other presenters to begin forming their talks or workshops.

Choose a Virtual Event Platform

Virtual event technology has come a long way in the past few years. Today, there are many platforms that can create a completely immersive virtual experience for your guests. To deliver a truly memorable virtual event, consider going beyond Zoom and working with event management software that can deliver features like:

• Sponsor booths
• Virtual lobby
• Virtual keynote stage
• Gamification
• Breakout sessions
• Networking spaces
• Custom branding

Many platforms offer a browser interface in addition to mobile apps to provide guests with their choice of how to connect. Check out our list of the best virtual event platforms to find the one that’s right for you:

• Best Virtual Event Platforms for Digital Engagement in 2023

Event Promotion

Use your social media channels and email marketing list to promote your event within your network and beyond. Share posts, videos, and stories on social media using pertinent keyword hashtags to extend the reach. For more information on virtual event marketing, check out our article:

• Virtual Event Planning in 2023: 10 Tips for a Stellar Virtual Event

Register Your Guests

How will your guests register and purchase tickets for your virtual event? On an event landing page? A google form? Most virtual event platforms offer registration functionality that can take payment, register your guests, and even provide them with a unique badge or QR code that they can use to access certain event features.

Guide Your Guests

Before the event begins, send out multiple correspondences to those who have registered. Share step-by-step instructions on how to join the event and navigate within the virtual conference space. Tell them everything that your event experience will be offering, and how to take advantage of what’s available.

During Your Event

Plan for Troubleshooting

Last-minute hiccups aren’t just a possibility with a virtual event – they’re a certainty. Plan for them by asking moderators to assist with event attendees questions in the chat. Ask presenters to join you at least 30 minutes before the event to test their technology. Have a backup device handy with all relevant apps downloaded. Virtual event planners should always have a Plan B in mind to keep things running smoothly.

Connect with the Audience

How would you greet your audience at a face-to-face event? Audience engagement is equally important within an online forum, and you can achieve a similar connection virtually if you invest the time. On your event date, ask your event attendees questions, and gather their answers in the chat, or via a survey or live polling. Use gamification to add some fun. Make sure your guests know that you value their time and attention.

Encourage Networking

Networking is a key aspect of any conference experience, whether in-person or online. Where relevant, use your virtual event platform to create networking spaces. Some tools even allow attendees to view each other’s LinkedIn profiles while chatting. Features like these encourage guests to connect with each other and enable them to easily follow up post-event.

Gather Data

One area where virtual events shine is analytics. It’s hard to get people to fill out paper surveys! But virtual event platforms capture data like attendance rates and how long guests stayed in the sessions. The results from surveys and polls can be used to develop new content for your next event too. 

After Your Event

Follow Up With Guests

Post-event, send out an email to all your guests within 48 hours. Some items that you could include in the email are:

• Post-event survey
• On-demand replay of the live event
• List of your upcoming events
• Any products or paid offers you want to highlight

Review Data with Stakeholders

Comb over the analytics for the event. Are there any patterns that you notice? What was the most popular aspect? Which types of virtual event features were under-utilized? Was this a result of poor event promotion, or did audience members fail to find value in these aspects? Gather your team members for a post-mortem and share your thoughts.

Record Findings for Future Events

Once you understand the data, write it down in a central document. This way, your event planners can have the information handy when crafting the strategy for your next virtual event.

Create a Successful Virtual Event

Virtual events are no longer the sad runner-up for when in-person options aren’t available. On the contrary, post-pandemic they’re emerging as a front-runner. 77.2% of corporate professionals say that they prefer virtual events because they’re so easy to attend.

For more information on how to host a successful virtual event, check out these articles:

• 10 Best Virtual Conference Software for Digital Events
• 15 Virtual Meeting Etiquette Guidelines 

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Adding different types of virtual events to your marketing strategy can help you extend your reach to a global audience, create networking opportunities within your community, and funnel more leads to your pipeline – all while spending less than you would on an in-person event.

The global virtual event market is expected to reach $366.5 Billion by 2027. It’s a staggering number but not altogether surprising; people have come to expect (and in many cases prefer) virtual event options. The virtual experience allows people to learn and network from the comfort of their homes, cuts down on carbon footprints, and mitigates travel expenses.

Some kinds of events are best suited to small groups, while others can be scaled up to reach hundreds of thousands of event attendees. If your organization is looking for new virtual event ideas to spice up your outreach efforts this year, I’ve got you covered.

In this article, I’m breaking down the most common types of virtual events to help you decide which kind of event is right for you.

What’s the Difference Between Virtual and Hybrid Events?

Virtual events can be broken down into two primary categories:

Fully Virtual

Fully virtual events are held completely online. Networking opportunities, breakout sessions, keynotes, and every other facet of the event are presented in a digital format. Event attendees can watch in real-time, or access the content on-demand after the event has ended.

Hybrid

Hybrid events offer certain components that are available online (for example, a webinar from a specific partner), and other components that are conducted in person (say, the main stage keynote).

