Employee Learning & Development Excellence - December 2022

Straight Talk with HR.com

10 HR Is Instrumental To An Organization’s Performance And Success

Exclusive interview with Kahina Ouerdane, Chief People Officer, GSoft

18 Recruiting And Developing Talent During A Downturn

Hiring talent that is agile and not necessarily wedded to one particular role is critical in today’s work environment - La Toya Hodge, Global Head, Marketing, Cappfinity

24 5 Tips For Building The Best Talent And Unleashing Rapid Growth And Innovation

It’s good business sense to take care of people - Jill Stelfox, Executive Chair and CEO, GPanzura

Why Bother With Career Development?

The business case for a manager’s time investment - Dr. Beverly Kaye, Founder, BevKaye&Co.

How To Design An Organization That Thrives On Social Capital And Organizational Learning?

The social capital-based organizational structure is the missing link for realizing the potential of turning human capital into social capital. - Mostafa Sayyadi & Michael J. Provitera, Deloitte

How To Build A Learning Organization

The difference between hearing and listening is action - Oscar Trimboli, Founder, Oscartrimboli.com

Stop Wasting Time And Money Training Employees

Finding value for your time, money, and resources Tim Connor, CSP, CEO, Connor Resource

Decoding The Connection Between Employee Development And DEI Progress Organizations that offer coaching or mentoring to underrepresented groups achieve DEI goals faster

- Amy Lavoie, VP, People Success, Torch.io

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Talent Mobility: From Career Development To Agility

ITM’s promise goes far beyond career development alone, it makes your company more agile - Edie L. Goldberg, Ph.D., E.L. Goldberg & Associates

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Employee Learning & Development Excellence - Monthly Interactive Learning Journal

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Virtual events in the Employee Learning and Development track help you stay on top of the latest training, development and assessment techniques in order to maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Develop your skills, concepts, and attitude changes, and gain more knowledge to enhance performance. Training is crucial for organizational development and its success which is fruitful to both employers and employees of any organization. Some important benefits of training and development include: Increased productivity, Less supervision, Job satisfaction and Skills development. Each Virtual Event consists of up to 10 credit webcasts.

Virtual events in the Training and Development track help you stay on top of the latest training, development and assessment techniques in order to maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Develop your skills, concepts, and attitude changes, and gain more knowledge to enhance performance. Training is crucial for organizational development and its success which is fruitful to both employers and employees of any organization. Some important benefits of training and development include: Increased productivity, Less supervision, Job satisfaction and Skills development. Each Virtual Event consists of up to 10 credit webcasts.

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Editorial Purpose

Excellence Publications

Debbie McGrath CEO, HR.com - Publisher

Finding Your Right Approach To Learning And Development for the New Year

Learning and development is traditionally considered a nice-tohave arm of the human resources department, and, often, the first activity to be curtailed when a company faces budget constraints.

However, the past couple of years have been crucial in how L&D became critical to an organization's success, and sustenance. With the economic recession, quiet quitting, and talent crunch expected in the coming months, learning and development teams are poised to play a major role in organizational development.

Taking on the development of one individual is brave; taking on the development of thousands is nothing short of miraculous. In Finding Your Right Approach To Learning And Development, featured on the cover this month, ADP Chief Diversity and Talent Officer Bob Lockett shares his experience in figuring out an approach to learning and development that works the best for the company.

developing training programs in order to create ROI.

Also, featured in this edition is an exclusive interview with GSoft Chief People Officer Kahina Ouerdane touches upon the future of human resources, how HR is transforming, and challenges and opportunities for HR, among others.

International speaker and trainer Tim Connor tells us why companies should stop wasting money on training. Check out his article, Stop Wasting Time And Money Training Employees, where he discusses a new approach that would help companies to build a positive longterm return on their training investment.

That is not all! We bring you a handful of other insightful articles in this edition of Employee Learning & Development Excellence, and hope you find answers to your queries about employee learning and development that help you achieve excellence in our L&D initiatives.

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Globally renowned keynote speaker Oscar Trimboli, in his article How To Build A Learning Organization, shares the factors companies must consider when

OR

Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed in the Excellence ePublications are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of HR.com and its employees. Under no circumstances shall HR.com or its partners or affiliates be responsible or liable for any indirect or incidental damages arising out of these opinions and content.

