As Bob Dylan once said, the times they are a-changin’, and it’s essential that as HR professionals we’re proactively evolving our strategies to meet the rapidly changing needs of the modern workplace.

This also means updating our HR operating models so we can best design and implement the solutions required.

Keep reading to learn more about how HR operating models are evolving as organizations reimagine the function’s role in the future of work.

• What Is An HR Operating Model?
• How We’ve Been Doing Things
• The Need For New Operating Models
• Operating Models For The Future of HR
• Selecting The Right HR Operating Model
• Transitioning To A New HR Operating Model: Best Practices

Let’s dive in.

What Is An HR Operating Model?

Simply put, an HR operating model is a framework that details how an organization’s HR function will deliver the services that help enable the success of the rest of the organization. Ultimately, the goal of an HR operating model is to ensure that human resources is aligned with the organization’s overall strategy and goals and is able to support the needs of the business as effectively (and efficiently) as possible.

Typically, this framework outlines the following:

• The structure and design of the HR team (including roles and approval hierarchies)
• The processes and systems that will be used to deliver HR services, and 
• The metrics that will be used to measure the performance of the HR function. 

Per Deloitte, an effective HR model is grounded in the business needs the human resources function seeks to address. As such, it documents the following:

Which imperatives or outcomes HR is tasked with delivering—whether it’s workforce management (e.g. organizational design, talent management, succession planning, change management), operational services (e.g. benefits administration), workforce development (e.g. learning programs and products), or driving productivity and engagement outcomes (e.g. initiatives targeting employee experience, cultural transformation, and DEI).

Who is responsible for delivering these outcomes—strategic HR business partners (HRBPs), specialized centers of excellence/expertise (COEs), shared services centers (SSCs), project-based teams, HR technology—or a combination of all these elements. 

How these outcomes are delivered (and measured)—including applying strategic organizational design, implementing innovation frameworks, adopting core guiding principles (e.g. teamwork, customer focus), practicing goal setting and road-mapping for key HR objectives, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), and embracing data-driven decision-making. 

How We’ve Been Doing Things 

Today, the vast majority of organizations use some variation of the Ulrich Model, which seeks to act as a bridge between the priorities of leadership and the interests of employees.

Below, we’ll briefly dive into what this operating model looks like before exploring how this deeply entrenched model is starting to fall short of meeting the changing HR needs of modern organizations.

Feel free to skip to the limitations of the Ulrich model section if you’re already familiar with all this.

What Is the Ulrich Model?

Developed by David Ulrich in the mid-90s, the Ulrich Model is a popular framework for structuring an organization’s HR function to improve efficiency and efficacy. 

Particularly ubiquitous among large, customer-focused organizations, the original model splits the human resources function into four key roles:

1. Strategic Partner: working closely with business leaders to understand the organization’s strategy and goals and develop HR strategies that support them.
2. Administrative Expert: managing day-to-day HR operations such as payroll and benefits administration.
3. Employee Champion: working to improve the overall employee experience and promoting a positive work environment.
4. Change Agent: leading or supporting change initiatives within the organization and helping to create a culture of continuous improvement.

In most traditional HR operating models based on the Ulrich Model, these four HR roles are typically translated into three roles that support the HR leadership team, namely human resources business partners (or HRBP), shared services centers (or SSCs), and centers of excellence (or COEs). 

Role Definition Recap

Here’s a quick recap of what each of these roles entails. (Feel free to skip ahead if you’re already familiar with them!).

HR Business Partner or HRBP

A human resources business partner (or HRBP) is an experienced HR professional who works closely with an organization’s senior leadership and business units. 

An HRBP functions as a strategic consultant rather than an HR service provider and serves to align HR strategies with overall business objectives.

Centers of Excellence (COEs)

HR COEs or centers of excellence are centralized subfunctions within an organization’s HR function that provide specialized expertise, guidance, and support in key HR disciplines. These include recruitment or talent acquisition, talent analytics, and learning and development. 

The goal of a COE is to drive best practices to improve HR’s critical capabilities and ensure that HR activities align with the organization’s mission, values, and culture.

Shared Services Centres (SSCs)

An SSC is an IT-supported HR function that serves as a centralized point of service for multiple business units within an organization. It comprises the people, processes, and technologies needed to provide a range of HR services to employees, managers, and HR professionals.

The purpose of an HR SSC is to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of HR processes by standardizing HR services, automating HR transactions, and reducing administrative workload. An HR SSC typically provides services such as payroll processing, employee benefits administration, HR information systems (HRIS) support, and employee self-service portals. 

Limitations of the Ulrich Model

While the Ulrich Model has endured largely unchallenged for decades, it’s proving to be ill-equipped to deal with the constantly changing needs of organizations in today’s disruptive business environment.

Some of its core limitations include the fact that most HR business partners simply don’t have the bandwidth to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in HR, and, crucially, COEs often aren’t flexible enough to be truly agile and reactive to change.

This is especially relevant given the way job roles, teams, and reporting structures are changing in agile organizations. Any given employee’s responsibilities may change significantly from day to day or month to month. 

For example, it’s increasingly common for agile companies to use temporary, cross-functional teams to run innovation sprints to identify problems or opportunities and prototype (and test) solutions. These teams may form for a week, a quarter, or a year before the collaborators move on to different projects.

HR needs to find ways to accommodate this more horizontal way of working. To do that, it needs more flexible and agile HR operating models than the hierarchies and role architectures of the past—and the Ulrich Model—allow for. 

The Need For New Operating Models

Just about anyone working in human resources can attest to the fact that the role of HR has changed significantly in recent years. 

As a result, the mandate of the HR function is shifting and evolving rapidly to keep pace with the changes in the world of work:

From	To
Spearheading workforce planning and recruitment	Spearheading workforce planning and recruitment, with an increased focus on employer branding to attract and retain top talent
Implementing one size fits all benefits plans that meet the needs of most employees	Reviewing and adjusting employee benefits to individuals’ actual needs and priorities
Implementing HR software for administrative and record keeping purpose	Implementing HR software to digitize, streamline, and automate workflows and harnessing workforce analytics to benchmark and improve HR KPIs.
Providing company-specific orientations to introduce new employees to company culture	Facilitating employee onboarding processes that get new hires up to speed faster and more effectively
Leveraging annual performance management processes to provide feedback to all colleagues around progress against goals	Testing new, more effective performance management methodologies to better recognize achievement, develop potential, and match top performers to critical roles
Providing a broad selection of employee wellbeing resources to meet the needs of as many employees as possible	Delivering an outstanding employee experience that promotes employee health and wellbeing and combats workplace burnout
Empowering colleagues to ‘own their own development’ and giving them a broad base of resources to support	Driving effective succession planning at scale, promoting internal mobility, and developing leaders that inspire employees to do their best work
Leveraging annual engagement surveys to collect employee feedback and empower teams to drive their own changes	Taking intentional efforts to impact employee retention and boosting employee engagement levels
Creating role-specific learning and development programs	Cultivating a culture of learning that facilitates career growth and implementing learning and development programs to bridge skills gaps
Leveraging employee resource groups to empower employees to create more inclusive work environments	Actively fostering an inclusive and psychologically-safe organizational culture that emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace

As the mandate of the HR function continues to evolve, there is a clear need for new operating models that empower HR professionals with the strategy, resources, and flexibility to ideate solutions that create new value by balancing the organization’s priorities with those of its people. 

Operating Models For The Future of HR

HR transformation or evolution is unavoidable for organizations that want to remain competitive in the future of work. 

A recent study found that more than 90% of chief human resources officers (CHROs) in the United States and Europe expect significant changes to the HR operating model within the next two to three years. 

As HR grapples with its changing role, various new HR operating models are emerging. 

Some of the factors these new operating models have in common include: 

• An awareness of the growing need for agility and adaptability
• An increased focus on the employee experience
• The use of tech like workflow automation software and data analysis to augment HR’s capabilities.

But what does that look like, practically? How can we set up HR to enable businesses to deliver excellent end-to-end employee experiences?

Well, it depends on what the business strategy HR is enabling and the size of your org. 

Gartner argues that creating a flexible and effective HR operating model will necessitate four key changes:

1. Dividing the HRBP role into more specialized roles
2. Curating a pool of dynamic HR problem solvers
3. Implementing next-gen COE to provide agile support 
4. Developing a robust HR service delivery and operations team

McKinsey has identified eight innovation shifts driving five operating model archetypes, namely Ulrich+, Agile, EX-driven, Leader-led, and Machine-powered. The image below provides a summary of these operating models.

But perhaps my favorite emerging HR operating model is EY’s People Value Chain Model, which I’ll describe in more detail below.

The People Value Chain Model

EY has developed a new HR operating model it calls the People Value Chain model. This operating model consists of three components, namely people consultants, the digital people team, and virtual global business services (VGBS).

1. People Consultants

These HR consultants are skilled collaborators who work closely with senior executives and other functions to nurture human value and unlock potential. Instead of relying on depth of expertise in just one area, people consultants’ value lies in combining people skills with business acumen. 

Under the Ulrich Model, aspects of this work were handled by HR business partners and COE. However, EY found in its research that up to 86% of these (high-cost) roles’ time was spent on operational and administrative tasks that can be automated. 

Under the People Value Chain Model, these tasks are handled by the digital HR team, freeing people consultants to drive real change by listening and working in agile sprint teams that actively problem-solve and innovate HR services. These short-term projects may be run by expert contractors and gig workers instead of high-cost permanent teams.

2. The Digital People Team

This team researches and implements the latest and greatest HR technology to design and deliver accessible digital HR services that support employees. 

Some examples of tasks the digital people team might handle include 

• Implementing cloud-based employee self-service portals
• Digitalizing and automating admin-heavy workflows
• Improving recruitment processes using applicant tracking software
• Harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning tools (e.g. chatbots)
• Using software to survey and track employee engagement
• Leveraging data analytics for continuous improvement

Under the People Value Chain model, the tech-enabled digital people team may account for up to 50% of the total HR workload. This frees up HR professionals to focus on strategic interventions that improve the employee experience and drive business performance.

3. Virtual Global Business Services (VGBS)

The VGBS component takes a variety of disparate administrative and operational HR services and makes them virtual. 

This virtual service environment removes functional boundaries by consolidating tasks involving functions like finance, I.T., supply chain, and legal, as well as numerous time-consuming, low-complexity, repetitive tasks formerly handled by COEs and HR business partners. 

VGBS offers the ability to create and maintain a central global business services hub that consolidates the organization’s policies, services, and SOPs; while virtual “spokes” or in-country hubs store country-specific knowledge and facilitate localized service delivery.

By leveraging digitalization and automation, virtual global business services allow organizations to scale operational capabilities while reducing administrative costs.

Benefits of the people value chain model

As mentioned, organizations that recognize people as “value centers, not cost centers” perform better than their competitors in terms of both employee engagement and customer loyalty, driving more value for the business in the long term. 

As such, organizations that prioritize people strategy, effectively adapt to change, and build workplaces that inspire their people are better positioned to thrive in a world of work in which business success goes hand-in-hand with the employee experience. 

The People Value Chain model offers a comprehensive, agile approach to balancing the needs of the organization with the needs of its people while harnessing tech to improve operational efficiencies.

