“How was your man meeting?” my HR manager asked me, raising her eyebrows as she hurried past the flow of people leaving the glass-panelled meeting room where we’d had our weekly management meeting.

She made her point quite clear. With only two women on the team of 14 that I’d inherited when I became Joint Managing Director of a London-based marketing agency, it was obvious that there was a disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of our claims to be a diverse and inclusive workplace. And, in my first year in the role, I’d done little to shift this.

I was grateful that she felt enough psychological safety with me to point this out. That’s something we’d focused on instilling into our culture in my first year in the role.

I’d share my performance review openly with my team. Our Directors’ development areas were posted publically to ensure people could hold us to account and see we were working on things too. 

We’d co-created a set of corporate values with our team rather than dictating them from the top.

My co-Managing Director (another white male) was open about attending therapy and took extended parental leave to role model the importance of men doing this as well as women.

But we hadn’t really got to what we, at the time, viewed as the ‘hard stuff’: representation at the senior leadership level and ensuring that our business really was an inclusive place to work.

Another conversation several weeks later impacted me in a similar way. As a straight, white man in a position of power, keen to understand the experience of people in our agency who didn’t look like me, I’d gone to lunch with one of our senior consultants, an Indian woman who had previously expressed concerns about us not walking the talk.

I trusted she wouldn’t sugarcoat her experiences for me and she didn’t! She brought to life her experience of being an Indian woman with an accent working in a predominantly white space. 

She also gently reminded me that I could not rely on her (or other team members who identified differently from me) to educate me about their lived experiences. If I was serious about being an inclusive leader, I needed to do the work myself and recognize the burden I would be placing on others by asking them to educate me.

She recommended that I read ‘White Like Me’ by Tim Wise. I did, and it marked the start of my ongoing education to appreciate my own whiteness, privilege, and how I contribute to systems that work in my favour and against others who don’t look like me.

Within a couple of weeks of these two conversations, we’d reviewed our management structure and made some immediate changes to the team. Over time, this had evolved into a group of the most senior client Directors in the agency, many of whom did not head up teams or departments.

We asked three men to leave the management team to focus on their clients. Three women who were heading up large teams were invited to join the group. It was an important moment for us, signalling to people that we were intent on driving change.

We were moving in the right direction, but I was acutely aware that all the faces in the room except one were white, like me. We still had such a long way to go. It was humbling to realize how far I was from being a truly inclusive leader.

Apparently, I’m not alone in this regard. Recent research shows that 66% of leaders over-estimate their inclusion efforts. 31% of employees think their leaders are ineffective at creating an inclusive team environment. 

Well-meaning platitudes advise leaders to ‘do the work’, ‘have the difficult conversations’, ‘start with themselves’, and ‘understand that it’s a lifelong journey’. The advice is valid, but it doesn’t necessarily help someone know where to start, or how they can improve.

In my experience, learning to lead inclusively starts with understanding what good looks like. 

I’ve appreciated efforts in recent years to better define what strong inclusive leadership looks like, and the development of thoughtful frameworks which codify specific behaviours which contribute to inclusive leadership. 

In this article, I share several frameworks which I hope will inspire you to think about how you’re showing up as a leader.

My hope is that you take a moment to read them and reflect on where you might improve, use them as a stimulus in development conversations (your own and your team’s), and set goals that build your capabilities in this critical leadership competency.

What does it mean to be an inclusive leader?

Definitions of what it means to be an inclusive leader have shifted over recent years.

Looking back on my early years as a Managing Director, I recognize my own efforts to be an ‘inclusive leader’ in definitions which speak to ‘valuing contributions from team members’, ‘striving to create an atmosphere where people feel their opinions matter’, and ‘prioritizing collaboration and open communication to make decisions and solve business problems’. 

People courageous and caring enough to point out my biases and knowledge gaps helped me to understand that true inclusive leadership is necessarily more activist and urgent. 

Shakenna Williams, Executive Director at Babson’s Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership (CWEL), points out that inclusive leaders need to lead without bias. They ‘authentically commit to diversity, inclusion, and equity. They seek to understand other cultures, challenge the status quo, and be an advocate of equity for all.’

With this in mind, here are three frameworks that you can use to develop into a more inclusive leader.

Practical Framework 1: The six Cs of inclusive leadership

Back in 2016 (a year after I took on my role as Managing Director), Deloitte pointed to the increasing diversification of markets, customers, ideas, and talent as critical reasons why leaders must build capability around inclusive leadership. 

They detail six signature traits of inclusive leadership, pointing out that leaders who model these behaviours do so primarily because these objectives align with their personal values, and secondarily because they believe in the business case for building more inclusive businesses. 

The model is helpful in the way it breaks each trait down into specific elements, linking them to behaviours that leaders should exhibit to others.

For example, ‘courage’ is broken down into having the ‘humility’ to recognize personal gaps in knowledge and having the ‘bravery’ to ‘speak about their own limitations in a very personal way’.

As I reflect on what I’ve got right and wrong over the last few years, I realize that this is what I am in part trying to do by writing this article.

While discussing my own journey, I fear some may view my reflections as ‘self-congratulatory’. My hope (and ultimately my conviction) is that by being open about what I have learned, and the mistakes I have made and continue to make, I may create permission or act as a catalyst for others to do the same.

Practical Framework 2: A strength-based approach to inclusive leadership

I recently came across another excellent framework that can be used by leaders seeking to become more inclusive in their approach. 

Salwa Rahim-Dillard offers a strength-based approach where people can identify their behavioural strengths in order to create a roadmap to becoming a more inclusive leader, focusing particularly on relationships with BIPOC employees.

I find this model particularly helpful in the way that it crystalizes very specific behaviours of inclusive leadership so leaders can benchmark their abilities (as low, average or high) for each behaviour and set goals for improvement.

After my time as Joint MD, I moved into a bigger role as global Chief People Officer. 

Seeking to bake inclusive behaviours into our business culture and systems, we rewrote our company competency framework to clarify what inclusive leadership behaviours we expected people to demonstrate as they progressed through the company. 

We did an admirable job co-creating this with our team, but, in hindsight, I wish we’d also had these frameworks to hand. 

They’re rich with examples of what inclusive behaviour does and doesn’t look like, and I know they would have led to some deep personal reflection, thought-provoking conversations and action planning. 

Practical ‘Framework’ 3: A phrase to guide in-the-moment decisions

While the above frameworks can be incredibly helpful, I find them less useful in helping me know how to act ‘in the moment’. 

I believe that inclusive leadership isn’t always about thoughtful planning. It’s about how you show up each day, in moments under pressure, when you mess up, when the heat is on… 

In these moments, when I’m feeling overwhelmed or unsure of how to act or what to do, I find myself returning again and again to a phrase I stumbled on a few years ago:

‘You have to think about when to stand up for someone, when to stand beside them and when to stand behind them.’

Standing up for someone…

There are times (as a result of the power, position, and privilege that comes with being a leader or identifying in certain way (e.g. as a white man) that you may find yourself in a situation or space where you need to speak on the behalf of a person or group who is not present.

You may have access and influence over spaces, people, or resources that they do not have. Your privilege or position may afford you the safety to speak out in a way that they can not.

Of course, it’s important to do this in a way that does not further marginalize a group or individual by making assumptions about their (life) experience or preferences. 

What this might look like…

• Recognize where bias may exist and call it out: ‘Before we start developing this website, have we thought about how accessible it will be to people with disabilities?’ or ‘I don’t think we should mandate that everyone has their video on through every call. That can be exhausting for neurodivergent people’. 
• Bring others’ voices into the room: ‘This is really important to our LGBTQ+ team members’ or ‘I don’t think we have enough experience of this to make this decision. We need to talk to our female engineers to get their POV first.’
• Advocate for others who aren’t there: ‘We should send this job opportunity to Kate while she’s on maternity leave.’ or ‘Ryan would be a better fit for this speaking opportunity than I would. He actually has lived experience of the topic.’ 

Standing up for someone also means leading from the front. This will also include:

• Using your power and privilege to address systemic issues that impact inclusion and belonging where you work (e.g. pay equity analyses, addressing bias in hiring processes, educating leaders and managers around bias, providing resources and safe spaces for historically-marginalized groups, etc.). 
• Role modelling the behaviours detailed in the frameworks discussed earlier.

Standing beside someone…

At a fundamental level, I see this as accepting that you can never truly understand someone else’s life experience, but that you can listen hard to understand differences and work with people to drive positive change.

What this might look like…

• Listen hard to the people that you work with and act on their feedback. Are your policies and communications using gender-inclusive language? Do people have safe spaces where they can provide honest feedback? Are you celebrating diverse cultural events and holidays? A simple shift for us was enabling people to swap out federal public holidays for dates that were religiously or culturally significant to them.
• Doing the work to educate yourself about others’ lived experiences. Listen to podcasts and diversify your social media feeds by following people who don’t look like you. Read books—non-fiction and fiction. A few that have really impacted me over the years: How to be Less Stupid About Race (Crystal M. Fleming), Don’t Fix Women (Joy Burnford), Minor Feelings (Cathy Park Hong), Me and White Supremacy (Layla F. Saad), Divergent Mind (Jenara Nerenberg).
• Educate people in your organization about what inclusive leadership looks like. The burden to do this shouldn’t sit on the shoulders of those with less power or privilege. 

Standing behind someone…

Perhaps most challenging for me was recognizing when my role as a leader was not to speak for someone, to ‘rescue’ or ‘save’ them, but simply to remain quiet and get out of their way.

What this might look like…

Recognize when you need to stop talking

In meetings, invite quieter voices into the conversation by asking people what they think if they haven’t contributed yet.

Don’t defend or explain yourself when someone gives you feedback about something you could do to be more inclusive. Say thank you and listen.