Hybrid events will often film a live event and provide virtual attendees with access to the livestream or recording replay. Tickets can be priced accordingly, with the highest admission price being in-person VIP tickets, and more affordable rates for virtual admission or replay access.

The 7 Main Types of Virtual Events

In a further breakdown from fully virtual and hybrid, virtual events can be divided into several sub-categories. Let’s take a look at some of the most common types of virtual events:

Networking

Networking is the second largest reason why people attend virtual events. Virtual networking events allow attendees to connect with each other in small groups and 1:1. Depending on the virtual event technology you’re using, attendees might be able to jump in and out of conversations according to their preferences, and even access each other’s LinkedIn profiles while chatting.

Networking is an excellent way to add value and increase attendee engagement. Being able to video chat with new contacts and then follow up post-event provides your guests with a reason to attend your next events too.  

Webinars

Webinars are the most common format for virtual events. A webinar is generally conducted within a small-group and can be presented live or via a replay. When presented by webcast, participants have the opportunity to ask real-time questions in the chat. Free webinars are a great addition to your event strategy because they provide you with the ability to increase brand awareness while marketing your larger, paid offerings to an audience of qualified leads.

Virtual Conferences

Virtual conferences are large-scale events hosted for big crowds. They provide an event experience that can either be completely passive, or more involved and active. For example, some virtual conferences solely consist of a single “main stage” with keynote speakers, a few panel discussions, and the ability to participate in the chat. Others are more in-depth, providing attendees the opportunity to engage in networking opportunities and breakout sessions, and to visit fully immersive 3D lobbies similar to a physical event. 

Trade Shows

Virtual trade shows are an excellent choice for product launches because they present vendors with many of the same opportunities available in a face-to-face setting. Within the virtual environment, attendees can visit different booths, learn more about the products by chatting directly with a team member, and even make purchases at a virtual POS. Many virtual event platforms utilize QR codes on digital badges, enabling exhibitors to capture leads that can be directly loaded into their CRM via platform integration. 

Job Fairs

Virtual job fairs allow you to connect with your target audience remotely. Since the event takes place outside the confines of a physical venue, you can expand your reach to other geographic areas without worrying about travel or time zone restrictions. If virtual job fairs are your sole focus, consider working with a platform that supports the niche. There are several virtual event platforms that cater specifically to recruiters, offering features like 1:1 interviews, small group networking, and individual booths for various employers.

Training Sessions

Since the pandemic, many organizations have taken their training online. Virtual training sessions are an excellent way to connect with a wider audience and add value, without having to incur travel expenses in the process. Virtual event platforms make it easy to include quizzes, Q&A, and video content in your sessions, just as you might when conducting in-person training. It’s easy to chunk lessons into modules, circulate study materials virtually, and even create breakout rooms so that trainees can study in a small group setting.

Town Halls

Virtual town halls allow you to expand on your traditional virtual meetings to make sure that remote teams across the entire organization remain on the same page. The online event format allows everyone to attend, regardless of their geographic location, and it’s easy to break employees into small groups for icebreakers and brainstorming. Gamification functionality can keep it fun, and interrupt some of the more dry financial and business content to increase audience engagement.

How to Host an Unforgettable Virtual Event

Choosing the best event format is just the first step in the virtual event planning process. Event organizers have a long list of decisions to make before, during, and after the event to guarantee its success. To access a free downloadable checklist for before, during, and after your event, click here.

For some awesome virtual event planning tips, you’ll want to read:

• Virtual Event Planning in 2023: 10 Tips for a Stellar Virtual Event

To learn more about the best virtual event platforms on the market today, check out our article:

• Best Virtual Event Platforms for Digital Engagement

Before you go, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest insight and tips from our industry experts!

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Say you want to bake a cake. A fluffy, layered, strawberry one, to be specific. How would you go about doing it?

Sure, you could grab whatever ingredients you have in your kitchen and throw them in a bowl, but would they be the right ones to make a strawberry cake and, more importantly, a good one?

The answer, of course, is no. You’d likely end up with some sort of doughy mess.

The only right way to go about achieving your goals is to know what you need to do to reach them in the first place. In the context of the cake, this would suggest doing your research, finding a recipe, and taking a trip to the grocery store to buy everything you need.

As for the working world, it means understanding yourself and your ideal role, what differences exist, and how to best bridge that gap.

This is the basis of any good professional development plan, and a concept both staff and managers should keep top of mind when looking to advance career progress.

In this article, I’ll take you through how to create a professional development plan for either yourself or your team member.

• What is a professional development plan?
• Why create a professional development plan?
• What’s included in a professional development plan?
• How to create a professional development plan with your team member
• Best practices for creating and implementing professional development plans

Let’s dive in.

What Is A Professional Development Plan?

A professional development plan, sometimes referred to as PDP, is a document or strategy outlining an employee’s career advancement goals. It serves as a reference that both managers and individual staff can use to guide their day-to-day work and benchmark progress with long-term goals. 

PDPs are popular among forward-thinking organisations that use them to support and enrich employees over the course of their careers. These plans are usually created at the beginning of someone’s employment at a company and then revised over time as needs and opportunities change.