EY estimates that, combined, VGBS and the digital people team can handle an astonishing 72% of HR’s current scope of work.

Delivering these services at scale with the help of technology can free up substantial HR resources that can then be redeployed to deliver value in other ways—such as spearheading DEI initiatives or establishing learning and development programs.

Selecting The Right HR Operating Model

Every organization is different, so it stands to reason that each organization’s best-fit operating model will depend on its specific context, business model, strategic priorities, and operational needs.

Some factors that influence which operating model is the best fit include

• Business strategy, organizational goals, and needs. A company’s stage of growth and broader strategic direction should go hand-in-hand with its HR strategy. The HR operating model should serve to answer both long-term and immediate organizational needs, whether it’s improving employee retention, acquiring top talent, upskilling/reskilling existing talent, or managing change. This is your north star!
• Size and organizational structure. A business with a one-person HR team will naturally have different operational needs than an enterprise with a large HR department and multiple HR managers. For example, a large enterprise with an established reputation or culture may need to weigh the need for consistency/homogeneity throughout the organization’s various branches against the benefits of more flexible (and agile) operating models.

• Geographic reach. Whether a company operates in a single geographic region, nationally, or internationally, will impact its HR needs. For instance, more geographically-dispersed organizations will likely prefer a decentralized operating model with localized hubs over a more centralized operating model. 

• Workplace/workforce model. Companies with remote or hybrid workforces will have different HR operational requirements, e.g. a greater reliance on HR technology such as employee self-service portals.

• HR tech stack. An organization’s human resources information system (HRIS) and the capabilities of the tool(s) it uses can have an enormous impact on the way its HR function operates. For instance, many HRIS solutions can significantly improve HR’s efficiency and productivity by automating administrative processes. However, transitioning to a new HRIS can be a huge challenge in itself for some organizations with deeply entrenched HR software.

Some organizations may find that the best approach for them is to adopt a combination of multiple different operating models. 

For instance, a multinational organization might transition its Ulrich-based shared services centers with a version of the People Value Chain model’s virtual global business services while retaining certain specialized (or localized) centers of excellence.

Transitioning To A New HR Operating Model 

For many companies, making the change to a new operating model can be a daunting prospect. 

For those organizations, it’s important to acknowledge that transitioning to a new model doesn’t have to mean a wholesale overhaul or instantaneous system redesign. 

It can also be tempting to think that throwing the right tech at the problem will fix everything. 

However, without a thoughtful analysis of the organization’s existing systems, employees’ needs, current HR shortfalls, and the role HR is to play in making the business’ strategic vision a reality—not to mention careful implementation and change management—even the most robust HR technology will only be a stop-gap measure.

Here are some best practices for effectively transitioning to a new HR operating model:

• Engage stakeholders from across the organization 
• Give front-line HR a seat at the strategic “table” to align HR and business priorities
• Assess critical capabilities and identify areas for capacity-building
• Actively listen to employees to understand their needs and priorities
• Identify gaps and opportunities for incremental improvements
• Run sprints with cross-functional teams for a broader perspective
• Create an enablement roadmap with small, achievable milestones
• Adopt an agile mindset of implementing, testing, and iterating before launching at scale
• Measure the impact of changes through quantitative and qualitative data analysis and continue to make tweaks and fine-tune your operating model.

The world isn’t standing still, and neither should we. As always, best of luck, and l’d be interested to continue this conversation either in the comments or over in the People Managing People community.

Some further resources to help modernize your HR function:

• How To Attract And Retain Top Talent Through The Employee Life Cycle
• People Ops As A Product
• Key Human Resources Responsibilities: Creating Happier, Healthier Workplaces
• 40 HR Metrics You Should Track And Data Collection Best Practices
• 28 Forward-thinking HR books

For regular content on the future of work and HR’s role in it, subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter and join our supportive community of HR professionals and business leaders passionate about building organizations of the future.

The post HR Operating Models Of The Future: Evolving HR For The Modern Workplace appeared first on People Managing People.

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As any HR leader can tell you, crises are an inevitable part of the job. Tough situations pop up, and often they’re out of our control. How can companies weather a crisis and turn it into an advantage in the long run?

Rachel Rosenfeldt

Rachel is the Director of Commercial Strategy and Operations at Kotter, the consulting and training firm founded by leadership and change guru, Dr. John P. Kotter. In her more than 15 years with Kotter, Rachel has worked with organizations from the board room to the front lines. 

 

She has partnered with HR executives to activate their employees through the lens of human nature, organizational structure, and Kotter’s decades of research in leading change.

Hi Rachel, welcome to the series! Before we dive in, we’d love to get to know you a little better. What brought you to this specific career path?

Finding my way to working for John [Kotter] was actually very unplanned. If you’d told me 15 years ago that I would be working at a consulting firm, I would have laughed you out of the room… but here we are.

When I began working for John, he had recently retired from Harvard Business School and had transitioned into teaching executive education courses, researching, writing, and speaking.

One of my “onboarding” tasks was to sit in on one of his executive classes at HBS. I had come from owning my own (very) small business and had never been to business school, so I didn’t know what to expect. 

But John’s class had me on the edge of my seat. I remember laughing, crying, and questioning a lot of my own assumptions in those short eight hours.

As I have immersed myself more deeply into our work over the years, I am more and more motivated by what the ability to manage change can do for people.

My focus now is to do what I can to help as many people experience what I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of so we can create more leadership in more people and help us all keep forward momentum as we wade through this changing world together.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now?

One of the most fun things about my job is getting to play in all sorts of industries and help tackle all sorts of challenges. It means we always have exciting projects going on.

From a client side, I’m working with non-profits who are shifting the tides of tradition to evolve into 21^st century organizations. Two are focused on serving families and children, so the impact is real, visible, and immediate. 

Another client project is helping a large utility lead the efforts in climate change by transitioning the way we think about, produce, and consume energy. Obviously, that one has very real implications for the future of our planet.

The other exciting project I’ve been working on, which is a new frontier for Kotter, is the launch of our Certification Program.

For years, people have asked how they can get certified in Kotter’s change methodology. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked for an online learning program to elevate their leadership and change management skills. With this new program, we can finally say yes, and people around the world can access the tools and skills to better lead change.

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

Oh, there are so many people who have helped me see myself differently and take new perspectives. But I’m going to have to go with the cheesy answer and say my parents. Specifically, when I was in my early 20s, I had everything mapped out to get my MBA and then start a business. 

I’m a planner by nature, and people who know me well are usually hesitant to challenge me because they know how committed I am to a plan.

Two weeks before business school decisions were due, my parents sat me down and advised me not to go. They pointed out that I had seen an opening in the market for the business I wanted to start, and they told me they believed the better investment was in starting my business.

They said I could start the business now and, if it didn’t work, I could always go back to school. But I would never be able to get back the opportunity to start the business in this market if someone else stepped in to fill the need while I was in school.

I ended up not going to business school and not getting my MBA. I won’t lie… it took a long time to come to terms with it, but it was the best advice I’ve ever gotten. It changed the course of my career and my life, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Can you share your story of when an organization you’ve worked at entered into a crisis? What happened? What did you do?

I would first ask what constitutes a “crisis.” Yes, there are some indisputable ones like financial meltdowns, wars, tsunamis, pandemics, but challenges come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of severity.

I think so much of what makes something a crisis is our labeling it as one. That label has resulted from a sense that an organization, or people within it, have been thrown into survival mode.

So, when have I seen an organization thrown into survival mode?

A company we worked with a while back had made many acquisitions over the years. Over time, they successfully optimized their supply chain to the point where they had far more manufacturing plants than they needed, and there was simply no justification to keep them all in operation.

Closing plants meant people were going to inevitably lose their jobs. It was a “crisis” the leadership team could see coming. To the credit of the organization’s leaders, they did not submit to the panic of how inevitable the closure of their excess plants was.

What was your mindset during such a challenging time? Where did you get the drive to keep going when things were so hard?

The leaders knew that they needed to approach communication with deep, deep empathy, which they did. 

They showed up in person and spent hours in face-to-face conversations with everyone at the plants, shared the information they had, were honest about the information they didn’t have yet, and listened to everyone’s questions.

They also knew they needed to let the people who would be most impacted have a say in how the process would play out if they were going to keep morale up.

This company had the advantage of having had practiced these skills during less dire circumstances. They knew how to bring people in as not just recipients of change but also as agents of change. And their leaders had built confidence and trust in their people over time to feel prepared to tackle big challenges. 

The forming of this muscle allowed them to approach their problem in a very non-traditional way that allowed them to avoid the situation becoming a crisis from the start.

Can you please tell us how you were able to overcome such adversity and how the company ultimately turned the crisis into an opportunity or advantage? What did the next chapter look like?

Because this company had built such confidence and trust in their workforce over time, they were able to go through this process in a way that might make many leaders uncomfortable.

Instead of laying out a plan for each plant’s closure, the leadership team shared the closure dates and then left it up to the team at each plant to determine their own closure process.

The affected plants got together and found that everyone wanted three main things out of the process: to feel they had been cared for; feel confident in their next step; and to show the company that they could do this without losing productivity.

The plants worked through exit plans for each employee based on role, tenure, and desire (some were happy to be the first ones out, and others wanted to stay until the last day). 

They set up career counseling services and peer mentoring, and they continued their drive to show the executives what they were capable of. 

On the day the plants closed, about 18 months later, nearly everyone said they felt supported and excited about their next step, and some of the plants even reported higher productivity than they had the day before the plant closures were announced.

This case was really an inspiring story of turning what we would all expect to be a time of crisis into one of possibility and opportunity.

Based on your experience, can you share five actionable pieces of advice for HR leaders about how companies can turn a crisis into an opportunity or advantage?

1. Support executives to lead through the uncertainty

As I mentioned earlier, executives should be building their change muscles before a crisis hits instead of trying to create those skills in the midst of one. 

As leadership manages through challenges, both big and small, they will need support that allows them to navigate both their personal responses to the situation and the responses of everyone else in their organization while still keeping business priorities in line. 

HR leaders can be well-positioned to influence and support executives in these moments.

This support can take a variety of forms, such as coaching or team sessions and should be tailored to the culture of the executive team.

As a team, they may need to focus on achieving unity around their vision for what a successful outcome looks like (not just “putting out the fire”); they may need to open their aperture to new ways of thinking about a problem (not attacking it “the ways we always have”); or they may need to be pressed to bring people on board earlier (not withholding information until plans are set in stone).

2. Provide tools for people to regulate their “Survive channel” and better access their “Thrive channel.” 

Our most recent research at Kotter has focused on the neuroscience of change and the two radar systems that are constantly scanning the environment for threats and opportunities. 

The radar system that detects threats (our Survive channel) is much more powerful than the system that detects opportunities (our Thrive channel). It’s easy for our Survive channel to become overactivated with all the change happening around us constantly. People need a new set of skills today to be able to keep their survive responses at healthy levels.

There are a number of ways to build this capability over time but, in moments of crisis, simple practices can help reframe the situation.

For example, when you bring small groups together in an informal setting, it can foster empathy through the sharing of their reactions to change, which facilitates a brainstorm of what outcomes are possible if they band together to get through the change.