I’ll own that I don’t always get this right, but increasingly, I now try to call myself out before someone else needs to – “Sorry, I think I just interrupted you just then. Let me be quiet so you can speak” or “Ugh, I think I just mansplained to you how to do your job. Let me shut up so you can get on with it.” 

Create a platform for others to shine

You don’t always need to be the person who announces the new policy, gives the presentation, or makes the pitch to the leadership team. Work behind the scenes with people and find opportunities for them to take the spotlight.

I remember when we conducted a candid deep dive into what our employees thought of our approach to diversity and inclusion. 

As Chief People Officer, I was itching to take the stage and share the findings back with the company… and it would have been entirely inappropriate for me to do so. 

But, by me getting out of the way, the team delivering it back was able to tell a more compelling and authentic story than I ever could have.   

Provide time and resources for employee-led inclusion initiatives

Many of the people in your organization who are working hard on projects to make your business inclusive won’t be getting paid to do this extra work. 

It typically comes on top of their day jobs. We didn’t fully crack this, but started to make progress in ensuring people who contributed to this agenda were rewarded for it.

Inspired by what we’d heard about at LinkedIn, we built a case for leaders of our identity-based Employee Resource Groups to receive a financial bonus. 

We started to carve out small budgets for these groups to coordinate activities that educated the rest of the business about their lived experiences, or to spend on fostering connection within the group they were part of. This didn’t all happen at once, but built over time as we listened hard to how people in these groups were feeling.

A continuous journey

Becoming an inclusive leader isn’t a destination you arrive at one day, or a title you earn, like a promotion. It’s an active, intentional, ongoing process. Whether you are viewed as one isn’t for you to decide. It will be decided each day by each of the people you’re working with. 

None of us gets it right all of the time, and as the world, our organizations, and the people we work with evolve, so must our approach to leading inclusively. To really make a difference in the organizations and communities we are part of we must each continue to listen, to learn, and to show up with intention every day.

What are your experiences of becoming a more inclusive leader? Join the conversation in the comments or in the People Managing People Community, a supportive network of HR and business leaders building organizations of the future.

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Any employee who can achieve a raise of 10% or higher by switching jobs will likely do so. This might come off as disloyal on the part of the employee, but I would challenge employers to ask what steps they’re taking to prevent this kind of attrition from their top talent. 

Are you leveraging and developing your talent efficiently? Are your benefits competitive and have you conducted compensation benchmarking or salary surveys to ensure that your compensation is competitive?

There was an observable trend during and in the wake of COVID where the job market experienced a paradigm shift in favor of employees.

This war on talent had employers scrambling to make sure they were doing everything they could to attract and retain talent; including the increase in hybrid and work-from-home arrangements and ensuring their compensation is competitive. 

If salary benchmarking is not something your company is doing regularly, or has ever done at all, then now is the time for you to do it.

Throughout my career, I’ve run salary benchmarking projects both internally and as a consultant for other organizations. 

Here I’ll take you through why salary benchmarking is an exercise that’s very much worth your time as well as how to do it. 

• What is salary benchmarking?
• What are the benefits of salary benchmarking?
• How to benchmark your salaries against the market

As you’ll see, it’s something any HR professional should be able to complete.

What is salary benchmarking?

Salary benchmarking is a process where you compare your job descriptions and compensation to similar positions in companies of a similar size and industry in order to see how competitive your compensation is compared to peers.

By conducting an analysis of this nature, you can ensure that your compensation is competitive and aligns with your organization’s compensation philosophy.

What are the benefits of salary benchmarking?

Salary benchmarking is very much a worthwhile endeavor, though it can come at a cost (more on that later).

More confidence in your market competitiveness

The first and major benefit of conducting salary benchmarking is that helps you be confident that you’re paying employees competitively in line with your compensation philosophy. Even if your compensation strategy is wanting to pay at benchmark, you can get reassurance that your average salary is in line with market data.

You want to make sure you are abiding by the philosophy you have in place, and, without a project like this, it can be difficult to tell if you’re truly walking your talk, as the expression goes.

Improve employee retention

The upshot of being competitive in the market is that your workforce will feel fairly compensated and it will be more difficult for rival organizations to poach them. 

Of course, compensation isn’t the be-all and end-all, but it’s certainly a key factor in employee retention. 

An added bonus here is that employees who are not concerned about their compensation being competitive will be more productive and have a higher degree of employee engagement.

Increased rigor around job leveling and overall talent management

The last benefit of salary benchmarking is that it forces you as an organization to regularly reevaluate your compensation philosophy, the jobs themselves, career paths, and can aid in the creation of salary ranges, grades, and job levels—an exercise that can certainly be neglected in the more traditional set-it-and-forget mindset when it comes to building positions in your organization.

By engaging in salary benchmarking projects regularly, it ensures you’re plugged into any major market shifts in compensation which could cause your employees to look around. 

It’s important to keep pace with market rates or you may risk losing top performers whose compensation is at the level where yours should be.

This kind of proactive compensation management is exactly what you need to make sure you are staying competitive and playing an active role in your talent management process.

How to benchmark your salaries against the market

Once you’ve made the decision to conduct salary benchmarking, it’s important to know the steps involved to be sure you’re completing a full analysis.

1. Determine which positions to benchmark

The first step is determining which positions you want to perform the analysis on. A broad approach would be one where you gather benchmarking data on all of your positions, but this can be a large undertaking depending on the size of your organization. 

Instead, you might opt to pick a few jobs where there is a high degree of attrition or competition in the market to determine proper pay ranges for those roles to ensure your job postings are competitive. 

If you keep losing workers from a specific job or job family, or you’re having a hard time hiring for a particular job, those are key candidates for salary benchmarking.

2. Refine your job descriptions

After you’ve selected the jobs you want to gather benchmarking data on, your next step is to refine your internal job descriptions. 

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean completely reworking them, but reviewing them and making sure they’re accurate to what the people in those roles are doing on a daily basis. Many jobs evolve over time, but typically the job descriptions for those roles are not updated as regularly as they should be. 

This is an important step because job descriptions are how you are going to compare your jobs to similar jobs in the market data set you use. There are many different job titles for what can be the same job—think of how many different iterations of a job title like customer service specialist exist!

This is why the more important thing to look for is the duties of the jobs in question to ensure you’re getting the best match and most accurate data.

3. Select your data source(s)

The next step is selecting a relevant salary data source for your salary benchmarking. 

It’s important to select salary data that is relevant to your industry and can provide the best information to complete the analysis.

Some of these sources are free to use, with some limitations and drawbacks, and some are paid (the paid datasets tend to be more robust). 

Deciding which source to use can be difficult, and cost is surely a factor, but completing compensation benchmarking with a free salary data set is still better than not doing it at all.

TechRepublic has put together a guide on some of the best providers of compensation data, along with their various pros and cons, which you can use to help determine what would best suit your needs. 

On a personal level, I’ve found a lot of success using the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which is a free source.

The data from the BLS casts a pretty wide net and doesn’t allow you to filter down to industry, size, or profitability, but I often argued in favor of these conditions. 

If you’re hiring for an accountant, you want to be sure your compensation is competitive regardless of the company size or industry; jobs like this are not limited to a single type of company, so ensuring competitive compensation against a larger range of peers is advantageous.

4. Compare the data against your own compensation level

Finally, once you have pulled the data you can then compare the data from the source against your own compensation level.

Often these sources will show you compensation at different percentiles for a given role in order to show you what the average is at the 50% tier, and what is above or below the benchmark at the 75% and 25% tiers respectively. 

What’s nice about this is that you can also use the percentiles as a guideline for creating salary grades.

You may start a new hire slightly below the 50% point and have senior incumbents closer to the 75% mark. This phase of the project is where your compensation philosophy will come into place; are you comfortable being right at benchmark in the 50% range, or do you have a more aggressive compensation philosophy and want to be above benchmark? 

This is the question you should have ready to answer when you’re getting ready to wrap this process up and make decisions.

Salary Benchmarking Case Study: A Fully Remote Organization

As mentioned, I’ve helped conduct analyses like these for a number of clients over the years in my role as a human resources consultant and when working internally.

The best case scenario is that it reassures them they are competitive, and the worst case is they realize they have fallen behind and need to make adjustments to align with the market and their compensation philosophy.

However, the consistent theme for all of them is wanting to be proactive about their compensation before it costs them talent.

It’s well known that replacing an employee is significantly more expensive than retaining that employee, which makes the case that it’s actually more cost-effective to make market adjustments to competitive salaries than it is to have to replace employees you have lost due to paying rates below market standard.

One previous client I worked with had an entirely remote workforce and they wanted to be sure their compensation was competitive regardless of the geographic location of their employees.

This was an interesting challenge because, even within the same job, the compensation range can vary significantly when you compare a state with a higher cost of living, like New York, to a state with a lower cost of living like Iowa.

Normally the geographic location of the organization itself is a filter for the data to make sure your compensation is in benchmark within their specific geographic region. 

The result of this was that, for every position we reviewed for the organization, we pulled data from the highest cost of living state in the dataset to ensure that the range they landed on would always be at or above the benchmark.

Other clients I’ve had wanted much more narrow data, down to even a particular city or county, and were satisfied with being at or slightly below the benchmark.

Something I made sure all of my clients had in common for these projects was first having a solid compensation philosophy that we could use as the foundation for their compensation benchmarking project.

Next Steps

At this point, you should have all the tools you need to get your benchmarking project going, but let’s remember some of the important points we discussed.

First and foremost you want to make sure we are solid on your company’s compensation philosophy so you can apply it to this project. 

You also want to make sure all of the job descriptions you’re going to be using have been reviewed and updated as these are going to be the most important pieces of data for you to match to other jobs.

Picking the right data set is an important decision, but one where you have options in terms of price and how thorough or specific the data is. 

You can also use the same data to evaluate or create salary grades when you’re getting ready to make any market adjustments to salaries.

