Latest HR Trends: Fairness, DEI accountability, impact of Layoff, Skills inequality, Good Work, ChatGPT, skills-based hiring techniques

???Hello Everyone and Happy Sunday !

Welcome back to the 3rd edition of?Weekly People Research.

It was another amazing week full of learning with researchers and all HR experts! ???

Last week's HR trends for researchers were: ?Fair and equitable work, DEI accountability, impact of Layoff, Skills inequality, Good Work, ChatGPT, Skills-based hiring techniques

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

Fairness and DEI accountability together significantly increase Employee Engagement

?? Findings of researchers:

Employees want to work for a superlative organization?committed to DEI?and to building a?fair?workplace. 2 important characteristics;?organizational accountability to DEI, together with?fair organizational processes?significantly impact?employees’ ability to thrive but?both are significant, even when taking into account the impact of inclusive leadership, according to a new interesting?research ?published by?Catalyst Inc. ?using data from surveys of 24,348 employees in more than 20 countries.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Researchers recommend senior Leaders and DEI practitioners to take below actions:

???Conduct an audit of your organization’s policies and practices -?as well as their effect on diversity and inclusion

???Be proactive in creating processes and policies to listen to employees?and involve their voices in decision-making. Then, follow up.

???DEI work is not “one and done.”?Employ evidence-based strategies?to learn how to hold your organization accountable to DEI goals, enact change, and iterate.

???Acknowledging past DEI failures?- It can be exciting to share progress made toward DEI goals, but it’s even more important to share lack of progress. Facing these difficult truths makes it easier for organizations to hold themselves accountable, not to mention building trust with employees and credibility with the public.

???Implementing immediate and evidence-based structural changes?that are essential for creating a more just and equitable workplace.

???? What were the expert opinions:

Really interesting research on what might drive employee engagement. It's not a surprise that perceptions of fairness and accountability for DEI have positive engagement implications. These two dimensions highlight the perceived reputation of the organization on important issues on those engagement scores. I really appreciated the (smallish) percent of respondents who did not see their organization have fairness or DEI commitment. Even with the consistent talk and messaging, more needs to be done. according to Dave Ulrich

The recommended action of "acknowledging past DEI failures" is critical to building a culture of trust and accountability around DEI initiatives, according to Drew Fortin

Employment judges are now paying particular interest in the quality of the Employer's EDI Policy and Training as well as the frequency of EDI Training. In addition, discrimination and harassment are two areas that have a particularly detrimental effect on organizational culture, according to George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC MIoL

HR leaders are concerned about the impact of Layoffs on the Business

?? Findings of researchers:

?Layoffs remain a critical talent management tool for organizations to adjust their workforce during times of change but maintaining?productivity?and?retaining critical talent?continues to be a challenge during these periods of disruption.

People?want to be in control of their own professional lives?and destinies, with the ability to work flexibly and develop their skills and careers.?Layoff support is available, but employees?don't know about it?- so there is a marked?disconnect?between what HR leaders and white-collar workers say is available, according to a new interesting?research ?published by?LHH ?using data from 2,524 HR leaders from organizations with 500+ employee and 7,028 white-collar workers across 5 countries.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Finally researchers give some recommendations for organizations that are considering or undertaking layoffs:

???Practice empathetic leadership:?Employers should resist the impulse to “circle the wagons” in response of layoffs, and instead?act with empathy and transparency, recognizing and understanding the emotional distress layoffs will cause – both to departing employees and their remaining colleagues.?

One practical way to demonstrate empathy is to ensure that appropriate career transition support is in place.

???Explore alternatives to layoffs:?Organizations should look to reskilling, upskilling, and redeploying employees as alternatives to layoffs wherever possible.

Even the most sensitively handled layoffs will have a negative impact on morale and the employer brand, damaging the trust that staff and,?in many cases, customers?have in the organization.

??Communicate more effectively and transparently across the board

HR departments, leaders, and managers need to improve their communications with the employees they wish to retain as well as those who are leaving.