3. Encourage empathy and transparency in communications. 

There are two surefire ways to prevent people from seeing opportunity in crisis: allowing them to believe they are not being seen or heard and leaving a void of information that leads them to fill in the narrative. 

In order for people to see an opportunity and feel they can contribute to something positive, especially in times of uncertainty, they need to feel valued and trusted.

Empathy means not just sending broad communications that state, “We know this is a difficult time for all of you.” 

Instead, empathy requires taking the time to make connections, ask questions, and truly listen so those communications can be more meaningful and personal. HR leaders can use their unique knowledge of an organization’s overarching story to connect to employees and create a sense of togetherness that is critical in reframing a crisis.

Transparency requires frequent, honest, and open communication. During COVID, some of the most effective leaders held regular (sometimes daily) all-staff calls with updates to share the essentials of: “Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know yet, and here are decisions we are making.” 

Occasionally, there was nothing new to share, but they still got everyone together and gave people the chance to ask questions. This is just one example of a practice that can keep people moving forward together.

4. Invite people to participate in solving the problem

People have a default reaction to sense change is something that is being done to them and then shut down or reject it altogether. 

However, if they feel like they can be part of solving the problem, they are far more likely to find energy to see what is possible rather than everything devolving into “us versus them.”

Instead of a small group at the top devising a mitigation plan and imposing that plan on the organization unilaterally (which sounds harsh, but how many of us have seen this again and again?), leaders can frame the opportunity that exists amidst a sense of crisis and rally people to go after those opportunities together.

Following through with giving people avenues to contributing to how a challenge gets tackled is key. It can’t just be a suggestion box that leads to a black hole. Leaders need to give people the chance to try new things and operate differently. 

The great news is most of us have very personal, specific, and recent examples of seeing in practice during COVID, and we can use those stories as proof to convince leaders who may be hesitant to “unleash the troops” when so much seems to be at risk.

5. Use the challenge as an opportunity to innovate

Turning a crisis into an opportunity isn’t just about “finding a silver lining” in an otherwise dire situation. It’s about tapping into creativity and innovation to come out not just intact but ahead a workforce that still has plenty of gas in the tank to keep going.

Keep in mind that “simple” is not always “easy.” This can be as simple as creating forums to ask questions that often don’t get asked out loud, like “Why have we always done it this way?” or “What if we tried this instead?” or “What’s stopping us from doing that?”

What are a few of the most common mistakes you see leaders make when their company hits a crisis? What should be done to avoid them?

When a major challenge arises, leaders behave like any of us would when in survival mode. Their human fight, flight, or freeze instincts kick in, and they make decisions that are intended to protect their business and people. 

What this ends up looking like is a lot of closed-door meetings where big decisions are made, followed by a big announcement or cascaded communications. It’s hard to blame them – this is how we were all conditioned through years and decades of how their respective industry believes business should be done.

Leaders need to be careful, though, because what can be meant to protect people can inadvertently overheat a survive response across the entire company. And that’s not good.

While some decisions need to be made by a small group of senior leaders, the need to keep things overly “close to the chest” can be left behind.

We can look to the example I gave earlier of the company with the plant closures. Was everyone involved in the decision to close the plants? Definitely not. But the leaders of that company were transparent about the situation, they were open about what they knew and what they didn’t know, and they invited people in early to help design and execute how they would tackle the challenge.

What advice would you give to HR leaders and organizations who have yet to hit their first real crisis?

Practice the skills you will need to lead an adaptable organization now – don’t wait around for a crisis. 

Build and exercise the muscle you need to be able to adapt to change so your organization can tap into that muscle’s memory when people may find drawing on their natural survival instincts more comfortable, though not always the best choice.

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

There are so many people out in the world doing great things, so the movements I would want to inspire are already well underway. 

If you ask me which I care most about contributing to that help the most amount of people, I’d have to say education.

 Our educational model has relied on its deep roots that grew in the early 20^th century and those roots don’t serve the diverse, fast-moving needs of our society today.

It’s a herculean undertaking to turn this ship from a course it’s been on for decades, and it will take a lot of people aligned and activated around a unified vision to make a difference. 

Right now, there are a lot of people and groups working independently of one another to try to change the system. If I could wave a magic wand, I’d figure out a way to bring them all together under one common vision.

Thanks Rachel, great insights! How can our readers continue to follow your work?

Following Kotter is such a great way to keep up with the latest in what the firm and I are doing. You’ll find updates on the latest thinking around the science of change, articles to help you move through uncertainty, and plenty of ways to help your teams upskill and be prepared for the next set of challenges and opportunities.

Find us at our website, learn about our training courses, or follow us on social media (LinkedIn, Twitter).

Further insights from the series:

• Overcome And Build On A Crisis By Bringing The Right People Together

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Companies are always on the lookout for talented people. In this interview series, we talk to seasoned HR professionals to pick their brains for ideas and insights on finding the right talent for our organizations.

Miriam Groom

Miriam Groom is a leading corporate human capital strategist for some of the largest organizations in the country as well as the founder of Mindful Career, a unique career counseling program. She also continues to consult with Groom & Associates, one of Canada’s leading recruitment agencies. 

Hi Miriam, welcome to the series! Before diving in, we‘d love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us what brought you to this specific career path?

I was born and raised in Montreal, and have been working in the recruiting industry for nearly 15 years. 

At a certain point, while trying to manage clients and grow partnerships at Groom & Associates, I realized that I was experiencing burnout. 

This realization motivated me to create a new behavioural career coaching process that uncovers an individual’s ideal career. As someone who desperately needed this guidance during a challenging time, I developed the Mindful Career career coaching process by utilizing the most innovative approaches utilized by leading industry professionals.

The process is designed to be a transformative experience for individuals looking to find fulfillment in their professional lives while avoiding burnout. This approach is the result of my own healing journey and is intended to guide others towards success and fulfillment in their careers.

It’s been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a funny mistake you made when you first started and what you learned form it?

I’m not sure if I can think of something particularly funny to share, but there have been many learning opportunities. 

On one occasion, a client approached us with feedback about a candidate we had previously placed, stating that the individual lacked the necessary skills and motivation for the job. 

However, upon further investigation, we discovered that the candidate was actually facing a significant interpersonal conflict with their manager and felt uncomfortable communicating in that work environment, leading to a toxic relationship. 

This experience taught us that every situation is distinct, and there is no universal approach to retaining employees. Rather, it is essential to assess each individual’s unique needs and preferences to ensure a proper match, as success in a job is not solely dependent on one’s skill set.

I’d say that approaching every individual with a single approach or solution is a mistake many of us in this industry have made.

Are you currently working on any exciting new projects at your company? 

Despite the mass layoffs we’ve been seeing, many companies are still experiencing a shortage of labour, so the focus is on retaining employees, which is why we’ve been utilizing psychometric testing and behavioural assessments extensively.

For instance, we recently assisted a Canadian pharmaceutical company in recruiting ten new staff members. We employed different psychometric assessments to evaluate both the team leaders and individual employees to ensure that there would be cohesion and effective communication among the team, which is crucial for employee retention. 

Since every person has a unique stress profile, which affects their communication style differently, we analyzed this variable for each team member, enabling us to advise the team leaders on how to manage each individual in a manner that would minimize stress.

We also provided leadership training to help the team leaders improve their managerial skills and understand how to oversee their team members more effectively. 

It’s commonly believed that a good manager is someone who is exceptional in their field and has excellent professional skills. However, a good leader is actually someone who understands communication and motivation.

Managers need to have a solid comprehension of human behaviour rather than just practical knowledge in a specific professional area or function.

Hiring can be very time-consuming and challenging. Can you share with our readers a bit about your experience with identifying and hiring talent? What’s been your most successful recruitment-related initiative so far?

We’ve currently been helping several organizations with their DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives, and they’ve been really successful. As we know, diverse teams are better at solving problems than homogeneous ones, and diversity has a positive impact on a company’s profitability. 

We’ve helped by training HR teams on how to join key online communities, reach underrepresented groups with specific marketing tactics, and more. This has been incredibly rewarding!

Once talent is engaged, what’s your advice for creating a great candidate experience and ensuring the right people go through the process?

When it comes to matching talent to a manager, we always recommend psychometric evaluations. 

These assessments help managers better understand their team members. For the candidate, it helps them gain better understanding into whether or not they’ll be a good match for the team or the role in the first place. 

Once a candidate is engaged, a strategically-designed onboarding process is critical, and must be optimized from the employee perspective. 

I often consult with companies to analyze and audit their onboarding process to identify gaps, and to help them gain new perspectives. 

Based on your experience, how can HR and culture professionals work with the broader organization to identify talent needs?

To identify talent needs, organizations should invest in workforcing shaping and mapping. 

Workforce shaping is an essential HR practice that involves strategically analyzing an organization’s current and future talent needs. 

Through this process, HR teams can identify any talent gaps and make informed decisions on recruiting, hiring, training, and developing the necessary talent. 

By shaping the workforce, HR can also anticipate changes in the labour market, emerging technologies, and shifting customer demands, and adjust their talent management strategies proactively.

In addition to the workforce shaping process, psychometric testing can also help companies get a better picture of individual needs. 

Is there anything you see that recruiters, internal or otherwise, do regularly that makes you think, “No, stop doing that!”?

Too many companies post job descriptions without the salary. Transparency is key, and if the salary isn’t posted upfront, it must be shared during the very first interview.

It’s also important to be forthcoming about other critical details such as requirements for in-office time, hours, vacation, and exactly what the role requires. 

Lately, I’ve noticed some employers promising remote work, only to ask the employee to start coming into the office—that’s not acceptable.

Furthermore, too many HR professionals sell a role without truly understanding what it entails. 

I always recommend that a recruiter or hiring manager meet with someone who has actually worked in the exact position so they can better understand its daily activities and responsibilities.

With so much noise and competition out there, what are your top 3 ways to attract and engage the best talent in an industry when they haven’t already reached out to you?

1. Social media

I would say work on your social media presence above all, because so many HR teams don’t use it to their full potential. Use multiple platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and even TikTok to build your employer brand and showcase your company’s culture. 

You can create engaging content that highlights your company’s values, projects, and achievements to attract top talent. You can also use targeted ads to reach specific audiences and connect with potential candidates.

2. Creating personas

Creating “personas” For different groups you’re trying to attract can help you tailor your recruitment strategy to each audience.

A persona is a representation of your ideal candidate and includes details like their job title, personality traits, years of work experience (age) and other demographic criteria. Once you’ve created your personas, you can develop messaging and content that resonates with each group, making your recruitment efforts more effective.

3. Creating a strategy for each persona

Once you’ve created your personas, you can develop a recruitment strategy for each group that’s tailored to their specific needs and interests. For example, you might use TikTok to reach entry-level GenZ candidates, or attend networking events to connect with more experienced professionals. 

HR teams absolutely need to work with marketing teams or hire a marketing consultant to help them create the right kind of content depending on the “persona” or audience.

What are the three most effective strategies you use to retain employees?

1. Career Mapping

Providing career advancement opportunities and a clear path for growth and development is essential for retaining employees, especially less experienced ones. 

Employees want to see how their current role fits into their long-term career goals, and having a career map helps them to envision their future with the company. 