Deepa Damodaran Editor, Employee Learning & Development Excellence

Debbie Mcgrath Publisher, HR.com

In a world of unparalleled challenges (global pandemic, racial injustice, politi cal rivalry, digital 4.0, emotional malaise), uncertainty reigns. Finding opportu nity in this context requires harnessing uncertainty and harnessing starts with reliable, valid, timely, and useful information. The Excellence publications are a superb source of such information. The authors provide insights with impact that will guide thought and action.

Dave Ulrich

Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Partner, The RBL Group

Excellence publications are my ‘go-to’ resource for contemporary and action able information to improve leadership, engagement, results, and retention. Each edition offers rich and diverse perspectives for improving the employee experience and the workplace in general.

Julie Winkle Giulioni

Author, Virtual /Live Keynote Presenter, Inc.’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers

I regularly read and contribute to Leadership Excellence and Talent Manage ment Excellence. I use many of the articles I read to augment my own presen tations and I often share the articles with my clients. They are always quick, right on target for the latest issues in my field, and appreciated by my clients. If you want to stay up to date on the latest HR trends, choose a few of the dif ferent issues from the Excellence series of publications.

Dr. Beverly Kaye CEO, BevKaye&Co.

Finding Your Right Approach To Learning And Development

3 foundations for successful L&D in enterprise organizations

By Bob Lockett, ADP

Taking on the development of one individual is brave; taking on the development of thousands is nothing short of miraculous. Yet that is exactly what enterprise organizations do when they shepherd their organizations from 50 people to 1,000 and beyond.

ADP has lived that exact experience. Our organization supports the learning and development of 58,000 talented individuals, and we feel we have figured out an approach to learning and development that works for us. Those last two words are critical: The reason our approach works is not that it is perfect, but that it is perfect for us

There is no modern, magical checklist for organizations to use when attempting to create the most effective learning and development strategy for them, but we have three principles we have used when forming our approach.

1. Learning Must Reinforce Culture and Values

Business results are a function of people results, and people results are a function of how you treat individual members of your organization. At ADP, we see learning and development as the bridge between the individual and the team. Focusing on it

ensures we are taking care of individual members of the organization.

The better we take care of our employees by carefully evaluating their strengths and giving them opportunities to grow their careers based on those strengths, the greater the dividends we see in performance, productivity and overall business success.

Enterprise organizations that want to support real growth and performance upgrades when it comes to learning and development must tie their strategy back to the organization’s mission and values. What does the organization value? How are employees incentivized to represent those values?

Your employees will look to your approach when answering these important questions.

2. One Size Fits Most, Not All

Best practice in the learning and development industry has long promoted the importance of customization and personalization. After all, the same training is usually not best for every employee when it comes to improving skills and growing their knowledge.

Despite that, many organizations may still be tempted to treat learning and development as a one-sizefits-all proposition that does not take into account the person’s specific role. ADP takes a bifurcated approach that provides different tracks for associates and leaders, and we feel it has made all the difference.

For example, we have found that associates need specific kinds of support to do their job well.

Training for their job and practice with the products and tools they will use are both critical, and the ultimate goal is for the associate to be able to have a productive conversation with a customer about the business’s product.

However, leaders and managers have completely different goals and needs. They need to learn how to

step away from contributing on an individual level and transition into a strategic role. The ultimate goal is for them to successfully lead diverse teams toward a common goal.

Enterprise organizations should identify the differences in expectations for associates and leaders and create learning and development that acknowledges those differences.

3. Success Can — and Should — Be Measured

The overall ROI of learning and development is notoriously difficult to calculate, but with the right technology in place, it is possible to capture the data you need to see the progress of associates and business goals. In fact, it is the only way to measure success in an enterprise organization.

HR Is Instrumental To An Organization’s Performance And Success

“A key skill for HR practitioners today is knowing how to capitalize on existing tools and technologies that help improve workplaces, whether it is improving the ways we work, how we engage talent, or how we onboard new team members,” said Kahina Ouerdane, Chief People Officer, at GSoft.

In an exclusive interview with HR.com, Kahina touches upon the future of human resources, how HR is transforming, and challenges and opportunities for HR, among others.

Q.How

do you plan to invest in your career development for the future?

Kahina: I have always wanted to change the world, and always believed in the power of collective intelligence to do so. To this day, the idea of building wholes bigger than the sums of their parts truly drives me.

After working several years as a lawyer in international human rights law, I came to the realization that change needs to start from within (organizations) first. I discovered management and organizational development and fell in love – what if we changed the world one organization at the time?