For example, someone I was coaching wanted to move from a consultative environment into HR. We put in place a 2-year plan where she accomplished a certification and got some experience in HR tasks through her consulting role.

She moved to her new role within 1½ years (6 months earlier than expected) and this has contributed to her overall happiness and allowed her to excel in the company!

The ultimate goal of a professional development plan is to equip both parties with a firm and actionable agreement on what an employee’s intentions are, what their future can look like, and how they can be supported in realising that vision.

Why Create A Professional Development Plan?

To some, professional development plans seem like another symbolic sheet of paper designed to promote high corporate standards. But they’re so much more than that. 

In reality, PDPs serve as an invaluable resource to employees and employers and have the potential to enhance the lives of both in a number of ways. 

Consider some of the benefits below.

Benefits for Employees

As the subject of the strategy, employees are obviously suited to benefit from Professional Development Plans.

Personal and Professional Insight

Creating a PDP will help employees better understand themselves, their capabilities, and any areas they’d like to improve. It serves as a form of self-discovery and allows them to gain insight into what they need to do to become more successful, both professionally and personally.

Clarity and Focus

Having a professional development plan can help employees stay focused on their career objectives by providing them with concrete goals and action items. This is something that’s often lacking from day-to-day work, where the focus is on immediate tasks and not necessarily progress towards longer-term objectives.

Increased Engagement and Job Satisfaction

PDPs encourage employees to become more engaged in their work because they can see that their efforts are going toward something bigger and meaningful. As a result, this can lead to increased job satisfaction and improved morale.

Benefits for Employers and Managers

Employees aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit from professional development plans—managers and organisations get a lot of value too.

Increased Retention

While employee turnover is a multifaceted problem, research indicates that career advancement opportunities are a leading factor in its severity. 

A recent Harris Poll cited it as one of the top reasons why staff leave their jobs, while a Workforce Learning Report from LinkedIn suggests that 94 percent of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their professional growth.

This makes PDPs an incredibly valuable tool for organisations who struggle with staff retention, and continue to remain essential as the effects of the Great Resignation lag on.

Improved Performance and Productivity

By providing employees with a clear, actionable strategy for their professional growth, managers can help them reach their full potential. This can lead to improved performance, better results and higher productivity on the job.

Aligned Goals and Objectives

PDPs help ensure that the goals of both employees and employers are aligned. This is incredibly important for businesses that want to make sure that the interests of their staff and those of the business are in sync. With a PDP, managers can work with individual employees to create an actionable plan that meets both their needs.

What’s Included In A Professional Development Plan?

It goes without saying that no two professional development plans will look 100% the same. After all, their whole value stems from the fact that each strategy is tailored to an individual’s unique career and goals.

But, with that being said, there are a few core components that every PDP needs to have in order to be effective. These elements serve as the foundation of the process, without them you’d have an unguided mess.

Employee Information

First and foremost, professional development plans should include key pieces of information about the employee in question. Beyond obvious things like name and start date, it ought to outline their specific title, role, day-to-day responsibilities, and history at the company. Including broader information from previous jobs can also be helpful for extra context and reference.

Assessments

Remember that cake analogy at the beginning of the article? This is where you take stock of your kitchen for ingredients. 

Skills assessments are a key component of professional development plans, as they enable employers and staff to obtain a clear view of a person’s interests, existing skill set, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for growth. 

The results of these assessments can be used as a guiding map throughout the rest of the PD process, literally spelling out what elements are missing to make the end goal achievable. 

Assessments also give employers the opportunity to better understand how their employees can be best supported. No two individuals have the same mind, and taking the time to properly evaluate an employee’s nature ensures that everyone has a compatible path to success.

Behavioural Profiling: Why It’s Essential to Any Professional Development Plan

Behavioural profiling is the process of understanding an individual’s behaviour patterns and how they influence their working style. This can involve looking at their motivations, communication style, and any potential conflicts that may arise when working with others. 

It’s an important part of a professional development plan, as it can help managers better understand how to work with their employees and ensure that the plan is effective.

While behavioural profiling isn’t absolutely necessary to creating a PDP, it is if you want to make a good one. Understanding how an individual behaves, interacts, and works best with others can help ensure that the plan is designed for their needs and that it’s successful in achieving their goals. 

It can also help provide insight into areas where improvement is necessary, allowing the manager to better focus their efforts and resources.

Action Items 

Like the end of any productive meeting, personal development planning has to include some degree of actionable takeaways. The insights of the prior skills assessment should be translated into straightforward, tangible changes that both staff and managers can take to get the ball rolling.

For example, let’s say an employee is eager to take on a supervisory role but lacks the background experience to fulfill one. They could agree to take training classes that cover the skills they’d need to learn for a leadership position, while their employer connects them with mentors who can provide necessary guidance.

How to Create A Professional Development Plan With Your Team Member

It’s important to recognize that the aforementioned components simply scrape the surface of the professional development planning process. The formal thing is a lot more in-depth and includes several layers of assessments, options, and special considerations.