This strategy involves identifying the skills and competencies required for various roles within the organization and mapping out the development path for employees.

2. Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment

Employees need to feel safe to express themselves, share their ideas, and take risks without fear of retribution. 

A psychologically safe environment is one where employees feel comfortable speaking up, asking for help, and sharing their concerns without fear of negative consequences. 

This strategy involves creating a culture of trust, transparency, and open communication, where employees feel valued, respected, and heard. 

We also recommend that companies of a certain size retain a psychologist in-house to help with interpersonal conflicts and other issues that HR may not be fully equipped to deal with.

3. Hiring the Right People

The most effective way to retain employees is to hire the right people in the first place. Organizations need to ensure that their hiring process identifies the best-fit candidates for the company culture, values, and job requirements. 

Hiring the right people reduces turnover, increases productivity, and fosters a positive work environment.

Can you share five techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill?

1. Write transparent job descriptions including the salary

A transparent job description is critical for attracting the right talent for a role. Job descriptions should clearly outline the required skills and experience for the role, as well as the salary range. This approach ensures that candidates are aware of what they can expect from the role and will help filter out those who may not be a good fit.

2. Use social media to its fullest potential

Social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn are excellent tools for identifying potential candidates. HR teams can benefit from partnering with marketing teams or marketing consultants to create campaigns for various audiences.

3. Actively search resumes on free job board sites like Indeed.com and reach out

Free job board sites like Indeed.com offer a vast database of resumes for companies to search and find suitable candidates. So many employers post to these sites and wait for people to apply, but they might want to consider going this step further and searching for resumes.

4. Use your own database of candidates who applied in the past

Too many companies interview excellent candidates and then totally forget about them if they aren’t chosen for the role. Mine your own database!

5. Use psychometric testing to assess if a candidate is a good fit

Psychometric testing is a powerful tool that can help companies identify candidates who possess the right personality traits, cognitive abilities, and other essential factors required for the job. 

This type of testing is becoming increasingly popular and can be a valuable addition to a company’s recruitment process.

Thanks Miriam, some great insights! How can our readers continue to follow your work? 

My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriamgroom
Mindful Career: https://mindfulcareer.ca
Groom & Associates: www.groomassocies.com

Some more insights from the series

• To Find The Best New Talent, Leverage Your Existing Talent
• To Hire The Best Talent For Your Organization, Don’t Confuse Culture Fit With Attitude
• To Find The Best Talent, Have A Clear Understanding Of Your Values

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How many people in human resources can say they truly love their work AND have the opportunity to use their own software to make work better every day? Probably not many. 

I’m grateful I have the opportunity to work strategically on building a magnetic culture at Quantum Workplace.

Through employee listening—the process of collecting, analyzing, sharing, and acting on employee feedback—we were able to reduce our voluntary turnover by 8%, achieve a 100% response rate on our annual engagement survey, and recruit and retain top talent.

There are plenty of ways to create and implement an effective employee listening strategy. 

In this article, I’ll take you through:

• What is employee listening?
• The “why” for employee listening
• Employee listening strategies, methods, and best practices

Let’s dive in.

What Is Employee Listening?

Employee listening is more than sending your annual employee survey. It’s an organization’s holistic approach to understanding, validating, and improving the employee experience based on the continuous collection of feedback using multiple methods.

Without an effective continuous employee listening strategy, it’s darn difficult to understand what’s driving things like employee turnover or engagement. 

The “Why” For Employee Listening

All good relationships are built on effective communication, trust, and respect. It’s no surprise, then, that creating meaningful relationships with employees can positively impact organizations.

An important aspect of building strong relationships with employees is to listen to them, ask for their feedback, and demonstrate that you hear them.

A few reasons to invest in employee listening include:

• Showing employees that you care
• Obtaining real-time feedback to guide data-driven actions that improve the employee experience across the employee lifecycle
• Cultivating trust in leadership by empowering managers to engage their teams
• Infuse business strategy, priorities, and goals with ongoing employee insights
• Building an “employer of choice” brand for your company to attract and retain top talent
• Creating an engaging and successful workplace culture
• Developing sustainable approaches to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

I’ve seen the impact of successful employee listening programs. A few of my own outcomes include:

• Reduced voluntary turnover by 8% between 2021-2022
• Secured 100% participation in our 2022 annual employee survey
• Achieved an overall 87% favorable rating with employees within the last year
• Enjoyed 95% first-year retention of new hires.

The results are there to be had, now we’ll go into the how.

5 Employee Listening Strategies, Methods, And Best Practices

In the past, companies have focused on how to communicate to the workforce, a largely one-way process. 

Now it’s time to master two-way communication by listening to employees and demonstrating that the organization hears them—active listening for companies.

Here are my strategies and best practices for building high-impact employee listening programs.

1. Utilise Multiple listening channels for continuous listening

If you’re going to listen really well, you need multiple “listening posts.”

Companies that execute employee listening best use multiple methods of listening such as annual surveys, pulse surveys, focus groups, 1:1 meetings, town halls, exit interviews, and internal social platforms to gather feedback on an ongoing basis.

Some of the most impactful listening channels include:

• An annual employee engagement survey that is championed and implemented by a cross-functional team of stakeholders
• Regular one-on-one meetings between employees and their managers
• Lifecycle surveys during onboarding, on employment anniversaries (stay interviews or surveys and 360-feedback surveys), and upon separation from the company (exit interviews)
• Regular pulse surveys to measure employee perceptions on big organizational changes
• Skip-level meetings between senior managers and those two or more levels beneath them
• Buddy mentors for new hires that seek feedback during an employee’s first three months.

Sending out one bumper survey per year, while useful, isn’t going to give you enough fresh data to know if you’re making much of an impact on your initiatives throughout the year.

Continuous listening, using a mix of methods, means you have more and fresher data to work with.

2. Shared responsibility for capturing feedback

To be effective, employee listening shouldn’t be solely owned by HR or management.

Instead, the entire company takes responsibility with senior leaders setting the “listening” tone, HR driving and coaching for success, managers nurturing trust and engagement, and employees feeling empowered to contribute fully to the process.

Your culture should focus on people and how to make them successful. This focus starts at the top with the CEO and is reinforced throughout the organization.

Invest in developing great people leaders so they create an open dialogue with employees and intentionally listen to their feedback.

Leader development initiatives might include assigning a training manager to teach new managers how to be great “people leaders,” monthly manager meetings to share best practices, or a manager mentor program.

3. Demonstrated action taken as a result of listening data

Alexander Bell said, “The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.” 

These words are so very true for employee listening! If your team members don’t see how their feedback is informing the company’s actions, they won’t continue sharing.

You can take a few simple steps to ensure follow-up action from employee listening efforts:

• Use favorability metrics to identify high-impact areas of improvement and focus your follow-up efforts on areas with lower favorability. We use the 6-point agreement scale (strongly disagree – strongly agree) and that’s also what we recommend to our customers. 
• Combine all of your data in one place with analytics. This helps you identify trends faster and makes data actionable. We use our own software, that combines all the data and analytics, but you could use one or a combination of employee engagement software, employee survey tools, and HR analytics software.
• Select the critical few improvement areas. I recommend the 3-2-1 model.
  • Find three key results within your data. These could be highs, lows, or key comments. 
  • As a team, discuss the two most significant opportunities for improvement
  • Decide on one action you’re going to take for the benefit of your organization.
• Update on your progress. Close the feedback loop with regular progress updates on follow-up activities. Use multiple communication avenues to spread the message like email, videos, Slack (or another internal messaging tool), all-hands meetings, and update future listening surveys with new questions to demonstrate the organization’s adaptability and flexibility.

4. Feedback loops that are part of the company’s DNA

I’ve worked with numerous companies to implement employee listening strategies and the biggest challenge—and reward— is universally the same…actually doing the listening! As Amelia Earhart said, “The most effective way to do it is to do it!”

A quick case study. 

In 2021, I noticed voluntary turnover was a little high. Based on sources of feedback like manager 1-on-1s, I had an inkling it was related to gender.

When I looked at the numbers it turned out women were leaving the organization at double the rate of men.

So, I dove into our other listening methods and looked at a mix of quantitative and qualitative data from our engagement survey, exit feedback, and manager conversation and survey comments.

I used what people were telling us to solve why turnover was higher for women.

From there, I developed a plan of action and had a conversation about it with leadership to gather more insights and ideas.

We focused on areas for women, implementing programs, training, education, and opportunities to support women. For example, we looked at workplace flexibility to be supportive of working moms and enhanced our parental leave policy, and analyzed benefits that support women. 

We also brought in a speaker on elevating women’s voices and we celebrated International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. 

After we acted on employee feedback, we once again looked at what employees were telling us through our feedback channels. The female turnover rate had reduced by around 50%!

Other numbers also indicate our continuous feedback strategy is working. Quantum Workplace’s 4.8 Glassdoor rating far exceeds the average company rating of 3.3. 

Also, employee engagement survey completion and favorability rates are significantly higher than the 85.2% response and 73.5% favorability rates in the software and IT space. 

5. Strategies to encourage employees to speak up

Getting employees to speak up in the first place can be a challenge for many organizations. 

Communicating the “why” behind employee listening is a great start as people are much more likely to do something when they understand how it can benefit them. 

This is why messaging around requests such as surveys is important, treat it like sales copy and maybe ask your marketing team to help out!

Another aspect is psychological safety, or people feeling confident they can speak up and contribute ideas without being humiliated.

When people feel ‘psychologically safe’ they’re more engaged and more likely to contribute ideas and suggestions.

Building psychological safety starts with managers, for example how they give and receive feedback and share wins and failures.

For more on psychological safety check out how to create psychological safety in the workplace

Lastly, and related to both communication and taking action, is ensuring you acknowledge feedback and give reasoning behind any decision-making. 

“We acknowledge a lot of you have misgivings around X so we wanted to address this and we’re going to do XYZ.”

Get Listening

I can say from experience that investing in an employee listening program can improve culture, relationships, employee engagement, and help tie HR closer to business goals.

We’ve all experienced great disruption since COVID-19, and engaging employees in ongoing meaningful ways, including employee listening programs, can help us all thrive through the changes to come.

Another great example of employee listening in action is American Express’s use of surveys to help hone its flexible working model.

Some further resources to help you:

• An Easy Guide To Employee Surveys (With Questions)
• 8 Effective Ways To Get Employee Feedback (+ Pros and Cons)
• Skip-Level Meetings: A Powerful Leadership Tool
• How To Conduct An Effective Exit Interview
• 4 Ways To Measure The Employee Experience

You can join in the conversation around employee listening and other proactive HR initiatives in the People Managing People Community and subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter to receive regular content to help you progress in your career and build healthy, productive organizations.

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The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that aims to extend the reach of the internet beyond smartphones and computers. It’s also about connecting things and environments.

Objects that can be considered on the internet of things include things connected to the internet, such as a farm animal that has a biochip transponder and can be monitored by a heart monitor. A car can be equipped with sensors that can be used to monitor its tire pressure or other natural phenomena.

We tend to think of the Internet of Things as smart devices that can automate our lives. However, there are still a lot of questions about this concept. For instance, what makes an IoT device, and how can it be used to communicate with other devices? Let’s look further into this.

