Latest HR Trends: Humble Leaders, Adaptive Leadership, Skills Shortage, Everywhere Work Revolution, Talent Agility, Value Creation

?? Hello Everyone and Happy Sunday !

?? Welcome back to the 45th edition of Weekly People Research! ??

?? Once again a fascinating week of learning with your inspiring comments and support! I'm writing this newsletter from New York, having just arrived for a week on a business trip.

?So you will see my posts in US time until next week.

?? In this new edition,?you will learn more about :

??Why can humble leaders who mentor improve their organizational status? Human Resource Management (HRM) researchers found that when leaders display humble behavior in mentoring relationships, they enhance their promotability.

??Why a new type of “adaptive” leadership is needed to address AI disruption The Adecco Group in collaboration with Oxford Economics researchers found that digital and technology skills are expected to be the most in demand in five years' time and are likely to be needed for every kind of role.

??Why are skills shortages the biggest risk to organizational growth in 2024 and 2025? Gartner researchers found that only 11% of L&D staff believe employees have the skills they need for future roles.

??Why is the Everywhere Work Revolution happening? Ivanti researchers found that the majority of employees find it more difficult to collaborate with their coworkers when working remotely than in the office.

??Why do owner-employer management practices have a direct impact on business performance? Gallup , JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation researchers noticed that entrepreneurial pathway to wealth and wellbeing often requires employing others.

??Why leadership has a serious impact on business transformations and value creation? Boston Consulting Group (BCG) BCG Henderson Institute highlighted that during the past two decades, only 26% of corporate transformations successfully created value in both the short and long terms.

These insights continue to evolve as we all learn more - as Dave Ulrich and we must now classify these ideas in the Taxonomy of Human Capability.

???Now, let's do a recap of the week on published research:

Humble leaders who mentor can improve their organizational status and promotability !

?? Findings of researchers:

Although leader humility benefits followers, teams and organizations, conventional wisdom is that humility fails to help leaders themselves advance in their own careers and this may have negative implications for human resource management (HRM) practices.

?? Non-humble leaders tend to enjoy tremendous career success as they have high levels of pay , organizational rank job security, and even job satisfaction.

?? When leaders display humble behavior in mentoring relationships, they enhance their own status and promotability.

?? Identifying a leadership predictor of mentoring is novel and implies that there may be other leadership traits, behaviors and styles that may also foster mentoring behavior, according to a new interesting research published by a team of US, UK and Singapore researchers in the Human Resource Management (HRM) journal using data ?? from 610 leaders across 18 industries and 21 job functions who participated in a leader development program.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Researchers offer 5 ways organizations can encourage humble leadership:

?? Reward humility in performance evaluations.

?? Recognize and promote informal mentoring, which is stronger and generally more effective than formal mentorship programs

?? Encourage humility and mentoring in leadership, helping the entire organization adapt and evolve into a "learning organization."

?? In developmental performance appraisal, constructive feedback on leaders' humble behaviors can be given.

?? Institute leadership training programs that emphasize humility, highlighting how these traits can contribute to career success and organizational growth.

??My personal View:

Unlike previous research, this outstanding research demonstrates that Humble leaders provide career support and guidance to their mentee through mentoring and this, in turn, can lead to capturing the human capital value they generate via enhanced promotability ratings. With the researchers' Five Recommendations, organizations can easily encourage humble leadership to succeed in business.

???? What were the HR expert opinions:

Dave Ulrich I like the metaphor of "humble" leadership as a predictor of positive leadership outcomes. This reminds me of Jim Collins' "level 5" leader who delivers results through what he calls "personal humility plus professional will." The competencies (knowledge, skill, and aptitude) of humility (self effacing, reserved, modest, etc.) are useful to identity, some of which are likely aptitude (nature) and others skills (nurture).In our work on leadership code, we put these competencies into the domain of "personal proficiency" and this research helps confirm and clarify this domain.

Jos van Snippenberg We're inundated with new titles of leadership. I enjoy examining the characteristics of leadership and their effects on people and outcomes. Undeniably, contemporary leadership falls significantly short in practice. Over the past 9 months, I've spoken with many HR managers and professionals. One of the most notable frustrations I encountered was the "drop syndrome" – situations where self-initiative is lacking, and every trivial matter concerning people is dumped onto one's plate. HR often sees numerous managers at their desks, struggling to keep employees motivated and engaged. Under the guise of being overwhelmed with work, they increasingly pass the buck to HR.