Below is a step-by-step look at PDP from start to finish.

Step 1: Self-Assessment

Personal Development Planning is best initiated with a self-assessment on behalf of the employee. 

This primary step creates a sample of their individual interests, personality, skills, and values that can be referenced later on. 

Self-assessments can take on a lot of forms, but generally include questions that ask employees to rate their abilities on a scale and provide an open space for them to elaborate on any special talents or traits they possess.

But having someone fill out a document is only the first part of the endeavour—once they’ve submitted everything it will be time to go over the responses and interpret their meaning.

Consider asking yourself the following questions when doing so:

• What interests does the employee have outside of work?
• How do the employee’s personal values relate to their current position?
• What skills do they need to move from their current role to where they want to be?
• Are there any weaknesses that might be blocking their progress?
• What kind of training could help them overcome those obstacles?

Step 2: Assessment of the Individual’s Skill Profile

Next up is—back to the analogy—seeing what ingredients you have to work with. Are the basics like flour (communication skills) and sugar (smart and logical thinking) covered? 

What about special considerations like strawberries (a background in CRM) and multi-layer pans (a minimum of six years of project management experience)?

Answering these types of questions can help employers get a better understanding of their employees’ capabilities and how to optimise them for the best possible outcome.

Conduct interactive assessments, interviews, reviews of work history, and any other practices that will paint a picture of the employee’s identity. The results should be compiled into the following four categories for easy reference.

• Technical skills—these are the specific skills and knowledge required to do a job.
• Interpersonal skills—this covers the employee’s ability to work with colleagues and customers in a professional and approachable manner.
• Aptitudes—aptitudes are the capacity to learn and develop new competencies, as well as how an employee interprets and applies information.
• Attitude—this speaks to the overall dedication, commitment, and enthusiasm that the employee brings to their position.

Step 3: Assessment of the Organization’s Needs

Every good relationship must have mutual benefit. That’s why it’s important to assess an employee’s needs during the PDP process as well as those of the organisation they work for. 

Ultimately, the two should align in one way or another, and that alignment is how you get the most out of a PDP roadmap.

Management should ask themselves questions like:

• What skills are our organisation lacking?
• What changes need to be made in order for us to meet our business objectives?
• What kind of training do we need in order to remain competitive?
• Do we have the resources and personnel necessary to support these changes?

Step 4: Exploration of Development Opportunities With the Employee

With a proper idea of what each party at the table needs, it’ll be time to explore the possible options. Ideally, you’ll want to identify opportunities that are realistic and satisfactory to both sides of the relationship—the employer and the employee.

For example, say an employee wants a career with plenty of room for salary increases. The employer could offer one in a department that requires long-term commitment and career growth. Or, if the employee prefers flexibility and mobility, the employer could suggest a role that allows them to work remotely or travel to different locations on a regular basis. 

In any case, the goal is to find a solution that challenges and supports the employee’s growth while also accommodating the organisation’s needs.

But new opportunities don’t have to be entirely new positions, either. In many cases, it’s actually best to start off with smaller steps that accumulate to a greater goal.

Some examples include:

New Projects and Responsibilities

Adding new tasks and projects to an employee’s role can help them gain relevant experience in the given field they’re interested in without committing to a whole position change. This can be a stretch assignment over a short period or even a permanent venture into a new field that will provide challenging experiences meant to expand and grow the employee’s abilities.

Mentorship Programs

Mentorship programs are used to connect more senior and experienced team members into developmental relationships with team members who want to expand their skills and/or experiences.

Mentorship programs are great ways to get employees up to speed with the new skills they need for a career path. It also gives them a chance to learn from their peers and other professionals in the field.

Related read: How To Start An Effective Mentoring Program In 6 Steps

Professional Development Courses

Enrolling in a professional development course, either online or offline, can provide employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to fill in any gaps they may have.

Short-Term Assignments

Temporary assignments allow employees to gain hands-on experience in a new area of the business while still having the flexibility to move back to their original role if needed.

Cross-Training Opportunities

Cross-training initiatives give employees an opportunity to explore different roles in their organisation and build new relationships with colleagues.

Step 5: Tracking Progress

No strategy—whether it involves employee development or not—is complete without progress monitoring and analysis. 

Managers and staff need to be able to identify where their plan is and isn’t working, correct any problems, and change course as things go on. 

The best way to do this is by setting specific KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are measurable and benchmarkable. For example, you could opt for SMART goals—which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This helps to keep track of how the employee is progressing and whether or not they’re meeting their professional development goals.

At the same time, it’s important to remember that no PDP is perfect, and the goals should be realistic enough for the employee to achieve. If their targets are too high, they may feel overwhelmed and unmotivated.

Finally, it’s important to take feedback into account as well. Regular conversations with the employee will help to create a better understanding of their goals and objectives, which can then be used to adjust the plan accordingly.

Professional Development Plan Example

The below is a screenshot of a three-year professional development plan broken into goals and subsequent actions to reach them.