At GSoft – where we create software that makes work simpler, kinder and faster – I’ve been lucky to experience the best possible growth and innovation culture, which has been my fuel for 6 years and deeply energizes and inspires me.

My career development? Remaining curious, evolving in an environment that never settles for the status quo, pushing the boundaries, reinventing ourselves, being challenged by colleagues, always wanting to do better, that is the recipe to me. The rest always follows!

Excerpts from the interview:

Q&A with Kahina Ouerdane, Chief People Officer, GSoft

Kahina: Experimentation is the new norm and no one great mind, nor department, can solve the complex challenges we are facing. With the nuances of our current landscape, and with the changes in the demands of the workforce, cross-organizational choreography is crucial to any business’s success. And so is investing in corporate culture and setting up the right frameworks for teams to collaborate and ultimately innovate.

We are now all trailblazers trying to make things work, no “best practices” apply, and the grass is green for all innovative, bold and agile “HR Professionals” ready to dive into the unknown and ready to shape what the future of work will look like.

Q.Where is the HR profession headed in the near future?

Kahina: We are facing a challenging time in our global workforce. From managing new hybrid work models to continued labour shortages, businesses of all sizes are trying to navigate an array of challenges – many of which show no sign of slowing into 2023. Despite it costing an employer an average of 33 per cent of an employee’s yearly salary for their exit, we are still seeing companies struggle with managing employee retention, which is ultimately harming their bottom line.

The need for strategic and agile HR professionals and teams will only continue to grow as business leaders and CEOs look to their counsel and support on implementing new practices that will help improve business operations and the bottom line.

Q.How have you been upskilling yourself over the past years?

Kahina: From understanding how to manage and interpret data, to proactively anticipating current and future hiring needs, to exercising the ability to motivate, engage, and manage the expectations of employees while tying them back to the organization’s goals, HR practitioners wear many hats.

This was incredibly apparent amidst the pandemic, when HR leaders played an integral role in navigating the transition to remote work and managing team restructures, proving that a once-administrative role has shifted HR professionals to be seen as strategic organizational leaders.

A key skill for HR practitioners today is knowing how to capitalize on existing tools and technologies that help improve workplaces, whether it is improving the ways we work, how we engage talent, or how we onboard new team members. As defined in a 2022 Deloitte report on the future of work, only “super teams” will prevail in the new work reality, because of their resilience to change. What is a “super team”, you will ask? It is having the tech “sitting at the table” next to HR. That is new.

Kahina: I have had the chance to participate in several year-long leadership trainings, focusing on organizational development, leadership, and coaching.

I have developed a network of peers outside of my organization, to bounce ideas, share trials and learnings, and more. Co-development can be so impactful!

I also regularly attend and participate in conferences that feed me. Further to that, I read often and listen to podcasts.

Q.What sort of skill gap do you see in HR in the current scenario?

Kahina: As companies look at what it will take to digitalize their operations, many organizations are seeing their employees and clients lag when it comes to keeping up with the future work pace, with many even noting they lack the skills or tools to conduct their jobs today.

Q.HR professionals need to be agile learners. How true is it in the current world of work? Why?

Q.Which skills are most highly associated with professional success for HR leaders today? Please substantiate.

This is true for HR, that now need to be much more tech savvy than it has ever been. At GSoft, through the innovation lab, our “intrapreneurs” are focused on addressing company pain points that are plaguing knowledge workers and their businesses and constantly experimenting to build the most innovative and simple solutions to address these issues.

Q.How have HR skill sets evolved over the years?

Kahina: HR functions have become strategic, having to conduct prospective analysis, develop proactive

strategies and very often actively contribute to the business’ direction.

The role has evolved to become instrumental to the performance and success of an organization.

Whether it is helping an organization to better collaborate with other departments, develop leaders’ skills, attract and retain the right talent or foster employee engagement and experience, HR practitioners must remain nimble to adapt to ever-evolving corporate needs and demands. And we are only getting started!

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How To Build A Learning Organization

The difference between hearing and listening is action

By Oscar Trimboli, Oscartrimboli.com

n October 2008, I was part of a group of Microsoft executives at a 3-hour university recruitment fair. I quickly noticed that students were walking past the stand, focused on the financial services and management consulting companies.

I

Listening to the feedback, I set a challenge for the current graduate community.

The occasional student who did speak to me explained that they were not interested in software programming. At that moment, I wanted to change their mind and explain they could enjoy careers in finance, human resources, marketing, and many other professions if they joined – which I tried using all my influencing skills.