The most important point to leave you with is that, even if you’re only benchmarking one position with free data, it’s still an investment that is very much worth your time and effort! 

Even insights gained with free data will provide you with more reassurance on the competitiveness of your compensation than doing nothing. For the small investment of some time to complete this analysis with free data, you will be able to avoid any unnecessary turnover due to your compensation being less competitive than you might think.

Comment below and let us know if you’ve done a project like this recently, what data source did you use, and if you would recommend it to others, or join the conversation over in the People Managing People Community.

For help with your compensation philosophy, take a read of How To Create A Compensation Philosophy For Better Hiring And Retention.

The post Salary Benchmarking: Benefits And How To Do It appeared first on People Managing People.

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I’ve been working with fast-growing tech businesses for the last 20 years helping them grow effective, scalable teams.

During this period, my teams and I leaned heavily on our people data to guide decision-making.

Here we’ll build on what we covered last time about building the foundations of your HR data and metrics and ensuring you have clear, auditable processes to support those metrics.

We’ll discuss how we take those metrics and use them to draw conclusions about organizational health and drive action from leaders.

As we take the next step, we need to think about what the trends are and what the data is telling us. Beyond that, we need to use the data to answer the business’s most prevalent questions.

We also need to think about our audience, most of whom are busy, so we need to make the data as digestible as possible and tell a story.

We’ll cover:

• Presenting data in a meaningful way
• Building personas for your data
• Having some fun

Presenting Data In A Meaningful Way

There’s so much data we can gather but let’s start with the most fundamental metric—the number of employees. Giving a monthly number of people in the organization is useful.

428

But maybe it’s more relevant to show whether that’s up or down from last month/quarter/year:

382, 418, 420, 428….

But wait, a graph is better here, right?

So here, at the most basic level, we have a trend line indicating that headcount is increasing.

We have a couple of months where it grew quicker and one where headcount decreased.  

Why?

Let’s add monthly starter and leaver numbers, that will give us a better picture.

So we can see a peak there but comparing 15 and 400 on the same axis isn’t clear, so let’s adjust again.

By changing starters and leavers to a bar chart, comparing them side by side each month and changing them to the right-hand axis, we’ve made this visually simple to understand.

Headcount is growing but hiring has been inconsistent month by month with September and May being anomalies. Can we explain that in our narrative?

We also need to make it clearer that that our graph has 2 vertical axes and also make the title clearer.

So what else can we see or what else do we need to see from this chart? It looks to me like there are more leavers in recent months, but also the business has grown, so maybe that’s to be expected. If we add attrition to the graph we will see a clearer picture.

Aha! Now we’ve created a rich collection of data about this set of employees and we’ve shown in one graphic that hiring is spiky, headcount is growing, attrition is rising, and leaver numbers are increasing.

With limited text, we can “talk” to stakeholders about what’s happening in the organization and hopefully induce some action.

This is a good example of how, by building the basic data sets (headcount, hires, leavers, attrition) that we spoke about previously, we can show trends and perform basic analysis by using simple tools (these sheets are available to download here).

By looking at your data in its simplest form and asking yourself the question “What is the story I’m trying to tell here?”, you can develop prompts for yourself, play around with the layout of the graphs, and create visually impactful messaging for your stakeholders.

You can even play around with tools such as ChatGPT to help you with your analysis. For example, if we take the graph above and just say what we see, then we can ask ChatGPT to make it concise.

“Headcount has grown from 320 to 428 in the last 12 months, 2 months (September and October) had the highest number of hires with 63 and 28 respectively, November saw the highest number of leavers with 20 and attrition has risen from 27% to 36% throughout the year”

As you can see, by quickly inputting the key points into a tool like ChatGPT, you can generate a concise version of your commentary in less time than it would have taken you to rewrite it yourself and your stakeholders will be impressed.

Speaking of which, let’s take a moment to think about our stakeholders and flesh out this example a little further.

Building Personas For Your Data

If we continue with the above example, what additional data can we add to explain what is happening?

An obvious example would be the type/location/demographics of the roles that have been hired, particularly in the spikes (e.g. could this be an annual graduate intake?).

The other obvious area is who is leaving (roles/location/demographics), what are their reasons for leaving and have they changed over time, and do they match with what people are hearing on the ground? 

For example, pay is often cited as a motivation for leaving but measuring this through leavers is a lag measure (e.g. very much after the event) as the people have already looked for another role, found one, resigned, and worked notice.

So, if you’re seeing lag measures highlighted, we need to find ways of getting more real-time data through your employee listening methods.

Now it’s starting to get a bit deeper and more complicated so we need to think carefully not just about the data but also the conversation we’re trying to prompt and our audience, and that’s where using internal personas comes into play.

Personas are often used by marketing teams to paint a picture of their target customers when building out marketing campaigns. They become quite complicated, but we’ll have a simple usage here.

I’ll show you a few examples of the personas that have worked for me in the past, the assumptions you can make about that group, and then the data they’re likely to want to receive and the manner in which it’s sent.

Internal personas examples

Executive Management Team persona

This group has limited time and needs to understand the longer-term impact of what our people data is telling us about organizational health and progress toward key strategic goals.

They are also a manager of a team/function, so they also need a high degree of detail about that.

About	Adaptations
Busy	– Don’t rely on self-serving data, put it in a deck and send it with follow-up- Take time to give commentary and explain – Be concise in what you present by ensuring everything you include is relevant and keep it as short as you can.
Focused on financials and a high-level, broad view of the organization	– Focus on the metrics that relate to financials – How do metrics link to broader strategic aims? E.g. are you trying to grow? Are you trying to reduce the number of managerial roles?
Data and business savvy	– They’re used to complex information represented well, take more time with this
Need a detailed view of their function	– Detailed representation of their function including hires, leavers, attrition, spans, layers, diversity, learning, engagement, demographics, and employee relations – Provide information tailored to their function, ideally with the rest of the organization as a benchmark

Managers persona

Managers need to be broadly informed about the organization to provide them with context about their teams and role (so lots of high-level, easily accessible data).

They will be onboarding new joiners to the company and interviewing prospective people, so they need to know the basics and a bit more—enough to be able to start to tell a story.

About	Adaptations
The group is varied across different locations, teams, and seniority	– Need solid, high-level data easily accessible- Need to know where to find more specific data about teams, locations, etc – Give some information, but you can also rely on self-service for those looking for specific information
Need to be informed	– Less focus on telling them what needs to change at an organizational level, but still give them the information to make their own inferences
Need to guide interviews and onboarding	– They need to know who we are—the fun facts about the organization e.g. demographics (see below)

Employees persona

Similar to managers in that they need a broad overview but with likely less detail.

About	Adaptations
Group is varied in different locations, teams, and seniority.	– Need solid, high-level, easily accessible data  – Give some information but can also rely on self-service for those looking for specific information
Need to guide interviews and onboarding.	They need to know who we are—the fun facts about your organization

Human resources personas

Your HR team needs different information from the employee and manager community as they are developing strategies and explaining the story.

For example, the business may want to know the average number of job applications per vacancy, or the total figure of applications in a given month, but your talent acquisition team will need to see this data on a per-job basis and would also like to see the incomplete applications and hits to the careers site so they can effectively manage the funnel of applicants.

They can then look at things like marketing effectiveness or the particular job descriptions to see if they need to make any adjustments.

About	Adaptation
HR Leaders and Analysts	– Need access to the appropriate data to be able to draw conclusions and develop insights
HR Business Partners	– Need access to data specific to their role/client group

I’ve found building personas extremely helpful for being clear about why we’re sharing particular data and what the purpose of it is.

These four simple persona examples above demonstrate that, from the same core data set, we can provide the same data with appropriate commentary, calls to action, and differing layers of detail.

Using our example of the attrition, hires, leavers, and headcount from earlier, this information would be most applicable to the exec management team (both company-wide and for their functions), Managers (company-wide but show them where to self-serve their teams if applicable) and HR (access to self serve by role type). 

By using the personas in this form, you get real value from them and it saves a lot of time and effort.

If you take the 40 KPIs we looked at previously you can map them to the personas—here’s a quick example from the recruitment metrics part of that article:

KPI name	EMT	Managers	Employees	HR
How many people are you hiring and in what location/executive department?	Yes for company and function Yes for specific org they lead and any additional info if you have it	Yes for company and function	Yes for company	Talent Acquisition: all the details Business Partners: all the details for their function Rest: Yes for company and function
How long is it taking you to hire someone for specific roles?	Yes for relevant roles to strategic goals in the organization Yes for the high-level number	No but allow self-service	No	Yes for Business Partners and Talent Acquisition

By doing this you’re building out a simple database of who needs what and why. I would also keep the method of calculation, data source, visualization, and underlying/audit process for each of these so you have everything in a single easily accessible place.

Having Some Fun

I want to dive into another example here that is relevant for all your businesses and even people outside of it as well—how do we show our company demographics? 

When telling a story about a business, I’ve always found that what people find the most interesting is “who we are”, and the “stickiest” fact I’ve found was the number of nationalities at a company.

So let’s take some simple examples.

• Gender
• Nationality
• Age
• Tenure

Let’s assume we have the data on this (all the data shown here is imaginary by the way).

• Gender. 45% male, 55% female
• Nationalities. (13 Total) Top 3: British 59%, French 12%, Italian 8%
• Age. (Average 34): <30 42%, 31-40 28%, 41-50 27%, 51+3%
• Tenure. <1 year 26%, 1-2 24%, 2-3 22%, 3-4 12% 4-5 6%, 5+ 10%

All clear but not very engaging, is it?

By using 4 graphs that came from Google Sheets or Slidesgo (both free), within a few minutes you can turn a list of numbers into something that’s engaging and tells a story about your organization.

These types of visualizations can be used for another persona—those outside your company— and can be posted on your website and other external-facing channels to showcase your organization to the wider world.