Best Practices For Creating And Implementing Professional Development Plans

While professional development plans undoubtedly offer a number of potential benefits, they aren’t inherently successful. Reaping full value from the strategy requires effort on behalf of both employers and their staff. 

There are also pitfalls that can happen along the way that you need to be ready for when getting started.

Leverage Software

It’s the twenty-first century, which means that today’s businesses have no excuse when it comes to the organisation of their PDPs.

Leveraging the right software solution can ensure that everything remains organised, up-to-date, and easily accessible. Many performance management tools allow you to set and track both short and long-term career goals, and incorporate feedback from both involved parties.

Open Communication

Open communication is key to a successful career development process. Be sure to set clear expectations from the start, and encourage open dialogue between managers and staff with regular one on ones. This helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the plan’s objectives, as any misunderstandings can cause costly delays.

Set Goals Wisely

The goals set in a PDP should be realistic, attainable, and measurable. Unrealistic goals will only lead to frustration while setting the bar too low could lead to employees feeling unmotivated and uninspired.

Connect With Human Resources

Your organisation’s HR department can help ensure that the PDPs are in line with company policies and strategies. They may also have resources available to help with the plan’s implementation and execution.

Follow Through

The most important element of a successful PDP is following through. Doing the work required to achieve the goals is essential, and it’s important to provide support, performance reviews, guidance, and resources when needed. Above all, be sure to provide recognition and reward employees for their hard work.

Be Flexible

Finally, it’s important to be flexible with the PDP. As employees’ skills and goals evolve, so too should their plans. Allowing for changes in direction and new milestones can help ensure that the plan remains relevant and beneficial to everyone involved.

Icing the Cake

Creating and implementing Professional Development Plans is a powerful way to ensure that employees are making the most of their skills, talents, abilities, and interests.

But, half-baked plans and limited follow-through won’t get you very far, so it’s important to carefully consider each step of the process. Keep in mind the tips outlined in this article and you’ll be well on your way.

Further resources to help you develop talent in your organization:

• Putting Employees In The Driver’s Seat Of Career Development
• Why And How To Build An Internal Talent Marketplace
• Internal Mobility: Why It’s Important And How To Nurture It
• How To Go From Manager To Coach

Subscribe to the People Managing People Newsletter to receive regular content to help you progress in your career and build happy, productive organizations.

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Regardless of the kind of business you run, increasing sales and growing your revenue are two critical factors that any owner must consider when running a small business.

There are a variety of strategies that small business owners can use to grow their businesses. However, these are some key factors you should consider when developing a successful growth strategy.

Research

One of the most important factors to consider when developing a successful growth strategy is conducting market research. This process will allow you to identify your target market and provide you with the necessary insight to meet those needs.

Before you start implementing any growth strategy, it’s essential that you thoroughly research your competitors. Doing so will allow you to identify areas of weakness and strengths that can help you scale your business.

Reduce Risks

Managing your risks is an essential part of running a successful business. However, there are many ways that you can reduce the risks that threaten your company’s growth. Another factor to consider is whether you have the proper insurance coverage. These are all things to consider before trying to grow the business.

Build a Sales Funnel

Next, consider building a sales funnel. This process can help you automate your business and grow it quickly. Although there are some aspects involved in running a sales funnel, it’s generally a smooth process once those processes are in place.

Every sale funnel should be conceptualized and built according to its unique needs. Whether a free-shipping offer or a high-priced coaching funnel, an automated selling machine must grow and scale your business quickly.

Get Creative

It would help if you always were looking for new ways to improve your company and make it stand out from the crowd. Also, be open to new ideas and strategies to help you grow the business. These creative avenues can be precisely what your business needs.

Increase Customer Retention

In addition to getting new customers, you also need to retain them to increase your company’s sales. A strong customer retention strategy can help boost your business’s sales. A business can increase customer retention by prioritizing customer service, creating loyalty programs, utilizing customer relations management systems (CRMs), or launching an email campaign.

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Most leaders don’t know how to employ HR as a strategic pillar of the business and this leaves a lot of professionals feeling somewhat frustrated.

In this interview series, we talk to HR professionals, business leaders, and anyone who is an authority on HR who can share what companies can gain by having HR in the boardroom and why and how HR should help drive company decisions. 

Edie Goldberg, Ph.D. is an experience HR leader, academic and nationally recognized expert in talent management strategy and the future of work. 

Her practice focuses on designing human resources processes and programs to attract, engage, develop, and retain employees. She is the current Chair of the SHRM Foundation Board of Directors, member of the Board of Advisors to several HR technology companies, and had been named a top 100 HR influencer for the past 2 years.

Welcome, Edie! Before we drive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

While in graduate school I worked for the Navy Personnel Research & Development Center. The title tells you how long ago that was!  

Here I had the opportunity to study the role of culture in the acceptance for workplace innovations, as well as implementing a Total Quality Management practice for the Navy. After getting my Ph.D. in Industrial & Organizational Psychology, I worked for a boutique firm that specialized in sssessment and development. 