Sarah McLellan The evidence is definitely there for a new era in Human Leadership. Now we need to break the mold in practice and start placing and nurturing leaders with a people-first, empathy-led, humble approach to building teams and businesses.

Murthy Nibhanipudi VS In my opinion, the ability to organize promotes the Human Leadership model in leadership program is a testament to our forward-thinking approach. By prioritizing organization, we create an environment where clarity, efficiency, and productivity thrive.

George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC MIoL I feel that this research comes down to the fact that there is a need to generate trust - across an organization - between those who lead and those who are being led. But, perhaps we need to remember that in some cases it is those who are normally led that need to take the lead.

A new type of “Adaptive” Leadership is needed to address AI disruption because the “Buy vs. Create” Talent Strategy is unsustainable!

?? Findings of researchers:

Leaders agree that it is their responsibility to inspire and empower workers to stay relevant across their whole working lives

??Digital literacy will be the most in-demand skillset in five years.

? 57% of employees lack confidence in their leadership team's AI skills and knowledge.

??Only a minority of businesses (11%) have made significant progress in digital transformation

?? Emotional understanding and empathy (EQ) are becoming increasingly important versus technical and analytical skills (IQ)

?? AI helps to create a human-centric business: Leaders must bolster uniquely human attributes with coaching, training and leadership development.

Most companies plan to recruit rather than train existing workforce, according to a new interesting research published by The Adecco Group in collaboration with Oxford Economics using data ?? from 2,000 C-suite executives nine countries during October to December 2023.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Finally, Adecco researchers formulated 5 recommendations below for companies:

?? Start with a responsible AI framework

?? Build skills and promote internal mobility

??Educate the entire workforce on AI

?? Embed adaptive leadership

?? Coach for uniquely human skills

??My personal View: This outstanding research on the impact of AI on the workforce demonstrates that the majority of companies and especially leadership are not ready, that is to say, not trained and do not have sufficient knowledge of new technologies. So the researchers' recommendations for promoting adaptive leadership are very interesting.

???? What were the HR expert opinions:

Dave Ulrich . Adecco has a history of thoughtful research. I agree that AI is still early in the "S-curve" of application, which much more to come. What I like about this research is that it reports and triggers what leaders need to know and do to move AI up the S=curve. In our work on leadership code, we identified five domains of effective leadership and AI can apply to each. Leaders need to be:1. Strategists. They need to envision what AI contributes to their strategic success, 2. Executors: create a disciplined execution plan for implementing an AI agenda3. Talent managers: help identify talent (knowledge and skills) to make AI happen (the focus on this research) 4. Human capability developers: build an AI=enabled culture. 5. Role models: given the data, they need to model using AI for themselves. Again, I like probing the leadership role for furthering AI progress. Thanks for sharing.

Namita Gopinathan,MBA I agree that digital literacy is very important today, but neglecting the development of human skills could lead to a disconnect between leaders and their teams. Promoting creativity, critical thinking and interpersonal skills will ultimately drive long-term success. I believe it is important for leaders to understand the human aspect of their workforce which is as important as technical expertise. Workshops centered around emotional understanding and adaptive leadership can bridge the gap between AI advancements and human interaction within organizations.

Katie Kaspari So intriguing! The shift towards developing human-centric skills is key.

George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC MIoL I was surprised at this comment: 'Most companies plan to recruit rather than train existing workforce'. Given the cost of recruitment and the loss of human performance that it creates whilst people settle in to their new role, I would have thought that it would have been more cost-effective to train the existing workforce. Furthermore, failure to train people will only lead to further shortages of skills in the marketplace. This in turn could have an effect on the Brand when society realizes the detrimental effect that this will have with regard to people finding it difficult to find alternative employment due to a lack of development. Very interesting and something that may require further research.

Skills shortages are the biggest risk to Organizational growth in 2024 and 2025, but clear Talent Agility strategies can close skills gaps!

?? Findings of researchers:

Only 11% of L&D staff believe employees have the skills they need for future roles.