They can also be used internally and split by country/function/department to give rich insights internally.

Pictures and graphs are easy to deliver in this way and do not require much experience, you really just have to play about with it, and there are hundreds of free Youtube videos or demos on the web of how to do it.

Using your data like this will engage your users and give you the feedback you require to move on to what’s next.

Key Takeaways

So, across the two articles, we’ve covered how to:

• Audit and record our data effectively
• Use personas to identify who needs to see what
• Take numbers and use simple or more advanced visual representations to simply our data
• Try new things with our visuals to make them more engaging including using free web resources
• Identify certain key pieces of data that most or all people need to see, even if it’s cut slightly differently
• Identify basic trends in key data.

You’re now in a really good place to start to be consistent with what you’re telling your audience. When you get to the point where you can:

• Calculate most of the 40 key metrics
• Turn the attrition, headcount, hires, and leavers into visuals and cut it by each relevant group
• Share key demographic data visually for each persona
• Distribute this information regularly (monthly or quarterly depending of your needs)
• Build an interactive database/spreadsheet for your metrics, their methodology and who they’re shared with.

You’re telling your business an interesting story and prompting each persona with a different set of questions that they have the opportunity to give you feedback on.

Even if you have complex problems and questions, starting with the basics and building steadily on top of that is the right way to go. Month by month, you can add new pieces of data and new charts to tell an increasingly richer story.

The same principles apply if you have a slew of tools and systems that are churning out reports for you; take the time to make sure calculations are consistent and understood and the basics are shared with the right personas in a consistent way.

The key takeaway from this is that, once you commit to making a start with metrics and analysis, you can get a long way quickly without being a data expert and you’ve got the foundation for more hardcore people analytics in the future.

The tools are out there, you just need to bring your subject matter expertise about what the data is and your business acumen to find out how it can help.

This will help you find the right way to share in as digestible a way as possible, and no doubt you’ll have fun on the way and certainly learn more about your business.

Best of luck and feel free to reach out to me in the comments or join the conversation over in the People Managing People Community, a supportive network of HR and business leaders building sustainable organizations of the future.

Some further reading to help you along your data journey:

• What Is People Analytics: An Introductory Guide
• 29 HR KPIs To Help You Meet Strategic Goals
• The Metrics You Should Be Tracking To Improve Your Talent Management Strategy
• 10 Best People Analytics Software for Workforce Analysis in 2023
• 10 Best HR Analytics Software of 2023 for Actionable Workforce Data
• 10 Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Analytics in 2023

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Recruitment, performance management, coaching, payroll, workforce planning—it takes more knowledge and skill than one person can reasonably attain to do it all well. That’s why we’ve created a brand new community exclusively for HR professionals and anyone interested in the people side of growing a business.

Joining the PMP community will help you gain the knowledge you need to progress in your career and make real impact in your organization.

The Goal of the PMP Community

We started this community to help you grow and develop your skills as an HR professional and leader. That could mean helping you to learn a new skill (and be held accountable), saving you time through a library of templates and resources, or connecting you with a mentor to guide you toward the next step in your career. 

Join a supportive community of HR professionals who understand the unique challenges you face and will provide valuable insights and advice. Some of our existing members include People Operations Managers, Heads of Talent Acquisition, HR Specialists, and Culture Experts. There is a wide range of peers and experts that show up to help you thrive in your role.

Benefits of an HR Community

Find a mentor – You’ll have the opportunity to connect 1-on-1 with PMP Experts who can help guide you in your career. They are available to offer valuable advice, share personal experiences, and provide guidance.

Build your network – It’s fine if you don’t like doing it. But regardless, networking is crucial for opening doors to new opportunities, collaborations, and partnerships. This community could very well lead to your next job opportunity, or help you find qualified candidates for open positions within your organization.

Build the playbook for the future of work – Beyond recruitment, this network is an opportunity to discuss best practices, share knowledge, and ultimately define what it means to manage people in a quickly evolving world. You’ll have access to a wealth of knowledge and expertise from fellow HR professionals who are eager to share their insights and experiences.

Start a peer to peer mastermind group – masterminds are self-organized groups of 2-4 members that meet regularly to gain fresh and valuable insight on practices, processes, initiatives and challenges. Connect with members who share similar goals, challenges and interests to help each other overcome barriers and win at work (and in life too!).

Still Need Convincing?

If you haven’t already dashed over to our Community page to sign up, I’ll give you one more reason to do it – quickly. The next 100 people to sign up will receive 30% off the price for their first year of membership. Just enter the coupon code PMP30HP at checkout. That means you get 1 full year of all of the benefits I mentioned above for less than $30. 

If you have resonated with anything I’ve said, I encourage you to check out membership. If you aren’t satisfied, you’ll get a full refund. No questions asked (although I always appreciate feedback if you’re willing to leave it)!

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Wesley Vestal

Wesley has 15 years of experience as a global HR executive responsible for HR operations, talent acquisition, talent management, technical training and leadership development, sales training, M&A integration, and process transformation both in the US and for three years overseas. Prior to that, he spent eight years leading consulting and best-practice research on knowledge management, human capital management, and process improvement. He’s a sought-out panelist and featured speaker at industry-leading conferences, a patent owner, and author of two books and numerous published articles on best practices on talent management and knowledge management

Hi Wesley, welcome to the series! We’d love to get to know you a bit better, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

After graduating from Trinity University in San Antonio, I spent four years fundraising for the United Way of Greater Houston. There, I was able to help others while learning sales, account management, customer service, and presentation skills. 

From there, I joined the American Productivity & Quality Center for eight years. I started out as a project manager and progressed through different positions until I was presented with the opportunity to lead the Knowledge Management/Human Capital practice. Because it was a small organization, my position as practice leader allowed me to conceive and deliver new ideas, package them, sell them, and deliver them in the form of articles, two books, and industry-speaking opportunities on Knowledge Management and other learning capabilities. 

After growing my family, it was time to get off the road (I’d been traveling over 60% of the time). I went in-house with a former client at Baker Hughes, a global oilfield services company. There, I worked on the global HR transformation effort, which led me into three HR leadership roles over the next nine years, including leading HR for an international division based in Dubai, UAE.

I then expanded my global leadership capabilities at KBR and Weatherford International. I decided to take a break from the oilfield and spent a year helping a close friend run his growing online program management business, Elsmere Education, serving as the Senior VP of Growth and Executive Consultant. In 2022, I was recruited by CAI to join as their Chief People Officer.  

It’s been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. What’s a mistake you made when you were first starting and what did you learn from it?

In the first six months at my job out of college, my manager asked for a list of fundraising prospects that we needed to pursue. It was close to the end of the day on Friday, so I rushed through and gave him a pencil and paper list, and whisked off to begin my weekend. 

On Monday, he shared with me that what I’d given him was not what he needed, and he’d had to spend Sunday night re-doing my work. I felt so guilty about causing him extra work, and learned how important it is for me to a) clarify expectations and b) deliver above and beyond so other team members can do their jobs.  

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

There are too many to name! However, there is one particular person who served as a sage mentor and guide—Guille Arango. 

Guille was my client for several years at APQC.  He is the smartest person I’ve ever met, consistently dropping nuggets of wisdom, book recommendations, and strategic concepts he found useful in his career. 

When I was looking to reduce my time on the road, he recruited me to work at his new company, Baker Hughes. He had asked me to improve the Baker Hughes Drilling Rig Count, an over 60-year service the company had provided to the investment community.   

Even though I’d never been on a drilling rig, he trusted me to successfully figure out the issue, communicate with senior leaders across the US, and resolve the problem. Lastly, at the end of the project, he suggested that we take this work and apply for a patent—which we successfully received after four years.

If more organizations would allow HR professionals to branch out into other business areas to build their operational and financial acumen, such as Schlumberger and GM, they could be better differentiated from others who aspire to the CEO role.

What’s your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” and how does it help guide you in your decision making? 

My favorite quote is from the legendary basketball coach, John Wooden. “When opportunity knocks, it’s too late to prepare.”

Through my work in knowledge management, learning and development, and talent management, I learned how great companies prepare employees to take on and excel in new roles. 

At the start of my HR career, I was exposed to global mobility, compensation, and employee relations issues and spent time with those experts learning the why and how to support those fields to the best of my ability. 

This drove me to find learning opportunities, such as earning my project management certificate,  a Global Professional in HR certification, and a Six Sigma green belt. When the opportunity knocked to lead large HR organizations, my preparation and ongoing education were absolutely vital.

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

In college, I originally planned to focus on law and/or politics but neither path was my calling. If I could go back in time, I would have encouraged my younger self to take more business and psychology courses helpful for Human Relations.

Why do you think HR deserves a place in the boardroom and in high-level decision-making?

Over the past 3 years, the importance of having a connected, business savvy People partner in the C-suite has grown exponentially. The role of the CEO has expanded to require responsibilities not previously needed for involvement—they are now chief culture officer, counselor, pandemic advisor, remote work specialist, inflation expert, ESG navigator, and retention guru. 

In the past, most companies leaned on HR professionals to deliver the basic functions of hiring, onboarding, employee relations, pay, and talent management. Now, those professionals are at the forefront of every decision we make to attract, retain, develop, and engage our talent.

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

First, HR professionals need to understand the strategy and financial goals of the organization to be able to translate those into a cohesive talent strategy. We need to understand where the business is going—it is the first, most important step to shape that strategy. 

For instance, if the business has traditionally sold individual products/services managed by discrete product lines but wants to pivot to selling “integrated solutions,” the HR team needs to be front and center to conduct a realistic assessment of the talent needs, including re-skilling requirements, incentive changes, and organization design factors.

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

Traditionally CEOs come from varied business backgrounds, gaining experience in the field, sales, operations, supply chain, and development organizations. 