???? What were the expert opinions:

Lay offs (by whatever name ... downsizing, reduction in force, budget cuts, etc) are sometimes required, according to Dave Ulrich

Investing in retention strategies like leadership development and reward & recognition are often "skipped" because they require investment in time and money. Focus on short term "financial results" unfortunately often wins from focus on the long term impact, according to Renske Valk

The impact of layoffs depends on how the company goes about it. Had they taken their employees into confidence and did their best to alleviate the pain, in my view , it will not have any negative impact on their morale and motivation. Incase they don’t pay heed to their employees emotions it adversely impacts, according to Jagan Mohan Reddy

What practitioners and academic question is the transparency, planning, justification, fairness, layoffs and job reductions strategy and decisions who goes out first. In reality its always junior resources NOT those decision maker who have caused such situations being targeted subjectively, according to Ahsan Qureshi

It's not a strategy you should deploy regularly. Like bankruptcy, layoffs are a response to an existential threat appearing out of nowhere or managerial incompetence. I think using layoffs regularly to adjust to market ups and downs is a sign of the latter. In the future of work, it will be the human abilities that are coveted and truly differentiate a company. Those that start acting that way will thrive, according to Drew Fortin

Skills inequality in the workplace is on the rise and affecting business

?? Findings of researchers:

The majority of workers don't appear to have?clarity on how their job?requirements may change and employees who are slow to prioritize and learn new skills will struggle to adapt and?may not see?the changes coming. Also company culture can stifle innovation and the situation is often worse than CEOs think, according to a new interesting?research ?published by?PwC ?called?"PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023"?- using data from nearly 54,000 workers in 46 countries and territories.

???Just 36% of employees as a whole strongly or moderately agree that the skills needed to succeed in their job will change significantly over the next five years, and only 43% say they have a clear sense of how the skills required for their job will change at all over that span.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Researchers recommend leaders to ask following questions:

???Do we have the skills necessary to transform??Employees can be forgiven for not having a clear view of their future skills requirements. Employers can’t.

???Are we creating an inclusive and inspiring vision??Successful leaders recognize that their transformation plans depend on employees who can translate their vision into action.

???Am I part of the problem??If you want creativity and innovation, your employees must?feel safe?to test and learn and even fail without fear of reprisal

???Is our culture causing some employees to disconnect??Your company culture may look very different from the C-suite than it does from the front line, and you can’t fix what you don’t see.?

???? What were the expert opinions:

The point around the CEO’s view of the tolerance of small scale errors and how employees see it is interesting, according to Peter Brown MBE , one of the author of this research

It seems like the commitment to learning (an attitude and a skill) becomes critical so that as the world inevitably changes, employees skills will also have to change. It is interesting that those with specialist training are more adaptable than those with generalist training. It could be that specialists have to change to keep up with their specialty (e.g., the half life of knowledge is shorter for them). It is also interesting to see the emerging skills. We consistently found in our research that the skill of navigating paradox is a predictor of personal and leadership success. We laid out some of those soft skill paradoxes. Finally, the impact of culture continues to be critical. We also found that the organization capabilities (e.g., culture) had more impact on business results that individual competencies (individuals can be champions, but teams with championships), according to Dave Ulrich

We agree the 3X difference between specialist and non specialist workers views of future skills is very troubling. Business’ must address the gaps between the “haves and have nots”, especially as this impacts everything from income inequality, family formation, wellbeing and the vibrancy of communities, according to Bhushan Sethi , another author of this research.

I love: 'Human Capital isn’t jobs or roles, but skills' - absolutely! However, if employees are to be in a position to anticipate change, then they need to be aware of how their own work can add value, or put a constraint on operations, in other areas of the organization. If you make changes in one area, I can almost guarantee that change will be required elsewhere. The ability (or lack of) to have such an understanding will be down to the quality of the on-boarding in the first instance, according to George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC MIoL

Employees find Meaning in their work but Poor Work experience also persists

?? Findings of researchers:

Good work?is?fundamental?to individual wellbeing, supports a strong, fair society, and creates motivated workers, productive organizations and a strong economy. Resilience and continuity are also recurrent features of the workplace experience for people. By and large, most people?feel positively?about their work on most indicators, but there is also a great deal of indifference, and for some measures significant minorities have adverse views. There are large numbers of people -?between 6 and 9 million in UK?- who continue to have a?poor experience?of work. Besides the personal benefits to the health and wellbeing of workers, raising job quality can support efforts to boost labor market participation and help address skill and labor shortages, according to a new interesting?research ?published by?CIPD ?called "CIPD Good Work Index" using data from 5,139 UK workforce using a survey conducted in January and February 2023.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Researchers give some recommendations for organizations to facilitate feelings of employee engagement:

?? Workers must feel properly supported by their managers and colleagues and should receive good-quality and timely feedback.

?? Being empowered in one’s job is very important. This includes having work autonomy – for example, being able to make decisions about how and at what pace one works – and having the right skills and the confidence to do a good job.

?? Employees must not feel overwhelmed by the demands of their job.

?? Employees’ motivations are shaped by individual factors. These include how we identify as people, personally and professionally, and our ability to ‘self-regulate’ or manage our behavior and not be distracted from our goals.

???? What were the expert opinions:

it adds another term to describe the important and complex area of employee sentiment (GOOD WORK) ... other terms include motivation, satisfaction, commitment, engagement, experience, well being, meaning. This data is somewhat more positive than other studies (e.g., Gallup) which is worth reflecting on. They also do a very nice job with the drivers of "good" work. We have also worked in this space by defining "abundant" organizations in the book Why of Work. We synthesized a myriad of sentiment studies into 7 dimensions of abundance, which we then evolved into the "b" of experience. I now focus more on personalization of whatever dimensions of good (abundant) work are identified. More work could be done creating a meta analysis of this plethora of sentiment work because it matters not only to employees, but because employee sentiment affect strategic realization, customer share, investor confidence, and community reputation, according to Dave Ulrich

Looking at the last 25 years in various industries and organizations, it definitely takes more to get employees to walk an extra mile. Is it bad? I'm not so sure. We (HR community) have spent many years to promote work-life balance idea as a foundation of employee wellbeing and efficiency in a long run. Seems like it starts to pay-off. Still, it requires an exceptional leadership and organization culture to ensure a readiness for an outstanding effort, when needed (i.e. managing Covid-19 crisis in organization). No doubt, the challenge is only getting more important, and it is on us - leaders and HR to build meaningful and inclusive workplace. Not to let it develop into a burning platform of declining engagement and weakening relation, according to Przemyslaw Niemczyk

I think that more people a losing the sense of their lives. This bring atomization of society and a desire to be less exposed in a "live me alone way". In General. That would explain a shift to the "transactional" labor for money exchange model. Work to live i/o live to work, according to Mikhail Tuzov

Although we all have varying levels of anxiety, personality, and addictive tendencies, the one thing all humans have in common is the pursuit of purpose and meaning. For me, I find purpose and meaning in business. I think there is no greater lever in the world for creating a real, meaningful, scaleable positive impact on the world. This is how I choose to exercise my mind, manage my anxieties, and put my drives and addictive behaviors to good use. Even if I had the money, I would continue to work, according to Drew Fortin

Employers must ban Employees from pasting code into ChatGPT

?? Findings of researchers:

GenAI usage is increasing steadily and putting?high risk?for?data exposure?risk?for employees and their employers.

15% of employees?have pasted data into GenAI - pasting is the riskiest action taken on GenAI because it is beyond the reach of existing data protection solutions and 6% of employees have pasted?sensitive data?into GenAI. This behavior is putting?their organization at risk of data exfiltration.?Also?Source code?(31%),?internal business information?(43%), and?Personal Identifiable Information (PII)?(12%) are the leading types of pasted sensitive data by employees, according to a new interesting?research ?published by?LayerX Security ?- using data from 10,000 employees from devices with the?LayerX Security ?browser extension installed.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Researchers predict that employees will be using GenAI as part of their daily workflow, just like they use email, chats (Slack), video conferencing (Zoom, Teams), project management and other productivity tools. So GenAI is opening up a whole new horizon of opportunities, positively impacting productivity, creativity, and innovation. However, GenAI also poses significant risks to organizations, particularly concerning the security and privacy of sensitive data.