Adapting quickly to changing environments, navigating career transitions flexibly, and enthusiastically mastering new technologies like Generative AI is becoming increasingly important in today's career environment.

?? The total number of skills required for a single job is increasing at 5.4% annually

?? So 83% of HR leaders struggling to find enough talent with the skills they need...and Boards of directors overwhelmingly cite skills shortages as the top risk to organizational growth in 2024 and 2025.

?? To meet the need for scarce and emerging skills across knowledge domains, CHROs must increase Talent Agility by strengthening five pillars, according to a new interesting research published by Gartner using data from a survey of 270 nonexecutive board of directors.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Gartner researchers recommend to fill critical skills gaps by strengthening five pillars of talent agility:

1?? Identify needed skills with strategic workforce planning and technology.

2?? Recruit talent with human-centric brand connection.

3?? Develop dynamic skills with agile learning.

4?? Retain top performers by increasing their employability.

5?? (Re)Deploy talent with project-based talent mobility.

??My personal View:

This insightful research demonstrates that Talent shortages are a top priority topic for organizations and L&D Leaders. The researchers' five recommendations are very interesting with the implementation of a Talent Agility strategy at the heart of their concern because otherwise organizations risk meeting growth goals and losing employees through attrition.

???? What were the HR expert opinions:

Dave Ulrich It confirms that talent gaps often exist between present and future strategy. Our work has identified 6 B's of filling talent gaps which are consistent with these pillars but adds a couple of ideas. We found in other research that "buy" (source new talent) had the largest impact on business outcomes.

Jos van Snippenberg Insightful research, that somewhat concerns me, especially when we consider the studies highlighting employee dissatisfaction with leaders. As a result of time constraints due to numerous additional responsibilities and the lack of skills, leaders struggle to maintain control and connection with their teams. This calls for a reevaluation of the role and focus of many HR departments at present. Companies willing to take the lead in renewing the Employee Value Proposition will gain a competitive edge in attractiveness. Transform the traditional "pay just for performance" model into "mutual commitment to value creation."

Dr. Guna Seelan R. 83% of HR leaders struggled to find enough talent because they are still in the comfort zone where they able to convince business leaders that it is difficult to find talent! But I think HR Leaders are still working on old approach to find talent which is already broken or not relevant in digital age.

Liz Rider I would also like to add; Think broadly and with a growth mindset about talent. We often have a fixed mindset towards our own employees and overlook the skills they have developed whilst in our companies. Also we could be missing out on people that don't fit our own view of talent. e.g. an individual who self taught programming skills as a teenager and didn't have the opportunity to go to university or someone with transferable skills. Think beyond are often self imposed boundaries.

Lourdes G. Critical insights for organizations to make a key priority. As you mention, the key will be to combine strategic workforce planning, technology, and project-based assignments for internal talent mobility to increase the breadth of skills, accelerate learning, and be nimble to stay ahead or on par with market conditions and company strategy.

Marcus Haycock A very thoughtful and interesting post packed with stats to support your argument. Having worked in the corporate world for over 30 years I believe there needs to be a paradigm shift in the way senior management view staff development. Traditional training is not always effective because it can be too content heavy with little follow up and application on the job. A lot of traditional training doesn’t create the requisite attitude and corresponding behavioral change required. When companies believe that all employees need leadership training to ensure a consistent supply and quality of leaders now and for the future organizational performance can improve.

Dr. Bhanukumar Parmar The Essence of effective and Agile Talent Management: It's about strategically leveraging employee potential to drive organizational success. Embracing agility enables organizations to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Although The Everywhere Work Revolution is ongoing but Collaboration is more difficult when working Remotely!

?? Findings of researchers:

Flexibility has become a key workplace priority!

??80% of Knowledge workers believe that flexible working is highly valuable, but just 25% say their jobs afford them high flexibility.

??Organizations that want to attract best-in-class talent must implement what researchers call it the Everywhere Work revolution.

?? 90% of leaders say employees have the tools to be productive but 43% of office workers say they couldn't easily access the same tools if they had to work remotely tomorrow.