Many top companies have C-suite candidates rotate through an HR-related role to give them a better perspective on people-focused issues. In contrast, many HR leaders have only performed various HR roles like compensation, talent, and recruiting. 

If more organizations would allow HR professionals to branch out into other business areas to build their operational and financial acumen, such as Schlumberger and GM, they could be better differentiated from others who aspire to the CEO role.   

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

Financial acumen is critical for all of us to understand how our decisions impact cash flow, top-line growth, profit margins, working capital constraints, etc. 

Additionally, HR professionals should work on understanding strategic planning concepts, using tools such Porters 5 Forces and SWOT analyses to understand how the company differentiates itself from the competition. 

Lastly, HR business partners need to understand the responsibilities of leadership and how to support leaders for better performance.  

In my experience, talent strategy should focus on building a sense of collective ownership for each employee’s outcomes for their clients.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important ways that HR can help drive company decisions? 

1 . Fully understand the strategy of the organization and how it needs to evolve to meet competitive threats or exploit opportunities.  

Example: In the oilfield services business, success requires strong products, a great sales organization, effective field staff to implement services, and an effective supply chain is required for success. 

Originally, these businesses were responsible for selling individual products or tools to various parts of the customer base (drilling the well v completing the well v. producing the well). 

Originally, these businesses sold individual products to customers, but due to exploration and production companies pushing risk and technology requirements in the early to mid-2000s, the oilfield service organizations needed to “integrate” their product and service offerings and deliver full solutions. 

Given this integration required a full update of company expectations, HR teams of the service organizations had to quickly pivot to build a new company structure, including project management and contracting expertise, incentive schemes to drive “integrated” behaviors, new hiring models to bring in talent that didn’t exist in the organization, etc.  

2 . Be able to translate business strategy into a thorough talent strategy that sustainably delivers over time.

Example:  A company’s talent strategy needs to prioritize identifying what roles need to have the best talent possible. While every role at a company is important, there are a few that a company needs to get “right” to remain competitive with other companies.

From there, talent strategy needs to outline how talent is acquired (buy, build, borrow), how much is needed and where it is needed, and the sourcing and development paths needed to bring it online. 

In industries with rapid growth/contraction cycles, it’s critical to maintain partnerships with Recruiting Process Outsource (RPO) companies to continue the talent acquisition process. Keeping a positive partnership with RPOs ensures the company has access to specialists who can staff up or down as demand rises and falls—without having to hire and lay off recruiters.

In my experience, talent strategy should focus on building a sense of collective ownership for each employee’s outcomes for their clients.

When consultants travel constantly and spend more time onsite with clients than with their own colleagues, it’s essential that the employees understand the purpose, mission, and accountability each other have to drive collective success. 

Additionally, talent strategy has to align with the knowledge management strategy—arming each consultant with the needed training and linking them to all resources  That way, they can bring the entire organization’s expertise to every business engagement

3 . Understand what talent acquisition strategy is appropriate for each scenario: 

• Whether a company should hire talent externally, or re-skill current employees 
• Change compensation incentives to attract, retain, or change behavior
• Activate the leadership succession bench to unlock potential new opportunities

4 . Ground business strategy decisions and accompanying talent decisions in solid business impact analysis.

This could be through a more tangible analysis such as ROI and cost-benefit analysis, or less tangible such as the impact on retention or engagement.

Example: In an analysis of product development and R&D engineer salaries, comparing internal benchmarks and external salary studies, my team discovered the average engineer was under the midpoint, approximately 10% below market. 

The HR team put together a plan and cost/benefit analysis for bringing the group in line with the company benchmark in year one and phasing increases to achieve market rates over the next two years. 

Using the cost of attrition as the benefit component, the incremental salary cost far outweighed the savings generated by lowering attrition and increasing engagement. Because of our analysis and phased approach, the business leadership team was able to  make educated people investment decisions.

5 . Serve as a coach for key decision-makers as they weigh alternatives.  

Example: All leaders need team members that can work through issues, provide feedback, and talk through challenges.

As a part of an organization going through bankruptcy and facing layoff decisions, the HR team and I were able to coach the senior leadership through layoffs during the holiday season.

We helped them with their decision not to lay off anyone in December—treating people with respect and mitigating the challenges that layoffs would entail internally. 

Parents and families had already made commitments to their kids and relatives—losing their job immediately before the holiday season could cause incredible stress and despair. While that was a costly decision, it was the right one for the people.

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen businesses make when faced with hard decisions?

1. First is that they don’t decide and they delay hard decisions, which leads to even more hard decisions along the way. 
2. They don’t always gather multiple stakeholder perspectives, they just make decisions in a “vacuum”, only gathering the executive team’s input. Tough decisions require widespread responses from multiple perspectives—customers, employees, and shareholders/stakeholders. 
3. Organizations don’t communicate the “why” behind the “what” around company decisions, and those impacted are left in the dark. George Bernard Shaw’s quote, “The illusion about communication is that it has occurred” is one of my favorites and a good reminder that what we say is often not received in the way in which it was intended. 

Lastly, who would love to have lunch with and why?

In the HR world, I’d love to meet and learn from Josh Bersin, whose work I’ve followed for years. I’ve used a number of his unique insights into talent models, tools, and methodologies that I’ve tapped into in my own work.

Additionally, as a sports junkie, I’d love to have lunch with my original basketball hero, Larry Bird. His passion for the sport and his ability to transition from one of the great players of all time to a successful coach and general manager would be fascinating to learn about. 

Thanks Wesley, some great insights in there! How can people follow your work?

My LinkedIn page is the best place – I’ve written a number of articles there and listed out the articles and books I’ve written over the years as well.

Some further insights from the series:

• To Get Ahead, Know When It’s Right To Ask For Help
• How HR Can Use Deep Data To Support The Business
• Why CHROs Make Great CEOs And How They Can Make The Switch

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In many organizations, talent reviews are little more than a paper shuffle.

HR spends a ludicrous amount of time persuading business leaders to place employees in one of nine little boxes, based on the person’s perceived performance and potential, then facilitates a series of heated debates about those placements.

The process has two primary goals: (1) identify talent with the greatest likelihood of making a value-added contribution to the organization and (2) decide how to transform that potential benefit into a reality.

On the surface, both seem logical. The trouble is companies often fail at the first and barely attempt the second. 

The lackluster effort typically results in a neatly crafted talent review and succession planning binder that languishes on the HR bookshelf until the following year’s meeting. 

To avoid proliferating this fruitless paper chase, consider incorporating these six actions into your talent review process.

Stop Sweating the Performance Factor 

Employees will sometimes question their talent review scores, but a manager can easily settle those challenges by presenting a fact-based assessment of their performance. 

Even competency ratings can be defended by a similar presentation of objectively observed behavioral indicators.

Performance is simple. An employee and manager agree on what should be done (goals) and how it should be done (competencies) and then the employee’s actual results are measured against those goals.

So, even if an employee initially disagrees with or is disappointed by the performance evaluation, he or she can ultimately come to accept the rating and work toward improvement given a reasonable rationale. 

Talent reviews simply look at sustained performance—that is performance over time and varying situations. 

Stop Pretending You Can Predict Potential

Potential ratings, however, are not nearly as easy to assign or defend. Left to their own devices, even the most astute leaders will default to squishy language and anecdotal evidence when attempting to rate an employee’s potential. 

Some organizations will borrow verbiage from consulting companies, but the verbose and generic descriptors only serve to further complicate the meaning and cast doubt on the measurement’s validity.

The pushback from employees makes sense when you consider what that one word–potential— is intended to measure:

• Career ability (I can do it)
• Aspiration (I want to do it)
• Engagement (I want to do it here, at this organization).  

It’s almost laughable. Without validated, job-specific assessment, how can a manager accurately assess an employee’s ability? And how can they tell someone with a straight face that they have limited career aspirations and thus no room to grow? Aspiration is internal – think intrinsic motivation. 

To be fair, with the right tools, engagement can be measured, but it’s often a circular argument. If employees perceive that they are viewed or even indirectly treated as though they have no ambition or potential, why would their engagement ever be high?

Part of the reason organizations are reluctant to share their talent review assessments with employees is that they have no confidence in the validity of their potential scores.

If companies want to use something other than performance trends as a rationale for investing in certain employees, they must first get potential ratings right. That means clearly and accurately defining the term or dropping it completely.

Clarify What is Expected From and Offered To Employees

Assuming a company is confident in its talent review scoring system, it should honor its employee value proposition by providing transparent communication to both those deemed as “High Potential” (HiPos) and those who aren’t.

Key Talent (HiPos) will want to know things like:

• Does this advance other opportunities for me such as promotions, international assignments, and high-profile projects?
• Will I be provided with additional resources (coaching, classes, mentors, etc.)? 
• What can I expect in terms of visibility with leadership? And by the way, (gulp)…what does the company expect of me now… and what happens if I can’t deliver?
• By the way, how do I stay on the HiPo list and continue to grow?

Non-key talent everyone else) may want to know things like: 

• How do I up my game and get in the HiPo group?
• Are there resources to help me do so or am I on my own? 
• Can I stay in the non-key talent pool indefinitely? 
• What’s the company’s “failure” tolerance? 
• Will I be branded with the non-key moniker forever or is the assessment honestly and objectively refreshed each year? 

Act on “Implied” Promises

Organizations will get points for transparency, but the kudos will evaporate quickly if people leaders aren’t enabled to follow through on the answers provided. 

This requires a strong company culture, well-designed HR practices, and supportive managers. 

For example, leaders can verbally support talent movement, and HR can build a career ladder infrastructure, but, if managers thrive in a culture that allows them to horde talent, all will be lost. 

To get talent management right you have to do more than make it appealing for employees and senior leaders to participate, you must reward managers who grease the wheels of participation.

Visibly Reward Talent Developers

Companies need to formalize and encourage the internal practice of a phenomenon that occurs naturally in the wider talent market. 