A more beneficial and forward-thinking approach is to find a security solution that addresses the risks and vulnerabilities themselves, rather than obliterating the use of the platforms themselves.

?? Companies need to enforce the company policy on GenAI platforms. For example, prohibiting pasting of code into ChatGPT.

???? What were the expert opinions:

The issues of "quality of data" are interesting to raise and a risk of any information system. Survey data can be manipulated, reports falsified, and interviews misinterpreted. ChatGPT faces a data risk of looking at "all" internet data and not sifting very well. it would give equal weight to a sloppy study of 50 individuals and a rigorous study of 5,000 individuals, or of biases comments vs. unbiased. I do agree that new technology like openAI is inevitable and needs to be accessed not feared, according to Dave Ulrich

The state must take the lead to create the rules and the framework for AI deployment. My country has started to work on the Digital Code that will describe vital issues of AI deployment. This would include data origin, protection, marking and many more up to deep fakes and other tweaks on reality that had become so easy with AI introduction. Most importantly the Code would guide the handling of the algorithms behind the AI, their development and transparency. I think that big companies would look into creating the AI solutions of their own. One of the political parties has already developed a chat bot based on their leader heritage (public talks, interviews, papers). So, AI tools can work as a digital DNA preservation for a person and for the organization (treated as living organism). Such sensitive area should be governed by the state, according to Mikhail Tuzov

Employers must rely on skills-based hiring techniques to attract top entry-level tech Talent

?? Findings of researchers:

Most companies?struggle?to fill entry-level tech roles and recruitment processes for entry-level roles need?to change.

Employers that removed education or work experience requirements for entry-level tech roles, and replaced them with demonstration-based competencies, see a?more inclusive recruitment process?and attract more candidates, with comparable candidate quality and performance on the job. Employers that redefined these hiring requirements are spending less, according to a new interesting?research ?called "Launching a Tech Hiring Revolution" published by?Generation ?- a global nonprofit network - with support from?The Hg Foundation ?Bank of America ?Clayton Dubilier & Rice ?MetLife ?using data from more than 2,600?jobseekers, another 1,275?jobholders already in tech roles, and 1,325 tech and non-tech employers, spanning 8 countries.

?? Recommendation of researchers:

Researchers suggested below 4 bold actions to companies to unlock the necessary change in their hiring process:

???Bring back the entry-level job: At the start of the hiring funnel, remove work experience and degree requirements and use certifications and other skills indicators to increase applicant pools.

???Take a skills-based approach:?During the hiring process, use technical assessments to ensure applicants have the necessary skills for the job.

???Embrace hard skills and behavioral skills:?Throughout the process, pay attention to behavioral skills as well as technical capabilities

???Rethink hiring teams:?Rethink hiring teams to reduce tacit bias and increase talent diversity.

???? What were the expert opinions:

I have seen the trend toward skill based work more than titles. In a University where I work, there is a focus on "stackable" credentials where any students are welcome to the school (no test or GPA requirement) and placed in courses commensurate with their skills. They then earn credentials along the way towards their degree. The idea of hiring for skills more than degree makes sense as long as skills are definable and assessable, according to Dave Ulrich

More often than not, when looking at entry-level employment, university graduates may have picked up some technical knowhow - especially if they have undertaken an internship as part of their university education. What about those who have not been to university (or college) and have not had the opportunity to gain such skills. In the UK the answer is that they can apply for an apprenticeship whereby they gain the technical skills required whilst they are working. Whether the new starter has undertaken a degree course or an apprenticeship, behavioral skills are still essential. Did you know that in the UK even university graduates can undertake an apprenticeship when they have gained their degree - but that, in the majority of cases, a degree education is not essential to undertake an apprenticeship, according to George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC MIoL

It's extremely important for entry-level employees to understand behaviors and cognitive ability to set job benchmarks. A technical assessment will not confirm if the candidate can function in the context of your corporate culture and values, according to Drew Fortin

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That's it for last week's recap - Happy Sunday!???

Thank you,

Nicolas BEHBAHANI