What Are the Benefits?

The various advantages of the IoT for businesses are usually focused on efficiency and agility. One of the main reasons is that it allows them to collect more data about their products and internal systems. This can help them make changes and improve their operations.

Manufacturers are now equipping their components with sensors to collect more data about their products. These devices can then transmit this data to a central hub, which can then be used to improve the efficiency of their operations. Another advantage of the IoT is that it allows companies to monitor their supply chains and improve their systems’ performance.

Communication

An IoT device should be able to collect and communicate data. For instance, an air filter can be equipped with sensors that can be used to check its cleanliness. A shipping company such as Maersk can use IoT sensors to monitor the temperature of a container. A consumer can then use a smart thermostat to monitor the temperature of their home.

Ability to Control

You should be able to control an IoT device from anywhere. For instance, a company can remotely turn on or off a piece of specific equipment, such as a washing machine. Using an app, you can also use the IoT to unlock a car or start its engine.

For example, Amazon’s Alexa can control various smart devices. For instance, if you want to lock your door, you can ask Alexa to do so. It can then trigger a sequence of events that will automatically close your smart blinds and turn off your lights.

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If there is one thing that human resources professionals have in abundance, it’s acronyms. Truly, the amount of acronyms we all use on a daily basis could form their own language, with dialects for the different industries we all work in. 

While the thought of adding more acronyms to your already overflowing vocabulary may sound daunting and unnecessary, I’m here to tell you that SMART Goals (and OKRs) are very much worth adding to your repertoire.

I’ve worked in HR teams where goal setting wasn’t taken seriously and, looking back, what was lacking was a proper framework to set goals and create action plans to attain them.

The smartest goals are those that drive both individual and team performance and are also working toward forwarding the ends of the organization as well; a true win-win scenario.

Here I’ll take you through a couple of goal-setting frameworks with a particular focus on SMART Goals. We’ll cover:

• What are SMART Goals?
• What Does OKR Stand For?
• HR goals examples

Let’s dive in.

What Are SMART Goals and OKRs?

The first question you are likely asking yourself is what are SMART Goals and what are OKRs? Well, I’m glad you asked! 

What are SMART Goals

As I mentioned, SMART is an acronym that breaks down like this:

Specific. Setting goals that have very focused outcomes by identifying what it is you’re trying to accomplish. The broader a goal is the more difficult it will be to track and actually achieve.

Measurable. After identifying what specifically our goal should be, we then need to define how we’re going to quantify the goal itself in terms of progress and completion.

Achievable. This is a very important caveat. While moonshots do have their place in the corporate world, generally speaking, it’s important for a goal to be attainable. A goal that is too grand to ever achieve is one that will never get done and can feel very demoralizing for those working toward that goal.

Relevant. Much like achievability, the relevance of a goal is also very important. Whether the goal is for an individual employee or a team, it’s important that it is relevant to the overall goal of the organization. An irrelevant goal can feel counterintuitive which may sap motivation from the employee or team working toward completing the goal.

Time-bound. The last, and arguably most important, step is to create a timeline or some kind of time constraint for the goal. We’ve all had open-ended goals before, and we all know how they usually turn out. Progress is made steadily, or not at all until motivation for the goal fizzles out due to more important priorities, or perhaps better-defined priorities would be the better way to put it.

So, an example of an HR goal using the SMART framework might be:

Reduce employee turnover from 15-10% by the beginning of Q3 next year.

It’s specific because it focuses on turnover, easy to measure because it has a %, achievable as 10% is about average, relevant because decreasing turnover will benefit the organization, and time-bound because Q3 is a timeframe.

What Does OKR Stand For?

Now SMART goals are not the only framework for goal setting that exists; as I mentioned at the beginning of this article there is another acronym to learn for this called OKR. 

OKR stands for Objective and Key Results and acts as a goal-setting framework that can be used to help measure and track your goals. 

The goal of this framework is to break down the objectives of your goals into measurable key results, usually 3-5.

You see this kind of approach used by human resources departments to ensure all employees working toward a goal have a clear idea of the objectives at hand, the measurements which will be used to track those objectives, and the milestones along the way. 

An example of an OKR for HR might be to standardize performance management across the business (objective), with the key results being to select a performance management system, roll it out across the org, and then gather employee feedback.

As you’re likely surmising, the similarities between SMART goals and OKRs are readily apparent with both frameworks being popular.

You can check out some HR OKR examples later, but below we’ll look at some SMART goals examples.

HR Goals Examples

Since we’ve now finished adding two new acronyms to your HR dictionary, I bet you’re wondering what some HR goals might look like in practice. 

Setting some goals in your HR department can help improve efficiency, increase engagement of the employees on your team, and increase transparency to the objectives of your department. 

With that said, let’s get into some examples of what SMART goals might look like in practice.

1. Employee Engagement SMART Goal

Increasing employee engagement at the top of everyone’s mind lately, and for a good reason. 

Recent statistics have shown that only 34% of Americans are engaged while at work, and 41% of the global workforce is considering quitting their jobs. 

What these numbers should tell you above all else is that there is an opportunity, or perhaps a vital need, to reach your employees so that they feel engaged and you don’t experience high levels of turnover.   

Creating a SMART goal to increase engagement would need a specific and measurable objective, along with a time frame; we already know this goal is relevant and achievable. 

Our goal could be to increase employee engagement by 10% within the next 6 months, and we could measure this with the results of regular employee engagement surveys.

2. Effective Hiring and Onboarding SMART Goal

We all know that replacing someone is significantly more expensive than retaining them.

As such, we want to be sure that, when it comes to talent acquisition and onboarding, we are doing so effectively and in a way that will create a positive employee experience for new hires and help with employee retention rates. 

If we were to create a SMART goal for this objective it could look something like this: reduce turnover of newly hired employees by 10% in the next year. 

This gives us a specific goal, a way to measure it in terms of turnover, especially turnover within the first 90 days, along with a time frame to gather meaningful data. 

We have to believe this goal is achievable, and it can certainly be relevant if there is a high degree of turnover in your organization. 

The other great thing about this goal is the degree to which you can build more goals of this. 

If you increase retention in newly hired employees, you can then pivot to retention across the entire organization, which may overlap with your company culture, and so on.

3. Increase Team Collaboration SMART Goal

It can be difficult to foster team collaboration and camaraderie, especially in remote teams. 

These types of collaborations can be important not just for improving morale but also for checking in on the well-being and mental health of remote employees who you may not see frequently.

A SMART goal here could be to increase the number of team collaboration meetings by 10% over the next six months. This is a goal that should be achievable as all it really requires is increasing meetings or strategy sessions with your team.

4. Improve Employee Experience SMART Goal

Creating a great employee experience across the employee life cycle is key to retaining and attracting top talent. Something you can use to track this is the employee net promoter score (eNPS) which tells you how likely current employees are to recommend your organization as a great place to work. 

Therefore, an example goal could be to increase our employee net promoter score from 55-65 over the next year.

From here, you could maybe combine with OKRs to lay out some key results that will help you achieve this goal e.g.

• Write a flexible working policy and have it approved and communicated in the next 60 days.
• Survey all workers to gather ideas on how we can improve the working environment.

5. Empower Executives as Cultural Leaders SMART Goal

A phrase you’re likely familiar with is that change starts at the top. This is true for many changes, but perhaps culture most of all. 

The most impactful leaders are those who are highly visible and truly embody the cultural values they want to see in the organization.

If your organization boasts about work-life balance, then you need to make sure your executives are leaving on time every day because, if they don’t, no one else will. 

A good goal to create around this would involve looking at your cultural values and making sure your executives are leading by example. 

To provide a practical example, we could make a SMART goal wherein the aim would be to increase participation by executives in culture planning sessions by 25% in the next 6 months. 

This goal itself provides a call to action for the entire organization. 

We’re going to start actively working on our culture and we’re going to make sure that at least 25% of executives participate in these sessions, or at least that is our goal. This sets a metric for leadership but also shows all employees that we are taking culture seriously by involving the key stakeholders of the organization.

This may also require some training or education to your executives where you remind them that the organization as a whole looks to them to set the tone for the culture.

6. Increase Emphasis on Learning and Development SMART Goal

Earlier we cited some statistics about current workforce trends, specifically how we’ve been seeing higher rates of attrition across the board. 

In an environment like this, it’s important to make sure your employees have the skills they need to succeed in their jobs, and not just for the current moment. It’s also important to make sure you’re upskilling employees for the future needs of your organization. 

This is another goal that is symbiotic in nature—it’s good for the organization which can address any current or future skill gaps that exist and it’s beneficial for the employee’s own development. 

If we think of an example of a SMART goal focused on training we could aim for something like increasing the availability of training programs and courses by 20% in the next year.

7. Create Employee Volunteer Programs SMART Goal

With the shift in generational participation in today’s workforce, organizations are finding that different things are being asked of them than with prior generations. 

We’ve seen that Millennials and Zoomers are much more socially conscious than their peers, and what is interesting is that they’re expecting a level of participation from their workplaces which historically has not been done.

A tangible goal here could be to create a volunteer program and aim for 25% of employees to use the volunteer program in the next year. 

There are a lot of angles we can take in designing the program but the goal is to make sure employees actually contribute to the program. 

If they don’t, it then becomes a question of why and making a course correction, but it’s our SMART goal that will tell us how successful the program is or is not. 

8. Leadership Development SMART Goal

Do you have the right employees in the right positions? Do you have a plan in place in the event one of your leaders abruptly leaves your organization? 

Leadership development is a critical area that you need to be focusing on because it can hugely impact the performance of your organization.

Creating a SMART goal around leadership development is one area where you have a lot of paths you can take. 

You can create a program for your high-potential employees, you can work on succession planning to make sure you have a plan for all the critical roles in your organization, or you can even examine your selection criteria for leaders to see if there is room for improvement. 

As an example, if we’re starting from scratch, we could make a goal to create succession plans for 50% of key positions in the next 6 months. 

As discussed this is a goal that is very specific, easy to measure in terms of having a succession plan or not, and most of all it is relevant and time-sensitive.   

9. Management SMART Goal

As we’ve mentioned, SMART goals don’t just have to be for a team, they can be individual as well.

If you’re someone who struggles with time management, whether that’s meeting deadlines or wanting to improve your work-life balance to avoid burnout, a SMART goal can help to hold yourself accountable. 

An example would be to create a goal for yourself where you commit to logging off on time for at least 75% of the days you work in the next 3 months. 

A goal like this is a good reminder to make sure your SMART goals are achievable; if you make the goal 100% of the time you would be setting yourself up for failure. 

However, it’s also alright if you don’t meet your goal, if logging off on time 3 days out of 4 is a goal you feel is realistic, or you would like it to be, then make that your goal. 

If business needs do not allow for it and you end up at less than 75%, you can always reassess and make your target more realistic for the next 3 months; or maybe there are some changes you can make at work to get closer to that number?

The point is, it’s alright if you don’t always hit your goal; what you do in those cases is look critically at why you missed your target and make adjustments moving forward. After all, a mistake you make once is a lesson, and a mistake you keep making is a decision.