If you watch workers move between organizations within an industry, you’ll notice that the pattern of travel is not random. Yes, employees join companies and leave managers, but the reverse is also true. Many times, employees are wooed away by prior managers. 

Great leaders have gravity, the kind that entices people to follow them. Imagine the employee brand, engagement, and performance-based culture an organization could create if it actively encouraged managers to be talent developers. 

Leveraging this unspoken dynamic of, “If you want to get somewhere at (insert company), work for that person,” would dramatically reduce turnover, sparking savings in staffing, training, and production. 

Obtain Proof of Concept

Organizations are usually skittish when it comes to comprehensive change, especially if it involves upping the level of candor. 

In larger organizations, HR can turn this challenge into an opportunity by volunteering to pilot the new process. Human resources leaders can adopt these ideals and, after conducting a transparent talent review, take the following actions to capitalize on the value created:

• Help employees craft meaningful individual development plans (IDP) that address a variety of goals such as promotion, skills development, or a lateral move.
• Align IDPs to real work and coach employees using a deliberate practice model that sparks measurable improvement.
• Answer tough questions such as: how do I get promoted? Is it “too late” to take a lateral move? How am I viewed by leadership? What support is available to me? 
• Track progress and IDP completions, noting the win for the employee, the company, and the manager. Align to long-term succession planning actions where appropriate.
• Reward managers for making good people-based decisions.

If talent reviews are to offer actual value, they must be valid, transparent, and believable. After all, when an external recruiter calls with an offer, it’s real. There’s no smoke-filled room. No nine-box nonsense. That’s what internal talent managers are really up against. 

Approach an employee with vague language and some half-hearted, mysterious explanation of how their “potential” was rated and all you’ll get is a resignation letter.

Interested in hearing your thoughts on the above so either leave something in the comments of over in the People Managing People Community, a supportive community of HR and business leaders passionate about building organizations of the future.

For a more in-depth article on actually conducting a review, check out Alex Link’s excellent article How To Perform A Talent Review In 5 Steps.

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Having a mentor is very important for any business, regardless of its type. Having someone who’s been there and done that can help you reach your goals. Having a loyal and knowledgeable advisor can help you achieve success.

Although they can’t make decisions for you, mentors can help you make informed decisions. They can provide sound advice and insight, and they’re not charging for their services. Usually, they work for free because they’re genuinely interested in helping the business owner succeed.

There are various organizations and places that can help you find a mentor for your business. These are typically run by people who are passionate about helping entrepreneurs succeed.

Look Within Your Network

The most common mistake many new entrepreneurs make when finding a mentor is assuming that networking isn’t an option. Networking can build connections, which includes finding a mentor.

When it comes to finding a mentor, instead of looking for “the one,” focus on building strong connections within your network. This will allow you to expand your scope of knowledge and connect with other people in various industries. However, transitioning from a networking relationship to becoming a mentor can be challenging.

Take It Seriously

Being organized is one of the most important factors that new entrepreneurs should consider when it comes to finding a mentor. Having a consistent and organized schedule can help keep the meetings going smoothly. One-on-one sessions can help you identify areas of concern and develop a strategy to address them. Having a lunch meeting once a month can also help you get the advice you need to tackle various business obstacles.

Be Respectful

You should also be respectful of your mentor’s time with you. They may be able to provide insight that you need to make an informed decision, but it’s still your business. Take the time to review your actions and improve them in the next session.

Attend Events

If you’re looking for a mentor, attend events related to your industry. These can help you connect and build a strong relationship with the person interested in helping you. One of the most critical steps that new entrepreneurs should consider when it comes to finding a mentor is being organized. A casual conversation with a potential mentor can help you feel like you’ve met someone who genuinely wants to help you.

The post Finding an Entrepreneurship Mentor first appeared on Rob Elkington | Business & Entrepreneurship.

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I’ve been managing people and budgets for over 20 years, and I was a CFO in 2008 when the recession hit and we had to drastically cut the company budget. Unfortunately, that included laying off a portion of our team.

Laying off workers is never an easy decision for organizations, but, when it becomes necessary, it’s important to do so compassionately and legally while also preserving the employer brand as much as possible.

Here I’ll take you through how you can conduct layoffs the right way, as well as how you can minimize the risk you’ll have to lay anyone off at all.

How to conduct layoffs the right way

Be transparent and respectful

One of the most important things you should do is be transparent with your employees about the situation and provide as much support as possible during the transition.

It’s important to communicate clearly and empathetically with employees, expressing gratitude for their contributions and acknowledging the difficulty of the situation.

Ensure that people are made aware of:

• Severance pay
• Benefits (health insurance, leftover, PTO, unused lifestyle spending accounts)
• Career counseling
• Job placement assistance
• Unemployment benefits.

When it comes to creating a communication plan for layoffs, it’s important to involve multiple stakeholders, including HR professionals, legal experts, and senior management.

The plan should be designed to ensure that all employees are notified in a timely and respectful manner and that they have the opportunity to ask questions and receive support during the transition.

Provide them with a clear understanding of the process, including the timeline, the criteria for selecting employees to be laid off, and the reasons behind the decision. Encourage them to ask questions and provide honest answers as much as possible. 

By being transparent and supportive, you can help ease the difficult transition of a layoff and help departing employees move on to their next opportunity with dignity.

Unfortunately, in this world of dispersed work, layoffs in-person aren’t always practical. If you’re doing it digitally, ideally it should be conducted face-to-face over Zoom or another communication platform.

Therein lies a caveat—it’s impossible to lay off 1,500 people (or more) via Zoom with a small HR team, especially when it’s something that needs to be done expeditiously. In this case—even though maybe it’s a bit impersonal—it will be an email.

However you do it, what matters most is that you show as much respect and support as possible.

Stripe’s layoff notice is a great example of how to communicate with empathy and transparency.

In their notice, they express gratitude for the contributions of the affected employees and explain the reasoning behind the layoffs in a clear and honest way. They also provide information on severance pay, benefits, and other resources available to help affected employees.

Rely on your human resources team

To ensure legal compliance, trust the expertise of the HR professionals on your team and consider consulting employment attorneys to ensure that the layoff process is handled in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.

You should also ensure that you’re following your own policies and procedures for layoffs, which may include offering severance pay and continuing benefits. Be sure to clearly communicate those benefits with your employees, too.

Offer outplacement services

As part of the severance package, consider offering outplacement services such as career coaching, resume writing, and job search assistance. These services can be a compassionate and effective way for organziations to support employees during a difficult transition.

Time is of the essence, so providing ample notice and offering job search assistance can help employees feel more secure about their future.

It may also help mitigate some of the negative impacts of a layoff and preserve the company’s reputation and employer brand by demonstrating the company cares about its employees and is willing to invest in their future success.

Be prepared to retrain, rebuild teams, and manage change

When handling layoffs, it’s important to remember it’s not just about cutting costs and reducing headcount. Companies should also be prepared to retrain and develop existing employees, especially if the need arises to rebuild teams entirely. 

By investing in employees’ development and building a culture of continuous learning and growth, you’re equipping your team with the skills they need to adapt to changing business needs.

Leadership and career coach, Beth Messich, makes a good point regarding this on LinkedIn. She raised the point that many people who remain in an organization after a round of layoffs are faced with “new org structures, with new bosses, and in roles with new scopes.” 

With so much change happening, the layoff strategy may not always include accounting and planning for training or change management… some of the key pieces needed to achieve the results a company was aiming to achieve through a layoff.

“It requires discipline and consistency, which can often get brushed aside because of other more urgent but not more important matters,” says Messich, “It is not easy, but it is not hard either. And it works better than what many companies are doing now.”

Get feedback from remaining employees on restructuring

Involving your employees in the decision-making process and seeking their input as your company restructures after layoffs will help to identify further inefficiencies and redundancies within the organization that can be addressed before further layoffs become necessary. 

It will also foster a greater sense of transparency and trust moving forward. Employee feedback can be obtained through surveys, anonymous suggestion boxes, town hall or “all-hands” meetings, or one-on-one conversations.

It’s important to make sure people feel heard and that their input is taken seriously, as this can help to create a more positive work environment during what can be a challenging time.

How to avoid layoffs

Implement better hiring practices

Of course, the best way to avoid layoffs altogether is to implement better hiring practices and budget accordingly. We saw a lot of overhiring in the last few years, especially at the FAANG companies.

They were overstaffed (even apparently hiring employees to do nothing!) and offered huge compensation packages without considering how sustainable this practice would be. Now the bubble has burst we’re seeing headline after headline announcing layoffs at these companies.

Things may have been different if they did a more careful evaluation of staffing needs and took a more strategic approach to workforce planning.

Of course, layoffs may have ultimately been unavoidable but could have been marginal in comparison. 

Invest in training and development programs

To avoid layoffs, companies should also consider investing in training and development programs to ensure that people have the skills and knowledge needed to perform their jobs effectively and adapt to changing business needs.

These opportunities allow employees to enhance their skills and knowledge, leading to improved job performance, increased job satisfaction, and potentially higher retention rates.

In addition, employees who receive training and development opportunities are more likely to feel valued by the company and invested in their professional growth.

For the company, investing in training and development programs can lead to a more skilled and adaptable workforce better able to meet changing business needs and drive innovation.

Related read: How To Create A Learning And Development Strategy In 7 Steps

Secondments 

Secondments are an option to provide employees with opportunities to learn new skills and gain experiences without having to lay anyone off. It involves temporarily transferring an employee to another department, team, or even a different organization.

For example, Zapier offered a secondment program where employees can work for a different team or in a different role for a set period of time rather than being laid off.

This meant the company didn’t lose loyal and talented individuals and allowed them to gain new skills, expand their knowledge, and potentially discover new areas of interest or career paths. 