Leaders are out of touch regarding technology employees need to succeed in Everywhere Work environments, according to a new interesting research published by Ivanti in collaboration with Ravn Research using data from over 7,700 executive leaders, IT and cybersecurity professionals and office workers in January 2024.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

??Finally, researchers provide some recommendations to organizations and CILs:

?? Empower employees with flexibility

Employers must consider employee values, defend against bias and provide flexible infrastructure.

?? Align IT and security priorities

In order to limit employee risky behaviors, a robust data security policy for remote working is required.

??My personal View:

This magnificent research clearly demonstrates that the need for flexibility is an essential element of the world of work today. More than hybrid, organizations must adapt to this need to attract the best talents; on the other hand, collaboration must continue even remotely because it is an important element of innovation in business. Organizations are negotiating a tricky balance: empowering employees to work anywhere and anytime while ensuring the enterprise is as safe as possible from rising cybersecurity threats.

???? What were the HR expert opinions:

Dave Ulrich A remarkable data set. It looks like those who become entrepreneurs have positive outcomes. I have met and worked with many entrepreneurs who say they have never worked harder or longer hours with more stress. And, they enjoyed it more than any other job experience. My sense is that this comes from having a sense of "control" over work ... what, when, how, and where. When working within a traditional organization, creating increased personalization at work comes with similar flexibility.

George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC MIoL Although promoting entrepreneurship across an organization is not new. What is interesting in this research is the gap in job evaluation. As part of our 'move' away from measuring productivity to managing human performance, we include entrepreneurship as part of employee development. There is a need to provide all employees (at all levels) with the skills to understand how their work can add value (to all stakeholders) but there is also a need to encourage them to keep a watch on what is happening in the external environment so as to be able to create and innovate new ideas that will ensure that changing customer expectations are being met.

Reema Purohit It's essential for organizations to recognize the significance of effective management practices in fostering a thriving work environment.

Dara Bidwell, SHRM-CP I work with small businesses now and one of the barriers to making the move from non-employer owners to owner-employer is lack of knowledge around the back end of running a business, misconceptions surrounding the true cost of employees and a lack of infrastructure. Sometimes these non-employer owners are literally leaving money on the table because they don't know how to develop the HR infrastructure to support employees or lack financial resources to hire someone like me to help them get organized.

Management practices have a direct impact on the business Performance and employing others is strongly linked to better well-being!

?? Findings of researchers:

?? Entrepreneurship is widely thought of as a pathway to wealth.

Business owners who score higher on a management practices index oversee better-performing businesses, as measured by recent revenue growth, profits and profit margins.

???? Entrepreneurial traits tend to be higher among Black, Hispanic and multiracial workers, the highly educated, and older workers. They do not differ significantly by sex.

?? Being a business owner with no employees is not associated with significantly higher income, wealth, job satisfaction or life satisfaction; rather, the entrepreneurial pathway to wealth and wellbeing often requires employing others, according to a new interesting research published by Gallup , supported by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation using data ?? from a final sample of 9,852 US workers included 3,117 “owners,” defined as anyone who received at least some income in the prior month from a business they own. Among these owners, 976 reported that they employed at least one employee other than themselves. Surveys were completed between Sept. 21 and Oct. 30, 2023.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Researchers also measured subjective wellbeing along five dimensions:

?? Engagement at work

?? Evaluation of employment situation

?? General life evaluation

?? Financial wellbeing

?? Whether basic needs are being met

??My personal View:

This fascinating research demonstrates that employing others is strongly linked to greater wealth and higher wellbeing. This research also proves that programs encouraging entrepreneurship and offering training on how to navigate the start-up process may prove fruitful in activating latent talent. Publicizing best-practice management techniques may also be useful, as research has found that management training boosts performance. Entrepreneurship programs would be more likely to contribute to wealth-building, job satisfaction and life satisfaction if the goal was creating more owner-employers, not just owners.

???? What were the HR expert opinions:

Dave Ulrich Thanks for sharing a remarkable data set. It looks like those who become entrepreneurs have positive outcomes. I have met and worked with many entrepreneurs who say they have never worked harder or longer hours with more stress. And, they enjoyed it more than any other job experience. My sense is that this comes from having a sense of "control" over work... what, when, how, and where. When working within a traditional organization, creating increased personalization at work comes with similar flexibility.