10. Earning a Human Resources Certification SMART Goal

Another example of an individual goal and one that many human resources professionals are likely aiming for to help their careers to help their own professional development. 

Many HR pros aspire to earn a credential to show their expertise in the field, and these credentials are highly valued with some employers offering incentives in terms of bonuses or raise for completion. 

What is great about creating a SMART goal for yourself to earn certification is the time aspect, many people can procrastinate and keep pushing things off forever. 

By design, a SMART goal will give you a deadline to stick to which can be just the motivation some people need to finally take that next step in advancing their career.

Whether you set the goal for yourself to earn a credential in 3 months or a year, setting the goal and sticking to it is certainly a smart decision you can make to keep yourself motivated.

Use Goals To Drive Operational Performance

I hope by now you see the value in creating HR goals to help drive team performance, focus your initiatives, and get projects through the door.

If you’re an HR manager reading this, you’ve probably already realised that utilizing the SMART or OKR frameworks is a great way to hold yourself and your team accountable and report back to leadership on your performance.

Some further resources to help you set goals and drive the business forward:

• How To Write SMART Goals (With Examples)
• 10 Best Goal Setting Software for Keeping Teams On Track in 2023
• What Are OKRs And How Can You Use Them?
• Putting Organizations On The Path To Success Using The Cascading Goals Method
• The Real Intent Of OKRs – It’s About Purpose (with Nolan Hout from Unlock OKR)
• 10 Best OKR Software of 2023 Compared & Reviewed

Subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter to receive regular articles to help you grow in your career and build healthy, productive organizations.

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Job interviews are a two-way process—you’re interviewing potential new hires, but they’re also interviewing you. It’s therefore important that you present yourself and your organization in the best possible light so as to not put off your top candidates. 

After all, most people don’t want just any job, they want the right job. 

According to a recent study, over 70 percent of job seekers have experienced “new-job regret” and 1 in 5 would quit within a month if their new job isn’t what they expected.

Leaving so soon is disruptive for both employers and workers, so ensuring your interview process is transparent and honest about what the role involves and how the company runs is vital in avoiding this. 

To help your interview process run smoothly, our researchers have investigated the most common red flags candidates say would put them off accepting a job offer. To do this, we reviewed over 5,100 Reddit comments from jobseekers, exposing the terminology and features candidates reveal are the biggest interview red flags. 

The number one red flag is the use of “family” to describe a company. What was once deemed as an attractive tagline by HR staff to entice potential talents is now quite the opposite. 

Almost one in five (18%) jobseekers from the study would be put off accepting a position if they were to hear “family” mentioned in an interview.

This could be in relation to a “family owned” business due to worries about nepotism, or it could be relating to recruiters describing the work environment and team dynamic using language like “we’re a family”.

In recent years, many have argued this concept endorses unhealthy norms like blurred boundaries, an exaggerated sense of loyalty, and a lack of empowerment.

The boundaries you have with your family are most likely quite different to those in the workplace and so creating clear, professional boundaries at work helps to maintain a safe, supportive, and favorable environment for all employees. 

In second place, 14 percent of candidates view a perceived desperation to hire or extreme staff turnover as a red flag. 

On average, a company will experience an 18 percent turnover in its workforce each year. However, if candidates are seeing the same job posting over and over, it could indicate your company is having a hard time keeping someone in the role. 

It’s not uncommon for candidates to ask about turnover in interviews, and if you respond with an extreme figure (very high or very low) this may be a cause for concern in some people. Having said that, it’s better to be honest about your organization’s situation rather than mislead potential hires. 

When discussing desperation to hire, jobseekers raised concerns about being offered a job during or very soon after the first interview. Concerns were also raised about being asked to start immediately, as it could indicate the previous position-holder left unexpectedly or on bad terms. 

If your organization is looking for someone to start quickly, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, explaining the reasoning behind your preferred start date to the candidate will likely put any issues at ease. For example, you may have won some new business, or are restructuring to give employees more time for training and development.  

Mentions of overtime are the third biggest red flag for candidates during interviews (13%). It’s one thing to be expected to work long hours during a busy season (tax time for accountants, for example), but it’s another when employees are expected to work overtime all the time, especially if it’s unpaid. 

For instance, if you tell interviewees that most employees ‘stick around after hours’, it’s normally code that overtime has been deemed an obligation and it’s frowned upon to only work your contracted hours. If this isn’t the case, then mentioning overtime at this early stage is likely to put candidates off, particularly if they’re keen to keep a healthy work/life balance. 

Inappropriate questions (9%), low salaries or upselling perks to “make up” for them (8%) and high or unrealistic expectations (8%) complete the top five biggest interview red flags. 

How to set healthier expectations and avoid giving off red flags when running interviews: 

• Ensure the job description is clear and free of jargon 
• Be transparent about salaries and financial compensation, without using basic perks like “free tea and coffee” to bolster your offering 
• Outline learning, development and career path opportunities clearly so potential hires can visualize progression and a long-term future with your organization 

• Offer transparency about why the predecessor left the role or why the role is open 
• The interview should feel like a conversation, not an interrogation 
• Follow up with the candidate in a timely manner and offer constructive feedback when possible.

Methodology 

People Managing People used the Screaming Frog SEO Spider to scrape 5,172 comments from a Reddit thread on “Red Flags in an Interview that Reval a Job is Toxic” on 16^th February 2023. We reviewed the comments to identify what candidates view as “red flags” when interviewing for a role and grouped these into categories. 

We then identified the number of times a red flag was mentioned in each category and calculated the percentage of times each category appeared proportionally to the total number of red flags.

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Q1 of 2023 is in the rearview mirror (where did that go?), so I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on some of the prevailing recruitment trends shaping hiring this year and beyond. 

Also, unlike a lot of these articles I come across, I’ll provide some tips for how you can adapt your recruitment process to avoid any pitfalls and get ahead of the competition.

1. Layoffs

Not a week has gone by in 2023 (although the trend arguably started in 2022) that we haven’t heard about a sizeable layoff round from either a big tech company or even some of the mid-sized ones too. 

Conversely, every recruitment webinar or seminar I’ve been to recently keeps talking about the “war for talent” without acknowledging that in some areas there is going to be an influx of people!

These layoffs change the landscape of hiring in a few ways:

You need to change your thinking that “the best candidates are the ones who aren’t looking”

This mindset has been outdated for a long time and is clearly irrelevant now. I’ve had to argue against this assumption many times when hiring managers ask me to target the still-employed people from companies that went through layoffs because somehow they believe that’s where top talent is.

When we’re talking about laying off thousands of people, or more than 5% of the workforce, this really isn’t the case. We need to stop overvaluing people who were not laid off—let’s not forget about the halo bias!

There are likely going to be a lot more candidates for your job openings and you will need to make sure you have a recruitment strategy on how to streamline but still assess well 

This is especially the case if you’re not used to the influx of candidates and resumes to go through. Keep the focus on your team’s needs and don’t get sucked into the “eventuality hiring” which likely resulted in a lot of these layoffs in the first place. 

Eventuality hiring means you hire “in case you need this skillset way down the line” rather than now or in the mid-term.

Don’t get complacent. Just because there are a lot of candidates out there doesn’t mean that every role will get an influx 

These people will come from a specific sector and with specific skill sets that won’t be suitable for everyone. 

The layoffs so far have been from a very specific subset of industries, so keep on top of your search, employer brand, and company culture game to keep attracting candidates. 

Let’s not forget that, before the layoffs, in many markets there existed a massive talent gap that the new influx of candidates is barely going to fill. A great candidate experience is still the make or break!

Beyond Layoffs

This is tough to predict but, going off of previous cycles, the market will eventually recover and the influx is going to reduce. 

This is the opportunity for companies to snag some amazing people who can make or break their company and help them weather the storms. 

Focus on getting the right people for right now and ensuring that roles in human resources, legal, finance, and risk are covered sufficiently for your area. We’ve seen how that pays off later down the line.

Companies that deprioritise retention are also likely to suffer down the line as retention is not something you just switch on and off.

2. Pay Transparency

With the rise of legislation and schemes around the world, companies are feeling pressure to disclose salaries in job adverts.

For years there has been a cohort of recruitment and HR professionals advocating for pay transparency as the benefits are numerous (saves everyone time; helps close the gender pay gap).

However, I also understand that, in some situations, it’s difficult to display pay ranges in a simple way—especially with the rise of remote work.

I’m of the school of thought that it’s not realistic to pay everyone across the world the same, and I’ve had many candidates argue with me on that point. All I say is that I live in London and I can’t move out to a cheaper destination.

If someone in Bulgaria (where I’m from) gets paid the same as me in London, I am in a sense penalised for not being able to move. This usually shifts the mindset of people when they realise that it’s all relative really. 

Pay transparency can be helpful here too, but it’ll probably take the form of pointing the candidate to a part of your website where you have local salary benchmarking. This will take time and effort but it’s worth it.

What we’re seeing now is pay ranges from $60K – 400K (I’m looking at your Netflix!). This is what I call box-ticking pay transparency. Does the legislation require a pay range for the role? Put something that is not really a guide at all.

As mentioned above, I understand it’s not easy to do in some cases, but, at the same time, it’s not a problem without solutions.

It takes time and resources to research pay ranges, which so far very few companies are willing to invest the time in. I think to be competitive in the landscape beyond 2023 you will have to put in the effort. 

Thankfully there are tools that can help with that--Figures, Glassdoor (to an extent), and Payscale to name a few. Some are quite nascent in their development, but, with more participation in the pay transparency movement, their dataset will get more accurate and helpful.

As a side note, something I think we should all consider beyond 2023 is the remote hiring trend and pay in general. 

A lot of companies have realised that they can recruit a good workforce remotely (subject to evolving laws of course) for a lot less than they will have to pay in expensive cities like San Francisco, New York, or London.

I can’t help but wonder how that will affect and potentially ruin the local salary economy if a lot of companies descend upon a country and hire the local workforce for salaries that are still cheap to them, but impossible for local employers to match. 

Something to watch out for as governments may try to legislate on this. It’s almost like a brain drain without emigration.

3. Excitement About AI And Experiments

The number of posts I get on my timeline about artificial intelligence: Midjourney, ChatGPT— even my favourite tool Notion got an AI upgrade. 

This truly is an exciting time when such tools are made accessible to the wider population and no, artificial intelligence isn’t sentient… yet!

For the moment it’s still something that requires a lot of guidance, but it can save a lot of time for sure. Here are some things I think it can be used for and where you need to verify its work.

Writing a first draft of a job description

Perhaps controversial, but there are a lot of examples of job descriptions it’s trained on and I’ve tested it quite a bit. 

ChatGPT specifically can come up with pretty decent starter job descriptions. Notice the word starter! 

You will still need to bring the job description to life for your specific role and company and edit it as appropriate, but it can save you some time. Also, job descriptions are not job adverts so you will still need to do the heavy lifting on that.

Get ideas on your branding/candidate outreach/candidate communication copy 

ChatGPT is really quite good at rewriting copy in a particular style or tone. This could be useful if you’re trying to reach out to a demographic that is a bit different to what you’d normally reach out to. Of course, still review and exercise caution.