Additionally, it helps foster collaboration and cross-functional understanding between different parts of the organization.

The Bottom Line on Layoffs

Above all else, if downsizing is necessary and layoffs need to happen, it’s important to prioritize your departing employee’s well-being, remain as transparent as possible, and communicate consistently throughout the process. 

Remember, the employees you’re letting go are people, often with families to support and bills to pay. This will undoubtedly be a difficult time for them.

Showing laid-off employees empathy, compassion, and respect, and offering as many resources to help them find a new job is just the right thing to do and will protect your reputation moving forward.

Additionally, remaining team members need to be supported and reassured through honest and open communication and a considered approach to restructuring.

Some further resources to help you handle and avoid layoffs:

• 7 Ways To Improve Employee Relations In Your Organization
• How To Create An Efficient, Sustainable Growth Hiring Plan

Join The Conversation

Have any feedback or advice to give on the above?

Leave something in the comments or join us in the People Managing People community, a supportive network of HR and business leaders passionate about building organizations of the future.

To stay up-to-date on asynchronous working and other important people and culture topics, subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter.

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The criticality of a closely-knit relationship between the Head of People and the CEO of an organization cannot be overstated.

But, despite the obviousness of this notion to HR leaders, it appears that executives need to be enlightened on this matter.

Allow me to illustrate this with an example of a blind spot that executives tend to have when their Head of People does not report directly to the CEO.

As an Interim VP, People and Culture, I once worked with a mortgage fintech organization where I reported to the COO.

I emphasized at the outset that the people initiatives the organization was seeking were intricate and that an HR leader was necessary to assist the CEO in dealing with these matters.

Achieving their objectives was impossible unless we modified the reporting structure to allow for this relationship.

Alas, that structure remained in place until the organization hit rock bottom. The challenges they were encountering were addressed, but the cultural norms that contributed to those challenges remained untouched.

Consequently, the COO struggled in their role, overwhelmed and unable to make a significant cultural impact from the top while losing their team and experiencing high attrition rates.

HR leaders are not miracle workers; progress is made only through people. Without the opportunity to develop the necessary relationships, even the most skilled HR professionals can find their efforts to be akin to walking on water.

Fortunately, the reporting structure was eventually revised, and I began reporting to the CEO.

Working closely with the COO, I was able to have meaningful, human conversations with the CEO about culture. As a result, perceptions of the employee experience began to improve and the root causes of the organization’s challenges were addressed.

It’s essential to bear in mind that this is merely one instance where a lack of relationship between the Head of People and the CEO has led to problems. As an HR focused on impacting meaningful change, this is a relationship you have to cultivate.

Here is how, over time, I developed the required relationship.

7 Methods For Building A Strong Relationship With The CEO

1. Report directly to the CEO

As highlighted in the above example, this is important. But, before approaching the CEO to request to report to them, it’s essential to work with your current manager and ensure that you’re aligned.

To persuade your manager and the CEO to change the structure, you must first establish a strong case for how this change would benefit the organization.

This includes demonstrating your ability to contribute to the CEO’s strategic priorities and goals, highlighting your unique skillset and experience, and showing your commitment to the organization’s mission and values.

It’s also essential to have a clear and compelling vision for how the new reporting structure would work, including a detailed plan for how you would collaborate with the CEO and other stakeholders.

Finally, you should be prepared to address any concerns or objections your manager or the CEO may have and be ready to explain why this change is necessary for the organization’s success.

It’s certainly plausible that apprehension may arise regarding the CFO or COO’s underutilization in the event of the change in reporting structure. The notion that they may not be fulfilling their potential or that their expertise and skillset are not being fully utilized could be a cause for concern.

To address this, I’d explain that the change in reporting structure is not intended to diminish the role or responsibilities of the CFO or COO, but rather to create a more effective and streamlined structure for managing human resources operations. 

By reporting directly to the CEO, it ensures that the company’s HR initiatives are aligned with its overall goals and vision and that resources are being used effectively. 

This can help the CFO or COO focus on their core competencies and responsibilities while allowing you to manage HR-related issues more efficiently.

Another probable objection to the proposed change is apprehension regarding an augmented workload for the CEO. The possible added burden on the CEO’s already busy schedule, and the potential stress it could cause, may generate apprehension and resistance towards the change.

I’d address this concern by presenting a clear plan for how the change in reporting structure will be implemented, including details on how it will affect the CEO’s workload and responsibilities.

This could involve providing specific examples of how you might take over some of the tasks that were previously handled by your manager, such as talent acquisition, employee retention, and training and development.

You can also highlight how the change will lead to faster decision-making and improved communication, which will ultimately reduce the workload for everyone involved. 

By addressing these concerns in a thoughtful and thorough manner, you can illustrate why the change in reporting structure is a positive and necessary decision for the organization.

By approaching this conversation with confidence, preparation, and a strategic mindset, you can increase your chances of convincing them to let you report to them.

2. Establish a Rhythm of Communication

I’m keen on instituting a customary meeting with the CEO as it serves as a splendid medium to cultivate an affinity and maintain the salience of human resources and talent management.

By organizing a recurring meeting, you’re able to establish a methodical and unvarying approach to deliberating HR-related matters and perpetuate a steady cadence of communication.

I’d advise arranging a weekly or fortnightly one-on-one, lasting no more than 30 minutes, in addition to the executive team’s collective customary meeting. 

This meeting provides a platform to address intricate HR predicaments that necessitate nuanced attention or may be inappropriate for discussion in a larger setting.

3. Become the Executive Team’s HRBP

In my role as the Head of People, I’m entrusted with the task of overseeing the organization’s people strategy while also providing counsel and assistance to the executive team. 

As the HR business partner to the team, I embrace a dual persona—that of a coach and peer—in order to assist the CEO in maintaining an engaged and high-performing executive team. 

An example of my support is providing guidance on communicating sensitive information to the team, or coaching the CEO on how to navigate challenging conversations with team members.

4. Get Accustomed to their Preferred Communication Platform

Comprehending the CEO’s favored method of communication is crucial to fostering a robust relationship. 

Some CEOs may incline toward direct interaction, while others may show a preference for digital platforms such as email, Slack, or Teams.

By grasping the CEO’s preferred communication style, I can adjust my approach to ensure maximal efficacy. 

For instance, in the case of the former, I will strive to request in-person meetings whenever viable, thereby forging a more personal connection. 

Conversely, in the case of the latter, I might furnish regular updates or reports via email to keep the CEO duly informed.

5. Know their “Top of Mind” Challenges

Comprehension of the CEO’s imperatives and predicaments is pivotal to forging a robust rapport. I prioritize investing time in comprehensively understanding their focal points, both on a personal and professional level.

If the CEO’s agenda centers on burgeoning the business, I would shift my focus on devising strategies to attract and retain high-performing employees to propel the company’s expansion.

Conversely, if the CEO is concerned about employee engagement or high turnover, I would explore methods to enhance the organizational culture and augment the employee experience.

6. Build Trust with Those They Trust

Recognizing the individuals whom the CEO confides in and fostering connections with them is an effective strategy to cultivate credibility and wield influence within the organization. By establishing trust with key stakeholders, I can establish myself as a reliable counselor.

To illustrate, I conscientiously cultivate rapport with members of the executive team or influential figures in various departments to build coalitions and solicit endorsement for HR initiatives. 

This approach is likewise an advantageous tactic to identify critical issues that the organization will be more receptive to tackling.

7. Be Relatable

Identifying mutual interests or hobbies that I share with the CEO can be a fruitful tactic in establishing rapport and amiable interactions.

This strategy fosters a personal connection and strengthens our relationship by virtue of shared interests.

For instance, if the CEO is an avid enthusiast of a particular sports team or loves hiking, I may relay personal anecdotes or observations linked to those areas. 

Through this approach, I can forge a more organic and personable connection that transcends the traditional employer-employee dynamic.

Forging An Alliance Vital For Organizational Success

A close alliance between the Head of People and the CEO is vital for organizational success.

A case in point is my earlier example of the mortgage fintech company where I, as the Interim VP, People and Culture, reported to the COO instead of the CEO, leading to significant challenges and cultural issues. Only when the reporting structure was revised, and I began reporting directly to the CEO, did meaningful progress occur.

By fostering this relationship, organizations will help to effectively address people-related challenges, improve culture, and align HR initiatives with strategic goals, ultimately driving positive outcomes.

If you’re looking for cultural transformation, executive coaching, talent management strategies, or HR strategic support from a Global Sr. Executive HR Consultant, please feel free to reach out in comments, on Linkedin, or in the People Managing People Community.

Further resources to help you implement change as an HR leader:

• How To Become An Effective Change Leader
• 3 Ways To Build Your Professional Network And Make Meaningful Connections
• HR In The Boardroom: Why And How HR Should Help Drive Company Decisions

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It’s 2020 and everyone’s feeling called out.

Following the murder of George Floyd, companies are scrambling to publish a diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI) mission statement on their website or send a letter from their CEO with their take on what happened.

Suddenly, DEI is the top employer branding goal of 2021. Recruiters need to know what to say when interviewing people who ask what their DEI goals are. People managers are considering DEI when writing their job descriptions and structuring their onboarding processes.

During that period, organizations had to learn to walk the walk.

Since then, there’s been no shortage of content produced about how to approach DEI work, yet the feedback we continue to receive sounds the same.

“What are the goals even supposed to be?”

“Yeah, employee resource groups, but what else can we do?”

“How can we do things that feel authentic to what we do as a company?” 

“How can we make it relevant to our current employees?”

The fact that these questions are being asked means there’s been a significant shift, a point of no return. It means we collectively agree that DEI work is the right thing to do, but now we’re asking, “Are we doing it right?”.

I’d argue that, up to this point, most company leaders are still struggling to determine the “right” actions to take in their relatively new diversity initiatives.