Next, I went to Towers Perrin to become a Global Thought Leader in their Human Capital practice. I started my own consulting firm over 20 years ago.

It’s said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?  

The first consulting firm I worked for had a pretty conservative and formal CEO. I had been assigned to work on a project at Gap, Inc. and I showed up in a suit.  Once the doors closed to the elevator we were in, my escort told me, “Don’t ever show up in this building dressed like that again!.”  

I learned you need to do research on your customers and know their culture. Dressing one notch nicer is good, but your credibility is shot if you don’t understand your customer’s brand.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I am most grateful for my husband who encouraged me to start my own business, helped me understand how to set up my own company, and continuously pushes me to be the best version of myself personally and professionally.  

I had thought of starting my own business many times, but I was too afraid that I did not have what it takes to be successful on my own. 

I do not like to sell anyone anything, and selling is important when you’re a consultant, but I’m a deep expert in my field and really passionate about the work that I do. 

My husband helped me see that I don’t have to “sell,” I just have to solve problems. Everything fell into place from there.  

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life? 

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” Albert Einstein.

This quote has led to my personal mantra “Always be learning.”  

Being curious and learning new things expands your knowledge base and helps you approach problems in new and different ways. 

When we are curious, we discover new pieces of information that were not obvious.  In my work, companies often approach me with a request to help them with something specific (e.g., Succession Planning).  

Rather than taking this at face value, I will ask why and seek to understand the organization’s current challenges so that I can make sure the proposed solution will really achieve the desired outcome.

Thinking back on your own career, what would you tell your younger self?

Experiment more with different opportunities early in your career so that you can discover where you really thrive at work.

Let’s now move to the central part of our interview about HR. Why do you think HR deserves a place in the boardroom and in high-level decision-making? Can you help articulate how a company will gain from that?

69% of companies today can not find employees with the skills they need to execute on their business strategy. There are currently 2 open positions for every unemployed person (5/1 for Software Developers).  

Making the right strategic choices that will increase your likelihood of being able to execute on the business strategy puts HR right in the center of decision-making.  

Where to put your next call center or design center (cost and availability of talent are critical factors)? How to build a high-performance culture? Yes, HR sits front and center on that too.  

How to create a hybrid-working system that increases productivity, reduces turnover, and facilitates collaboration—you need HR for that too.  

When most board members think about HR in the board room they think of compensation and that’s it. In today’s work environment, HR is at the heat of many critical business decisions.

Furthermore, recently the SEC has instituted a new requirement to report on Human Capital 

Metrics that drive the value of the company. Developing a strategy for what to report, and how to report it, to demonstrate your value on Wall Street without giving away your competitive advantages is a strategic challenge designed for board members with HR expertise to expertly guide.

From your experience, how can HR people and culture professionals ensure they’re involved in strategic planning processes? 

It is up to the C-Suite leaders to ensure that HR has a voice at the strategic planning table. As mentioned above, how or where a company expands requires a talent strategy to support that decision.  

Making those decisions without relevant data that could influence a successful outcome will be a costly mistake. Furthermore, strategic workforce planning is deeply connected to strategic planning for the organization. They work hand in hand. If HR is not involved in an early enough stage, then opportunities and deadlines will be missed.

A lot of folks believe that CHROs would make great CEOs, but often they’re overlooked. Why do you think that is?

This is complicated but mostly lies in the fact that many still perceive HR to be an administrative function focused on compliance, not organizational strategy. 

However, there are many business-savvy CHROs out there who’d make a great CEO. They understand the company culture and are often clear communicators with strong interpersonal skills that make them superior leaders.

For example, Lina Nair, CEO of Chanel, was the former CHRO of Unilever. Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, was the former Vice President of HR.  

Most HR leaders are not given the same opportunities during succession planning that the CFO or COO may be given earlier in their career. 

Providing them with the opportunities to really understand the business and develop the credibility to lead the organization through special projects is one way CHROs could develop the experiences that would make them more likely to be selected for a CEO position.

What skills can HR folks work on to become more effective business partners?

Effective business partners understand the business and develop solutions to the current challenges facing the organization. HR professionals need to shift from order takers to asking more questions about the business to uncover opportunities for improvement or innovation.

Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important ways that HR can help drive company decisions? Please share a story or an example for each. 

1. Provide talent data to report on the health of the organization (and to comply with SEC requirements)

While the SEC has made a Human Capital Disclosure requirement, they were very vague as to what this should include.  Providing talent metrics is one way to show both the board and your shareholders/stakeholders how healthy the organization is operating. 

Intelligence on issues such as turnover, time to fill a position, % of employees actively involved in development, workplace culture, employee well-being efforts, DEI practices, and metrics can all speak to the overall health of the organization.

2.  Drive the compensation strategy to achieve the company’s goals.

Compensation is the largest expense for almost every organization. Having a strategy that allows you to attract the right talent, without overpaying, is critical.  

Understanding your total compensation strategy can help an organization make wise decisions.  

For example, many organizations have moved to an unlimited Personal Time Off (PTO) strategy to attract talent, knowing that the company culture is one that values personal time to relax and refresh, but employees feel a deep responsibility to their co-workers and will not abuse this type of policy.  