I realized rather than convince one student at a time, there needed to be something more fundamental to change in Microsoft’s employment brand. During the following months, I started listening to the Microsoft graduate community – those who had joined, those who were offered a role and did not accept, and those who joined and left.

Rather than listen alone, I invited other executives and the current graduate community to listen to what was being said about the Microsoft employment brand. The themes were consistent – narrow opportunities for potential employees, limited career opportunities, and an organization that represented the past, not the future.

How does Microsoft access the best and brightest talent from the following years’ graduating university students throughout the next 12 months rather than at recruitment fairs when it is too late?

As a result, the graduate community built an award-winning program – Microsoft Protégé which changed the perception of university students for Microsoft as a career option.

The Microsoft graduate community built a program which:

● They activated the program on-campus from the start of the first term by connecting in a meaningful way with past professors and alums working at Microsoft.

● Engaged with potential graduates at the beginning, middle and end of their last year of study

● They created a way to activate the potential graduate community in groups of four rather than individually to make engaging with the organization less intimidating

● They connected current Microsoft executives with their alum institutions and potential graduating students.

The result was utterly transformative for the current graduate cohort. It provided a cross-company project for them to learn about the end-to-end business rather than their daily departmental role. The program changed the exposure to the potential talent pools from people attending recruitment fairs to all students in their final year while being in continuous dialogue throughout their last year.

As tempting as it would have been to convert the students I met at the recruitment fair in 2008 and walk away, I realized that the difference between hearing and listening is action. By adopting a systemic approach to listening, the ROI of the listening is being felt today – decades later as the award-winning graduate program is still in place today – generating

returns for graduates and their employer beyond a brief discussion at the stand.

Listening creates an ROI, when you take as much time in planning the experience after the event as you do before and during the event.

Whether you are creating a graduate program, a high-potential leaders program, or a training course for workplace safety – the return on investment is a function of how much time you invest in the post-event experience.

Through my work with executives, leaders, and learning and development professionals this simple framework consistently surprises them because they rarely invest the time, thought, and conviction for the post-event experience.

The most effortless listening we could have done was interview current and past graduates still at Microsoft. We deliberately spoke to people who received an offer or joined and then left the organization within 24 months, as well as their hiring managers, final manager, and their university professors.

Stop focusing on your program’s attendee experience and focus on the post-program experience and interview their stakeholders.

Rather than just asking participants for their ideal experience, engage with their stakeholders. If you are creating a sales training program, interview sales leaders and past and current customers, and for the highest ROI, interview customers who selected your competition.

For a safety program, interview injured workers, medical professionals, and external industry leaders in safety locally and overseas.

Do You Listen for Symptoms of Systems?

When you design programs, invest a third of your time into the post-event experience. If you are developing a one-day program, invest one day of your effort in designing the post-program experience by listening to

the stakeholders interacting with the participants after the event.

As a result, your programs will move from educational, engaging, and practical to transformational, sustainable, and impactful.

The impact for you will be evidence of a consistent, noticeable, and commercial ROI, reducing the time you need to justify future program investments.

Oscar Trimboli is a globally renowned keynote speaker, host of the Apple award-winning podcast, Deep Listening, and author of the new book How to Listen: Discover the Hidden Key to Better Communication. He is on a quest to create 100 million Deep Listeners in the world, and is passionate about using the gift of listening to bring positive change in homes, workplaces, and the world. Would you like to comment?

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Recruiting And Developing Talent During A Downturn

By La Toya Hodge, Cappfinity

During the 2008 financial crisis, many companies turned off their emerging talent pipelines. This had a detrimental impact over subsequent years, not only in fulfilling future roles, but also in making diverse hires. With these learnings in mind, many organizations – particularly ones that are committed to diversity – are preparing for economic uncertainty and re-visiting hiring strategy.

It is important to note that this current economic environment is unusual, however. There are high labor numbers and low employment rates, which are not traditional indicators of a downturn. This means it is imperative for companies to have a strategy for this unique and unusual period. Implementing a skills-based recruiting and development plan will be useful in finding and keeping the right talent during this difficult economic period.

Invest in Skills

A commitment to hiring talent that will be agile and not necessarily wedded to one particular role is critical in today’s work environment. We are seeing this in anticipation of a recession, and also as a result

of the pandemic, a talent shortage, and the changing nature of jobs.