To be honest, even seasoned DEI practitioners like myself struggle with how to set the right goals for their clients. In-house DEI executives are also careful not to set goals too hastily and ensure they are the right and meaningful goals that the organization will be motivated to meet.

All this to say, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t feel you’ve been setting the right goals. It’s not an easy thing to do.

It’s perfectly reasonable to look back and ask:

• Were the goals we set the right ones? 
• What goals do we tackle next? 
• How do we set goals that we’ll collectively care about, believe in, and work hard every day to meet?

To help you going forward, I’ll share a practical, step-by-step process you can use to identify the right DEI goals for your org and track your progress toward more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces.

• How to set DEI goals
• Ways to Track, Report, And Adapt Your DEI Goals

How To Set DEI Goals

Step One: Define and Align on Your Meaning of DEI

In order to set meaningful DEI goals where you work, you must first align on the purpose of DEI work. To do that, you need to have a deep understanding of the lived culture in your workplace.

Not aspirationally, but the realities of what it feels like to work there. Especially for people with historically marginalized identities.

This part of the process can’t be skipped.

DEI Practitioners can spend up to a year working to fully understand the live culture that is operating within teams, between individuals, and how managers are behaving. They have to intricately know the inner workings of the employee experience.

Through surveys, interviews, and (ideally) focus groups, they ask team members questions like such as “What does it feel like to be included?” and “What does it feel like to be excluded?” (Here 51 more questions you can ask).

From here, you can clearly define what DEI means for your workplace based on what you’ve learned.

Does it mean more diverse leadership representation is needed?

Would greater pay transparency help address employees feeling undervalued and trust issues? 

Perhaps DEI-driven leadership development like mentorship programming and career pathing for both a motivating and supportive culture? 

Does it mean better, more inclusive meetings that help people feel valued and heard? 

Once you’ve gained an understanding of the live culture and aligned on the purpose of DEI, we can move on to the next step which is to involve others.

Step two: Bring Meaning to the Masses

Let’s say that you’ve found that your DEI goals are centered around becoming more inclusive.

It will become essential to ensure the inclusion goals you set are relevant and motivating to the people directly impacting the necessary policies, practices, and procedures that will change as a result of the work that will follow.

In a sense, you’ll need buy-in from your stakeholders. After all, inclusion work is a business decision and synonymous with the values operationalized by your organization.

So, do you know who the governing structure is? Do you know who you’ll need to involve for the impact you seek? Once you identify them, are you confident they will agree to be involved?

Everyone Has a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Story

In a perfect world, inclusion goals should be a part of everyone’s overall performance. So, figure out how to make whatever goals you set relevant to everyone. 

People managers, executives, recruiters—everyone needs to be tracking the inclusion goals as a part of their performance and how they do their job. To do this, help people find their own story.

Art Howard, VP of DEI at Wiley, believes that most people have their own stories of feeling excluded, disadvantaged, disenfranchised, harshly judged or punished, isolated, or on the receiving end of bias. There are many angles to human identity that have suffered at the hand of the status quo, capitalism, and patriarchy.

He encourages his colleagues to find their own story and where they fit into this work; to get in touch with parts of themselves that were negatively impacted by these harmful systems. He sees this as a way to continually go back to the “Why” inclusion is important; because it’s a core need that we all have.

This exercise will also start to engage our empathic abilities and help us find common ground.

Mind the Gaps

Once you’ve defined DEI, identified your areas of focus, and made it relevant to everyone, you’ll surely see some gaps in understanding. Consider these your educational (or even professional development) goals for leadership, management, and the governing structure you’ve identified. 

Setting educational goals like this is a very common starting place.

Consider hosting workshops for your recruiting team, people managers, and executives on how opportunities for more inclusive practices, procedures, and policies will benefit them and everyone. Let it be collaborative and don’t assume you know more than anyone else in the room.

Expect struggles in application and stalled execution. Now, your goals have meaning and the real work starts!

Step Three: Assess the Gaps 

If you’re feeling like your initial goals to educate the masses are aspirational, given the way we’ve historically designed our workplaces, they likely are. 

Take it one day at a time. Give these goals a set of tasks, timelines, and retrospectives just like any project. Ensure the goals and opportunities for growth that have emerged are obtainable and specific.

Here are some potential gaps to look out for:

• Did you notice that a senior leader wasn’t engaged or was defensive when you attempted to educate leadership on inclusion? 

• Did you receive feedback that someone in management wasn’t giving constructive feedback during performance reviews and was even bullying this direct report? 
• Are the meetings held across departments disrespecting people’s time because they are dominated by the same people speaking over and over? 

Start to notice gaps like these and let them be your opportunities for growth, AKA your goals.

From here, you can start to implement “Winnable Experiments”, AKA practical initiatives that you can implement and measure within your control.

Practical Examples of Inclusion Goals 

Although it’s important to remember that you must develop your own goals as they pertain to your organization, here are some ideas for obtainable, and specific inclusion goals that relate to anyone:

1. More inclusive meetings and communication practices by 2024—establish inclusive meeting requirements for every department.
2. A culture of allyship by 2024—equate allyship as a job requirement for leadership and management and make it the norm and only accepted work ethic for all. Embed it in all job descriptions, performance reviews, and salary negotiations.
3. Improved employee happiness, joy, and fulfilment by 2024—implement policies that improve people’s lives outside of work.

Ways to Track, Report, And Adapt Your DEI Goals

Here’s something you may not have read anywhere else yet. 

So many people ask me how they can track and measure the success of their DEI initiatives and better understand their progress toward their goals.

But what if, instead, DEI isn’t something that we report out on and there is no overt celebration or posted leaderboard showing improved numbers?

When you really think about it, DEI work is no cause for celebration. It’s our duty to get right with humanity. It’s not a PR moment, bragging rights, or a quota to hit. It’s like meal planning, yard work, and laundry i.e. never ending!

I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve sat through listening to someone present on their diversity data, employee engagement data, or some other data from the endless surveys employees receive on their experience at an organization.

We need to start asking ourselves, who are these benefitting?

We know we need to be continually moderating, observing, and learning what impact our goals are having.

What I’ve found has worked are the conversational opportunities employees have to be honest, discuss their feelings, share ideas, and give verbal impromptu feedback to a trusted facilitator who they don’t work with on a regular basis or who has any stake in their employment. 

Ron Sarazin of Olympic Performance, Inc got it right. 

I once worked at a company that regularly brought in Ron to lead us in a discussion of our honest employee experience. 

Ron knew our organization well, our people and performance goals, and how to communicate the needs for change in a way our HR Leadership could understand. 

People felt psychologically safe to be open, transparent, and collaborate toward solutions. Honestly, it felt like group therapy. I looked forward to these conversations every year and truly felt they were cathartic, productive, and healing. 

I highly recommend working with a trained facilitator to lead these conversations and learn what can happen when space is held for your employees to have them. 

Instead of quantitative, let your DEI results be qualitative. Let the goal be to create the spaces for these conversational results to be had safely and authentically.

Psychologically safe, socially informed, and trusted spaces for these conversations uncovers important truths for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Consider forming a group for each to track and manage your results for each one. 

Here’s how.

Diversity 

Form a facilitated conversation group with the stakeholders responsible and accountable for hiring across teams. When thinking about how to form the group, consider who’s experiencing the issue and who can affect it.

Include a recruiting champion, a sampling of people managers, the minds behind employer branding and/or recruiting software, and whoever is involved in the creation of the job description and needs of the job.

Get everyone together to reach a consensus on the goals in place for diversity and representation. Talk about the challenges everyone is having with sourcing, interviewing, and hiring diverse talent.

Hold these conversations quarterly at a minimum and treat these groups like the leaders of the charge for diverse hiring. 

Equity

Similar to your diversity results, let the way you track and manage your equity work progress be driven by the people experiencing equity issues. Remember, who’s experiencing the issue and who can affect it?

Psychological safety is of the utmost importance in this setting. Let this be a two-part effort. Host meetings that are cultivated as a healing space for participants to express concerns, provide feedback, and suggest solutions.

This can be in the form of an employee resource group or a special focus group with diverse representation. Again, psychological safety and socially informed facilitation is key here.

Next, consider who can affect pay transparency, salary negotiations, promotions, leadership development, mentoring and coaching, and intern programs. Host another group where the anonymous and protected feedback has been prepared as a deliverable for this learning and action planning space of stakeholders. 

Inclusion

Let inclusion be the most frequent and diversified groups that you assemble for these conversations. 

Here’s where you can hear straight from the source how your DEI goals are progressing. In their own words, people can express safely what’s making them feel included, excluded, and whether there is a true sense of belonging in the culture. 

The best part: if someone’s asking about the DEI goals and the progress, you’ve identified an ally and can then invite them to join these groups and contribute to the work, too. Because it’s not one person’s job to track and report on, it’s everyone’s. 

It’s worth mentioning that surveys can be a useful method for gathering information on progress toward your DEI goals. 

There are many resources out there to assist you with identifying non intrusive questions that may uncover important existing data in your organization, like this 21 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Survey Questions to Ask.

When it comes to surveys, keep in mind you’re working to put DEI goals in place because you’re aspiring to go somewhere new with your workplace, not keep things the same.

Surveys can only track what’s existing now and can potentially retraumatize people with the questions included if they are not created with an anti oppression lens. Here’s a great podcast episode about this.

Join the Conversation

We realize People Leaders, HR Execs, and DEI Practitioners are often a team of one. Your roles are to create collective impact while balancing the needs of the individuals you support with the needs of the organization, which is no easy feat. 

The good news is that it’s the same skill set required to set meaningful DEI goals. You can do this! 

Want more tips on how to facilitate these conversations? Reach out to me, I’d love to help. 

In addition, there are many, many others doing this work. Join the People Managing People Community here and get regular inspiration by subscribing to our newsletter here. 

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