Sourcing Boolean strings 

How many times have you been tripped up by a missed bracket or quotation mark? I know I have, but AI can be quite helpful there.

I asked Bing with AI to write a boolean search string for a software engineer with Python in Europe, then I asked it to break down Europe into separate countries and voila.

Jumping off point for an interview question bank 

Sometimes you can get quite stumped on where to start with interviewing questions. ChatGPT is quite good at generating a few to get you started, but do not rely on it wholesale.

Chatbots to answer candidate questions

Potentially, chatbots could be employed to answer candidate application questions, but I haven’t seen an applicant tracking system or careers site reliably implement one yet.

General caveats

As you may have noticed above, I always say to review the work AI produces. It is still really important because, while it is really impressive so far, it is still a facsimile of intelligence at best and it can get things really, spectacularly wrong at times. 

OpenAI themselves (the creators of ChatGPT) have admitted to bias being baked into the system and sometimes the AI experiences what it calls “hallucinations” AKA completely wrong answers but written in a compelling way. GPT-4 may address some of these it’s still very much a work in progress.

Also, work on your prompts. Like with any machine, the results are only as good as the instructions you give.

Evaluating AI

Now I’m no doomer and gloomer about AI, if anything I’m quite excited by the possibilities. But we have to be realistic. 

Notice that nowhere in the examples I gave for AI use is the automation of tasks on actual hiring decisions or CV reviews.

That’s because I am of the firm belief that AI is still practically an SEO keyword search when it comes to CV reviews—and I know it is. 

As far as AI is concerned, words have no real meaning. So what you’ll be encouraging is CVs akin to those early 2000s websites where they would type words in white on a white background to appear higher in the searches in order to game the SEO system of the time.

What if a candidate excels at their work but has a condition making it harder to write a CV? We’ve built in bias against them by using AI to filter CVs. I’ve bought applicant tracking systems for a while now and if they have this feature I always asked how exactly their “wonderful AI” is scoring CVs. 

I’ve never gotten a satisfying answer. I can train humans to minimize bias, but can I do that with a “black-box” AI? AI may reject candidates based on superficial CV details, not their abilities. We need to consider how to prevent unfair discrimination from AI we can’t fully understand or control.

Hiring is still a higher-level, nuanced decision that cannot be outsourced to AI yet. If you would like a demonstration of how things like this work, check out this video where ChatGPT was asked to answer Physics questions. It did well in things like coding and formula but, in higher-level reasoning, it completely flopped.

We’ve gotten to a stage where not even the creators of the systems know what the reasoning behind their decisions is, they are so vast and complex. 

ChatGPT is a bit better in that you can ask it why it reached a certain decision, but the depth of explanation and reasoning is not great. And would you do that for every single CV? 

If a hiring manager came up to me and was rejecting a candidate “just because” I’d be ringing alarm bells, so why would I let AI off the hook?

4. Interview Processes

As someone who is currently looking for a new role as I write this, I am noticing interview processes getting longer and longer again. 

On average, the hiring processes I have been in recently have been around 6 stages, which is fair enough because they’re for leadership roles. 

But the same has been happening for a few contractor roles I’ve interviewed for as well. Recruitment methods as a whole seem to be moving backward, with more exclusionary testing and focusing on irrelevant things like how you did in high school (true story!).

I had a very frank chat with a few leaders on why they feel like they needed to do this and, through some poking and prodding, what came out is that there are so many candidates vs so few roles at each company now that they want to be really careful about who they add. 

The instinct when it comes to being careful with hiring is of course longer recruitment processes. Get as many people as possible to interview someone to make a decision by committee. 

It seems the more tremors there are on the stock market, the more unsure people become of hiring altogether. For the moment, with the way the market is, candidates seem to be more receptive to this change and the pattern is shifting again. Let’s see how long it lasts.

When the talent market stabilises a bit, we will likely see the call for more efficient processes return and pick up where it left off before the current turbulence.

This is why I still will advocate for not necessarily short and rushed interview processes, but efficient ones instead.

Introducing efficiency makes the process faster without sacrificing on the quality of the insights gained. Talent acquisitions will need to pick up the pieces again to make sure that there’s a balance between not wasting time and properly assessing new hires.

Invest in interview training and preparation!

Related read: The Key To Focused, Engaging Interviews (+ Template)

5. The Decline Of DEI Hiring

Having spoken to a few organisations focused on diversity in specific industries, I have noticed that, on top of less DEI hiring, there are also fewer companies that are looking to work with such organisations and support them (e.g. Women in tech).

It does seem like there is a bit of a cooling off from companies to have either a diversity-focused recruitment team or a DEI lead within their HR team. I think this is likely because of three reasons (so far that I could find):

1. The initial impulse was all for show and, now that budgets are tight, these are seen as roles that can be easily trimmed
2. There was a backlash from the market on the tokenism of the whole scramble to hire these roles
3. All the roles are filled (unlikely, but it’s an option!).

I personally see DEI as the responsibility of all of us, not just HR but everyone in the company. However, I am concerned about this development.

Revival of meaningful DEI change

Where I think a lot of companies can win is starting to show not just that they have hired a DEI lead or, god forbid, a “diversity recruiter”, but have taken meaningful steps towards being inclusive. 

This can take the forms of things like:

• Putting your money where your mouth is by supporting relevant groups
• Participating in and even leading events that contribute towards the cause 
• Training folks on how to spot and minimize their biases
• Taking a skills and experience-based approach to hiring e.g. removing university degrees from the requirements 
• Working with your teams to include them in the mission of why DEI is important and helping them understand their place in helping (e.g. referring or advocacy)
• Creating alternative paths towards a certain career (e.g. pathways for career breakers, candidates without a university degree, or apprenticeships)
• See where you can bake flexibility into systems like PTO or working times
• Ensuring your working culture is not tolerant of exclusive behaviour.

The major thing is that these have to be consistent efforts that help as many people as possible (and, of course, your organisation as well).

Closing Thoughts

There have been a lot of things rocking the world of hiring. Like with any disruption, you can either look to patch up the cracks or use this as an opportunity to try something new from the ground up.

This is an opportunity for companies that want to stand out and adopt the positive trends and get ahead of the negative trends arising. 

Regardless of which one you want to focus on make sure you get your basics of recruiting—employer branding, sourcing, candidate experience and good interviewing—in order. They will never steer you wrong.

Some further resources to help you hire the best talent for your organization:

• How To Create An Efficient, Sustainable Growth Hiring Plan
• How To Create A Great Candidate Experience (Even Through Rapid Scaling)
• How To Give More Effective Candidate Feedback
• 10 Key Recruiting Metrics To Focus On (And 12 Advanced)
• Your Employer Value Proposition: An In-depth Dive
• Candidate Sourcing Tips To Help You Find The Best Talent

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

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Skills mapping is a useful tool with the power to revolutionize talent development in organizations of all sizes and industries. 

By creating a clear picture of employee skills and mapping them to specific roles within the organization, companies can gain valuable insights into their workforce capabilities and develop targeted strategies for improving employee skills in alignment with top-level organizational goals.

In this article, I’m going to describe the benefits and process of skills mapping in your organization. Hopefully, I’ll inspire you to think about skills mapping in your role, on your team, and at your company. We’ll cover: 

• What is skills mapping?
• Benefits of skills mapping
• The skills matrix
• How to run a skills mapping project
• Skills mapping tools

What Is Skills Mapping?

Skills mapping is the process of identifying the skills needed for each role and team and mapping them against the skills of each individual employee. The resulting skills maps are then used to develop targeted training and development programs that enhance employee skills to be more aligned with organizational goals.

Skills mapping helps to clearly define paths to different roles within the organization and what is needed to get to the next level for any existing or prospective employee. The three main areas of skills mapping are:

• Skills mapping for individual roles
• Skills mapping for teams
• Skills mapping for individuals

Organizations that want better employee and organizational performance may consider investing in skills mapping because it provides a targeted, focused approach to employee development.

This can mean the difference between your business being open or closed on a short-staffed day. Skills mapping will help you to optimize your workforce planning efforts by ensuring you have the right people with the right skills available when needed.

Skills vs competencies

In many circles, skills and competencies are interchangeable when talking about what is expected and what people could do. 

As a result, sometimes skills mapping is referred to as competency mapping, but this is not always a consistent belief! 

For some, skills are a more simplistic view, measuring a person’s ability to execute a specific task or activity successfully and skillfully; the ability for someone to do something. 

In contrast, competencies are described as reflective of a person’s knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs demonstrated through behavior that allows them to achieve specific goals. 

So what’s the difference? 

For me, having a skill means “Yes, I can do that thing that I know how to do, in a way I have done it before” whereas a competency is more focused on “Yes, I can handle a scenario where this needs to be done or solved, even if in a slightly different way.” 

In my view, skills are more simplistic than competencies, and competencies have more depth and flexibility in application over time. If you want to nerd out on the differences, learn more here!

Here I’ll refer to skills mapping, but this process can also be applied to competencies as well!

Whatever your choice, an investment in mapping skills and/or competencies, and developing focused talent development plans to enhance those capabilities, is a wise investment that pays dividends over time. 

Benefits Of Skills Mapping

A 2020 study by Deloitte found that the best-performing companies are those who invest in developing internal opportunities and career paths.

In organizations that invest in talent development, hard-to-find skillsets are developed in-house, which supports effective succession planning and overall leadership and competency development.

These world-class companies are the same that have been growing and leading the pack for years—they might just be on to something when it comes to skills mapping! 

Let’s learn from the best and consider the many benefits of skills mapping as a critical element of your talent development process. The benefits of skills mapping include:

• Improved workforce planning. Skills mapping helps organizations identify gaps in their workforce and plan for future hiring needs. This ensures that the right people with the right skills are available when needed.
• Enhanced employee engagement. By identifying employees’ strengths and weaknesses, organizations can provide targeted employee learning opportunities. This leads to increased engagement, job satisfaction, and retention.
• Increased productivity. When employees have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities, they’re more productive. Skills mapping helps managers assign tasks that match employee skill sets, leading to better quality work and increased efficiency.
• Better performance management. With skills mapping data readily available, managers can provide more accurate performance feedback to their teams. This leads to improved performance management processes overall.
• More effective succession planning. Skills mapping helps organizations identify potential successors for key positions within the company. This enables them to create effective succession plans that ensure continuity in leadership roles.
• Improved diversity and inclusion efforts. By identifying the unique skill sets of each employee, organizations can create a more diverse and inclusive workforce by leveraging individual strengths.
• Better hiring process. Knowing what skills are needed helps everyone get super clear about what to look for in a hiring situation which will lead to better assessments and a more efficient and effective process.

Skills mapping provides valuable insights into an organization’s talent pool. These can be used to optimize workforce planning efforts, enhance employee engagement and productivity, improve performance management processes, and enable effective succession planning efforts as well as diversity and inclusion initiatives.

The Skills Matrix

Skills matrices are used by organizations to identify and assess the required skills, knowledge, and abilities of their roles and teams, along with that of their existing employees. An output of skills mapping, skill matrices visualize the skill map across teams, roles, and individuals. 

A skills matrix provides a visual representation of the current skill sets of employees within an organization, allowing managers to quickly identify gaps in competencies and areas for improvement. 