Companies can reduce the administrative load of tracking time off and carrying time-off accrual on their books.

3.  Provide labor market and compensation data to determine the best locations for offices/factories/call centers or for global expansion.

When companies are seeking to expand their organizational footprint to a new area, the cost of property and building is a concern but not as much as the cost of talent. 

Moving to a location where the talent does not exist to meet your organization’s needs is a flawed decision that will result in an excessive amount of moving expenses.  A talent strategy needs to be in place to meet the business needs.

4.  Assess the culture and talent to develop strategies for M&A that put the combined organization in the best possible position.

Most mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fail due to a conflict in the cultures of the two companies and the inability to capitalize on economies of scale. The best M&A outcomes are the result of deep due diligence about the company, its culture, and its talent to understand how the new combined entity can be better than the two companies simply combined.  

A few years ago, I was brought in to help two merging companies create a high-performance culture that was not present in either of the previously independent companies.

We assessed the culture of each organization, understood their individual capabilities, and then were able to strategically facilitate a new culture that combined the best of both companies to be better in their newly combined entity.

5. Create new talent strategies that increase the company’s competitive position e.g., able to attract the best talent, optimize the workforce to increase productivity, and improve organizational agility. 

During the recent COVID-pandemic, companies that were able to respond to the changing business conditions as an opportunity to improve their competitive position clearly excelled during challenging times.

Creating an agile talent strategy that enables companies to shift their talent to meet the company’s most pressing business challenges emerged as a critical capability. 

When Verizon’s retail stores closed, they took that opportunity to upskill store-based employees into new roles where they had greater demand, and made them more fit for the future.

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen businesses make when faced with hard decisions? What should one keep in mind to avoid that? 

The most common mistake I have seen is jumping to a quick conclusion as to what the problem is, rather than doing the due diligence to ensure you are fixing the right problem.

Getting curious and asking many questions with different people across the company often can reveal the root cause issue that needs to be addressed.

The second most common mistake is relying on old-school methods (e.g., last in, first out), rather than strategically thinking about the talent you currently have available to you and what capabilities you need for the future.  

Related to this mistake is exiting employees from the organization because they are in a job you are eliminating, and not assessing the capabilities the employees’ have to see if they could be better deployed elsewhere in the organization. 

This results in a tremendous amount of outplacement costs and an increase in salaries paid to external hires. When you understand the skills and capabilities of individuals you can make better talent decisions.

When trying to create a high-performance organization, most companies focus more on results than on behaviors. When people get results “at all costs,” then create a toxic culture that becomes ineffective.  One of the best ways to demonstrate new company values in how employees are expected to work together to get better outcomes is to terminate high-performing executives who behave badly.  

This clearly sends the message to everyone else that getting results the wrong way will not be tolerated in the organization.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why?

Ram Charan – He is a global business advisor who has so much wisdom that every time I hear him speak; I learn something new.  

Ram also understands the value that HR provides in the boardroom, and I would always love to hear him chime in on this topic of how to get more CEOs and more boards of directors to understand the critical role that HR can have in both developing business strategy and managing the risks related to the execution of that strategy.

Thanks Edie! How can our readers further follow your work?

I am pretty easy to Google and people can learn more about my work on my website.

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Pay transparency is the next big shift that will define the future of work. 

In a recent survey, 85% of upcoming and recent grads said they were less likely to apply for a job if the salary was not disclosed in the job posting. As Gen Z enters the workforce, they are pushing forward more open and transparent conversations about pay. And they’re not the only ones. 

In the past few years, we’ve seen an explosion of salary data being shared openly: from crowd-sourced sites like Glassdoor and Levels.fyi, to salary spreadsheets within private networking groups, to the rise of pay transparency advocates on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

Now, new pay transparency laws are coming into effect across the United States and Canada, mandating that companies start sharing salary ranges internally with employees and externally on job postings. 

All of this leaves companies scrambling to figure out how pay transparency will impact their employees, their business, and their bottom line. 

What is pay transparency?

It’s a common misconception that pay transparency means disclosing all your salary ranges to the public in one big announcement. Pay transparency is actually a spectrum of actions that your company takes to communicate about pay with current employees, candidates, and the public on an ongoing basis. 

At the least transparent end of the spectrum, a company may share very little about the “why” and “how” behind pay. Employees only know their own salary, and candidates may not find out the salary for a role until a later stage of the recruitment process. 

On the other end of the spectrum is the kind of radical transparency where all salaries are shared openly, similar to how the salaries of U.S. government employees are publicly available. 

Most companies fall somewhere in between these two extremes. They may share salary ranges without sharing the actual salaries of individual employees. They may share some aspects of their compensation philosophy, such as whether they pay differently depending on location, but not share other aspects, like how their salary ranges are positioned relative to competitors. 

You don’t have to go all the way to radical transparency to achieve great business results. Increasing your level of pay transparency, even by a few steps, can have a widespread positive impact at your company. 