Dara Bidwell, SHRM-CP I work with small businesses now and one of the barriers to making the move from non-employer owners to owner-employer is lack of knowledge around the back end of running a business, misconceptions surrounding the true cost of employees and a lack of infrastructure. Sometimes these non-employer owners are literally leaving money on the table because they don't know how to develop the HR infrastructure to support employees or lack financial resources to hire someone like me to help them get organized.

Leadership has a serious impact on Corporate Transformations and Value Creation!

?? Findings of researchers:

During the past two decades, only 26% of corporate transformations successfully created value in both the short and long terms.

?? The average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 index has more than halved since the late 1970s

?? A leadership change during a transformation is associated with a 4.1% points higher TSR performance over the five-year time horizon (compared to the previous downturn period).

? Having a long-term strategic orientation exhibits a strong positive impact on transformation performance, being associated with a 12.5% points higher TSR impact over a five-year horizon.

At any point in the past 20 years, roughly 30% of companies significantly underperformed their sector for a period of multiple years, making transformation a necessity for performance reasons, according to a new interesting research published by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) BCG Henderson Institute using data ?? from a sample including nearly 2,000 public companies from around the globe that generated at least $10 billion in revenue in 2022 or had a market capitalization of $10 billion at the end of that year.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

In addition to having better financial performance, researchers believe that Preemptive transformations offer three secondary benefits.

1?? These transformations take less time: preemptive transformations result in consecutive restructuring costs for an average of only 12 months, compared with 14 months for reactive ones.

2?? They are less costly: The costs of restructuring in preemptive transformations total 1.5% of yearly revenues, on average, compared with 1.8% for reactive transformations.

3??They increased leadership stability: The share of companies experiencing a CEO change in the two years following the start of the transformation is significantly lower in the case of preemption (16% versus 21%).

??My personal View:

This interesting research over a 20-year period demonstrates that although transformations are essential for businesses, too many of them fail after a few years. The impact of leadership and the preparation of the workforce is essential and above all the failure of a transformation is costly. Finally, the leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow.

???? What were the HR expert opinions:

Dave Ulrich Wonderful research with a very good question (how leadership impacts transformation and results). I would strongly agree that quality of leadership affects both transformation and market value. Today, intangibles represent 60 to 80% of a firm's market value, and our research showed that leadership (or human capability) represents 25 to 30% of the intangible value. Long term investors recognize the importance of leadership (see book Leadership Capital Index) .Leaders also shape transformation, as these data suggest. I like the addition of focusing on preemptive transformation which is a great idea. I wonder how to determine when the take pre-emptive action

George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC MIoL There are a number facets that need to be looked at when undertaking such pre-emptive transformations . For instance, the ability of leadership to assess and plan for likely changes in the external environment; engendering trust across the organization (ensuring people are aware of the reasons for change); management of human performance (ability to provide continued human development so that change is not a 'sudden' occurrence causing major upheaval); setting realistic targets (time and outcome). The culture within the organization will play a big part in managing change - if people see change as an opportunity to develop their own knowledge, skills and experience, as well as building a successful organization, then they are more likely to accept change (this should be an ongoing concept - not a 'one off'.

Kailash Raghuvanshi The foremost and the core requirement is to have the right leadership at the top. These are the ones who will lead by example setting expected behavior and results for their reporting chain and so on down the chain (and thereby right/good/open culture), so that the employees/workforce is engaged and working in the right direction for the organizations' vision and goals, instead of being insecure among themselves helping competition gain even more advantage. Key per-requisites like Trust, Ethics, Integrity, Fairness, Empathy, Empowerment, etc. are well-known, but not easily implemented practically due to selfish reasons and hidden agendas of some people in the leadership chain.

Liz Rider I think when we finally realize how critical it is to put people first we will see more success in our organizations and of course transformations. I'm fact we can reverse the 70% failure rate when we put humans at the heart of transformation.

Jelena Joksovic Complacency is what harms most businesses and people. It’s like running on Autopilot. If there is one thing we learned from the past, it’s that, change is inevitable whether we like it or not. So, ‘Never stop adapting’. Many great leaders have learned that “your strategy is only as good as your ability to adapt fast”. Having that tremendous capacity to adapt as the ‘game changes’ is how you become resilient and continue to grow.

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