The matrix typically lists skills on one axis and roles and/or employee names on the other axis. The intersection of each position and employee displays the skills required for that specific role or position, noting which skills are essential to the role. Employees are then assessed based on their proficiency level for each skill listed.

In the above skills matrix, roles are mapped against each identified skill, along with notes about which skills are essential to the role. 

Next, individual team member skills are mapped in, which allows leaders to understand what skills are expected for the role, which is less important, and how each individual is performing against the expectations of the role (as indicated by their level of performance across each relevant skill).

Skills matrices are often used as part of talent management strategies to help organizations plan for future hiring needs, provide targeted training opportunities to employees, and ensure they have a skilled workforce available when needed. 

They can also be useful in identifying potential candidates for promotion or transfer within an organization based on their existing skill sets. By being able to look across the skills of the existing team, leaders can quickly identify who has the skills they need when considering various emerging needs of the organization. 

It also helps to open discussions with team members about where they excel and where additional training might be needed.

When used consistently, a skills matrix helps organizations optimize their workforce planning efforts by ensuring they have the right people with the right skills available at all times.

How To Run A Skills Mapping Project

If your organization wants to leverage skills matrices to guide employee development and organizational effectiveness, you first need to map out the essential skills needed for roles and then map which skills employees already possess.

This is doable, but it will definitely require some conscious effort and decision-making. Here I’ll share some structure and insight as to how to get started mapping skills in your organization. 

By following these steps, you can gain valuable insights into your current workforce capabilities and develop targeted strategies to enhance employee skills that align with organizational goals.

Define the Objectives of the Project

Before selecting a skills model and getting to work mapping skills, it’s essential to understand what you hope to achieve through the project.

Are you looking to identify gaps in employee competencies? Do you want to develop targeted training programs? Are you seeking to align employee skill sets with organizational goals? 

Identifying these goals will help you select a model that aligns with your objectives and will help guide your work throughout the process. 

Select a Skills Model

Once you’ve defined the objectives of the project, the next step is to select the appropriate skills model/framework to guide the assessment and evaluation of roles, teams, and employee skills. 

There are several different models available, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, so it’s important to carefully consider which one will best suit your organization’s needs.

A few common models of skills mapping include: 

• Korn/Ferry Lominger Leadership Architect Competency Model
• SIGMA Leadership Competency Framework
• HRSG Behavioral, Technical, and Leadership Competency Models
• Industry-specific Competency Models such as the Food and Beverage Service Competency Model or Nursing Competency Model.

Gaining commitment and buy-in from the people impacted and that will interact with the skills model is critical to the success of implementing any model. 

By following these steps, you can ensure you choose a skills model that aligns with their objectives and provides an effective framework for assessing employee competencies.

1. Research available models. There are many different skills models available, ranging from generic skills or competency frameworks to industry-specific standards. Conduct research on the various options available and evaluate their suitability for your organization based on factors such as relevance, comprehensiveness, and ease of use.
   
2. Engage stakeholders. Engage key stakeholders such as HR managers, department heads, and employees themselves in the selection process. Consider their input on which model would work best for your organization.
   
3. Evaluate costs and resources: Assess the costs involved in implementing each model, including any required software or training for staff members who will be conducting assessments. Some mapping methods leverage software tools that require subscriptions, whereas other models are more “buy-once, use forever” in nature but might not include rich tools such as the software-enabled models.
   
4. Select a model: Based on your research and stakeholder feedback, select the most appropriate skills model for your organization.

Pro Tip: There is not one right answer here, even across industries. Talk with your team and leaders to understand their desires when it comes to a skills model. Once you find one you like, commit to trying it out! If it’s not the right fit, be bold to adapt and try something else!

Once you’ve selected a model to try, you can begin the mapping exercise (now the fun really begins)!

Map Skills to Roles and Teams

1. Identify key roles. Start by identifying the key roles within your organization that you want to map skills for. This could include job titles or specific departments. I suggest starting with a small department where the roles are well understood. Having job descriptions ready for these roles is a huge help, also!
   
2. List required skills. For each role, make a list of the specific skills needed to perform that role effectively. This can be based on job descriptions or input from managers and employees. Personally, I highly suggest involving the manager of the role in this process because they are the person that evaluates the performance of the role and should understand what makes that role special and exceptionally valuable to the organization.
   
3. Match skills to model. When you list the skills required for a role, they might not be immediately aligned with the model you selected, meaning they will require a little bit of translation in order to align. Using your selected skills model, match each required skill to the relevant skill within the model.
   
4. Evaluate the roles as part of a team. Once skills are mapped to roles, review the roles that are on the same team and ensure that the skills associated with them demonstrate variation. For example, more senior roles should be associated with more or higher-level skills and roles should vary in required skills.
   
   If you find that every role on a team requires all skills or mostly the same skills, that’s a cue to review the roles and determine what makes each role different, and how to consider the different roles in terms of required skills. 

Return to step 2 in this section if this happens, and don’t be afraid to make changes as you go! The more you practice skills mapping, the better at it you will become and the clearer you will see the variance in skill requirements across roles and teams.

5. Review the skills matrix with the team. After you’ve identified the skills across roles, and confirmed variation in required and helpful skills across roles, show your draft map to the team that actually performs the jobs and ask for their feedback to see if it’s reflective of the skills they use to perform in their role.

Sometimes, you’ll hear about parts of the job that you didn’t know about or complexities that require a particular skill you hadn’t anticipated. Checking the validity of the model with the team it reflects is a must. 

Assess Skills Across People

Once you’ve mapped out the required skills for each role, assess employee abilities against those requirements using the chosen model. This can be done through surveys, interviews, and/or other assessment methods.

The process typically involves conducting skills assessments or performance reviews to evaluate employee skills in various areas such as technical skills, communication skills, leadership abilities, problem-solving capabilities, etc.

The assessment should reflect the selected model and should be treated carefully so as not to promote bias or skill inflation (where a manager or employee says that an employee is higher skilled than they really are, thinking that will help the employee, manager, or team in some way). 

In the past, I’ve used rating scales for skills mapping using three basic categories: underskilled, skilled, and over-skilled. With these simple categories, employees and managers can clearly articulate if an individual is below, at, or above expectations in a skill. 

Analyze Skills Across the Organization

Phew! If you get this far, you’ve put in a lot of effort to select a model, align roles and teams to skills, and evaluate individual employee skills.

Now it’s time to consider how to leverage the skills model, mapping, and rating to identify gaps between required skills and actual employee performance of the required skills. 

In this phase, your job is to identify gaps or misalignments in skills employees have against the requirements of their role. 

When you find gaps, don’t immediately perceive a person to be unskilled in their job overall or “not a fit.” Instead, consider what talent development initiatives might be helpful in closing the gap. 

Is there someone on your team that’s highly skilled in an area that another person is lesser-skilled in? That sounds like a great opportunity for a pairing, job shadowing, or a little skill share to me! 

When considering how to address any gap in skills, look around and honor the experts you might have already within the organization.

Humans are social creatures, and learning is a social activity, meaning it’s super beneficial to both engagement and learning when one employee gets to mentor or teach another employee a skill that helps them be better at their job. 

When identifying gaps at scale, beyond one isolated team, I’d recommend developing targeted action plans for addressing any identified gaps in employee competencies, such as training programs or development opportunities. 

As you review the gaps across roles and teams, look for themes in skill gaps. For example, does your customer success team need training in conflict resolution across the board? That sounds like a great opportunity for a larger-scale course or development program tuned specifically to that group’s needs.

Individuals and teams that get to experience learning that is tailored to their context will absorb more when they can apply the learning to their role directly, so always look for these opportunities to provide development in the context of the specific team or role! 

Finally, as you finish the initial mapping and gap analysis exercise, continue the work! Regularly monitor progress towards closing identified skill gaps and adjust action plans as necessary. 

Similarly as to how you might review your monthly spending in your department, take a moment each month to review skills levels and progress towards closing the identified gaps in skills. You might even consider bringing your team in on the fun while promoting social, supportive learning across the group. 

When you bring a new role or team online, be sure to create a skill map to reflect what is required of that role, and map new employees against the requirements of their roles to ensure each employee is receiving the development they need to be successful. 

Skills Mapping Tools

There are a variety of skills mapping tools available today that can assist organizations in assessing and mapping employee skills across roles and teams in almost real-time as well as helping with data analysis. Here are some examples:

• HRSG – The oldest company in the skills-mapping game. HRSG is an AI-enabled expert-level tool for skills mapping, gap analysis, and supporting the development of skills in employees that want to move forward in their careers. As a tool, it’s flexible and allows custom-developed skills to be part of your skills map.
• AG5 – A pureplay skills management software that is trusted by some of the largest airlines and manufacturers in the world. AG5 supports detailed skills mapping, including safety and regulation-related skills, and enables leaders to simply search for skills across the database of employees to identify people in the organization that are a good fit. 
• MuchSkills – A talent management platform that supports the visualization of individual and team skills and a slick search to identify who in your organization has the skills you’re looking for. With a few clicks, you can see all people in your organization that are skilled in a specific technology, regulation, customer-facing behavior etc.
• iMocha – An AI-based assessment tool that assists organizations in understanding their employees’ strengths and weaknesses to identify opportunities for internal mobility and further employee development.
• Skills Base – Skill mapping software that is visual and helps teams understand, assess and act on skill data. Skills Base is one of the most complete skill mapping tools on the market and directly understands talent development in reference to skill maps, gaps in skill, and succession planning.
• TalentGuard – A performance management and competency assessment tool that supports HR teams in engaging employees through learning opportunities including coaching, training, and on-demand content. 
• Cognology – A competency management system that helps you understand your current workforce and identify external candidates to fill skill gaps. Cognology includes skills assessments, tracking, and reporting. 
• SoftExpert – A self-described human development management software that enables skills mapping, gap analysis, and talent development plans to support employee growth and succession planning aligned with company objectives. 
• Augmentir – Not a pure-play skills mapping and management tool, but can accomplish those goals through one of its many modules. Augmentir enables skills to be mapped and managed, however, from what I can tell, it’s created with manufacturing and physical operations roles in mind, including mappings for safety and process control-related skills! 
• Kahuna – Skills management software that includes a visual team matrix mapping skills to individuals and highlighting gaps and opportunities for development in a few clicks. Kahuna is used by some of the largest organizations globally and supports different roles, views and features across HR teams, supervisors, and leaders

Each of these software options is a likely contender for organizations looking to map, matrix, and visualize needed skills across the organization. 

Finding the right software tool for the task is a very personal process, starting with the objectives of the initiative coming from the organization. 

Before diving into the software, be sure you and your team are aligned on why you want to try skills mapping and what results you hope to see from leveraging a technology solution for skills mapping to support talent development. 

Let’s map it out! 

Taking the time to engage in skills mapping helps discover the path toward sustainable growth in organizations and will pay dividends in the long run because you’ll know what talent and skills you have, and what talent and skills you need to acquire in the future. 

This will help you to upskill team members and you’ll also see boosts in engagement and productivity.

Further resources to help you develop the rights skills in your organization:

• Skills Gap Analysis: How To Identify Key Skills To Meet Your Business Goals
• How To Perform A Talent Review In 5 Steps

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