Why pay transparency is good business practice

If you get it right, pay transparency can be one of the most powerful pillars of your overall compensation strategy. It can help you hire the best people, retain them for the long-term, and create a positive and productive work culture.

Pay transparency attracts top talent

Pay transparency is a powerful advantage in a competitive talent market. Even though some talent acquisition professionals fear that publicly posting a range may hamper their efforts to “sell” candidates on their companies (i.e., candidates not applying for a role based on the posted salary range alone), survey data shows that job postings with salary ranges actually attract up to 90% more job applicants.

In some jurisdictions, such as New York and California, companies of a certain size are legally required to share salary ranges on job postings. The introduction of this legislation, in two of the most populated states, has prompted other states and provinces, and even the federal government, to consider enacting similar laws.

These laws create a ripple effect: many companies have started sharing their salary ranges proactively, before it is required by law, to attract more applicants. 

The result is that open conversations about pay are becoming more common before and during the recruitment process. Companies that aren’t prepared to have these conversations risk losing out on great candidates. 

Pay transparency improves pay equity 

Studies have shown that pay transparency has the power to close pay gaps based on protected characteristics like gender, ethnicity, disability status, and sexual orientation.

When a company is transparent about its pay practices, it becomes easier for the employer and employees to identify and address any pay disparities. It creates pressure for the company to address the inequity, and makes it easier for employees to speak up and advocate for fair pay. 

In the absence of transparency, employees may find out about a pay gap through personal conversations with coworkers, online message boards, or crowd-sourced salary data sites. These backchannel conversations can foster resentment, gossip, productivity problems, and can even expose you to legal risk and damage your employer brand.

Pay transparency may also bolster your company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Women and people of color prefer to work at organizations that are actively committed to fair pay and equality.

Pay transparency builds organizational trust

Trust between employers and employees is one of the key performance indicators of a company’s success. According to the Harvard Business Review, employees at high-trust organizations are more productive, more collaborative, happier, and stay at their companies for longer. 

Pay transparency can have an immense positive impact on organizational trust. It gives the company and its managers the opportunity to openly communicate with employees about how and why pay is determined, and what an employee can do to grow in their role and compensation. 

This reassures employees that their company is trying to be thoughtful and equitable in its approach to pay, and can result in a greater sense of employee satisfaction around pay. 

How to overcome the barriers to pay transparency 

Even though pay transparency is currently seeing a rising tide of support, and has so many positive business impacts, it can still be an intimidating idea. Companies often worry that their salaries are not ready for public scrutiny, and might reveal pay gaps and other risks within the organization.

It’s important to remember that pay transparency is a spectrum. There are small, incremental steps that you can take to get ready and reap some of the benefits of better communication around pay.

Build a consistent and equitable pay structure

The first step to greater transparency is to get the foundations right internally. 

Start by documenting your compensation philosophy. How does your company pay relative to the market? What are your guidelines for how pay decisions should be paid? Your compensation philosophy serves as a source of truth to answer these questions. 

Then create a pay structure, which serves as a framework of job levels and salary ranges for all the positions at your company. Many companies will have some elements of this structure already in place, but, if you’re building it from scratch, start with your first job leveling framework. 

Make a plan to fix any inconsistencies 

Once you have your pay structure in place, you’ll need to assess how your actual employee salaries stack up against your intentions. You may find that you have employees who are significantly above or below your ranges. You might even uncover a pattern of bias or a pay equity issue. 

Make a plan to remediate these issues. For example, you might choose to prioritize pay increases for high-performing employees who are below their salary to bring them to internal equity with their colleagues. Alongside that, it may make sense to introduce guardrails for hiring, so that new offers are made in a way that is consistent with your existing employees’ pay. 

These issues were not created in a day, and it’s likely that it will take more than one salary review cycle to fix them. However, doing so will ensure the long-term success of your compensation strategy and prepare you for any upcoming pay transparency requirements. 

Prepare managers and recruiters for tough comp conversations

Pay transparency is all about fostering more open and honest communication about pay, which can be a sensitive and emotional topic.

Your company’s HR department or executive team might do an initial rollout of any pay transparency initiatives. But, if employees or candidates have questions or concerns going forward, they are most likely going to have these conversations with their immediate manager or their recruiter. That makes managers and recruiters the frontline advocates for your compensation and pay transparency policies, and they need to be set up for success. 

This will include providing them with detailed information about the company’s compensation policies and practices, training them on active listening and having difficult conversations, and educating them on any legal or compliance requirements around pay transparency. 

The pay transparency movement is gaining momentum

By the end of 2023, roughly one in four American employees will be covered by some sort of pay transparency legislation, and that number will only increase. 

Getting ready to be transparent can be a long process, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. By improving your level of transparency, you can improve your company’s pay equity and DEI outcomes, attract top talent, and engage and retain your employees for the long term.

How ready is your company to contend with pay transparency requirements? Are you planning to put more structure around your pay or roll out new transparency initiatives this year, even if you’re not mandated to do so? Share your plans, opinions and additional advice in the comments. 

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