The Society of Human Resource Management released research earlier this year that shows 56% of employers are utilizing pre-employment screenings to get a better understanding of a candidate’s strengths and skills. Recruiters are looking for a range of skills in recruits, such as the capacity to be agile, resilient, analytical, and their willingness to learn.

If their employment proposition or role changes, the organization can look at the skills adjacency in the organization and move people around. The foundation of these core skills allows that movement to happen, which is important in today’s climate, as the anticipated longevity of the role they are hiring for goes beyond five years for emerging talent.

Focus on Retention

Organizations may focus on certain hard skills that relate to the job they have recruited for, but the reality is that a candidate has many more skills and strengths available to a prospective employer. One of the key ways to maximize the full potential of talent is to help them build a level of self-awareness.

Hiring talent that is agile and not necessarily wedded to one particular role is critical in today’s work environment

Companies can work to understand, identify, and put those extra skills to work. Prior to the pandemic, organizations were focused on filling a single role. The relationship between talent attraction and talent management has changed and it is being more tightly aligned to focus on retaining strong people for the long term.

When an employee is allowed to leverage their natural competencies, organizations are more likely to retain that employee and help them grow over time.

Being aware of and nurturing an employee’s full potential needs is critical. It involves reimagining what they could do now, and in the future can do. Organizations that want to develop good talent mobility strategies are providing interns and graduates with insight tools that they can discuss with managers.

That range of skills is then known to the manager and organization and can be activated later. Investing in an internal mobility strategy also boosts retention. For example, Staples realized the number one reason people were leaving the company was because of a lack of career mobility and, as a result, the company implemented an internal mobility strategy to help keep high-performing employees. By using an

internal career platform, Staples was able to match employees’ skills and capabilities with potential opportunities and not just the roles that were available that day.

Hire from Within

In a recession, you have an opportunity to save a great deal of money by focusing on an internal talent pool. Doing this takes time and effort, but does not cost any money. Research from Gartner shows that only 33% of employees, who were looking for a new opportunity in the past 12 months, searched internally first. The research also showed that men are well attuned to internal movement, but there is less of a focus on encouraging women to apply for those jobs.

Therefore, more women move to a new job than make an internal move. Ethnic minority women are even less likely to stay for the same reason.

Organizations could utilize online assessments to unlock the potential of current employees to thrive in new positions. Employees do not get the chance to show what they can do because they are pigeonholed, however, digital case study projects or work simulations give employees a chance to demonstrate a range of skills applicable to the role.

Work simulations provide a “portfolio of evidence ” for hiring managers. Individuals capture learnings and key insights they might not know about themselves yet. Digital case study projects or work simulations provide supplementary, unbiased information to go along with an interview. They also allow for greater efficiency in hiring.

During the pandemic, application numbers doubled within Cappfinity clients. Those who had online assessments and feedback reports did not have to hire more recruiters to get through all the applications. Traditionally, most organizations invest and integrate tools for external recruitment, but internal talent is often untapped. However, there are creative and quick ways to transition to skills-based hiring from online assessments, often with platforms.

Looking Ahead

This recession is not like others and we will continue to see more applications in the emerging talent market. To see a good return on investment in terms

of hiring during the downturn, organizations should invest in skills-based recruiting and talent mobility so that they can upskill, train, and redeploy employees. Online assessments and candidate reports allow organizations to access and tap a wide range of skills. The possibility of hiring from within is a great recruitment and retention lever perfectly suited for the current environment.

La Toya Hodge is the Global Head of Marketing of Cappfinity.

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Stop Wasting Time And Money Training Employees

Finding value for your time, money, and resources

By Tim Connor, CSP, Connor Resource

Many organizations that invest in employee development or training are wasting a great deal of time, money, and energy. Don’t believe me . . . read on!

Do you know the average retention of new material, techniques, or ideas after three to four weeks? Well, it is around 3%. So, the next time you send your employees to an all-day seminar and expect performance improvement that lasts - you are living in La La Land.

I have been in the training business for over 35 years and conducted hundreds of seminars in 26 countries for audiences between 10 and 3,500 people. I have observed hundreds if not thousands of people physically sitting in sessions while they were mentally somewhere else the entire time. Is this because I am a boring speaker or because they had little or no interest in the content being covered? Neither.

Many factors determine whether an employee will learn, understand, embrace, and apply new knowledge and skills. Some of these can be controlled by the organization, but many are the results of an employee’s beliefs, expectations, mindsets, attitudes,

and agendas which cannot be controlled by the training entity whether an outside outsourced firm or an in-house training department.

If you want your employee investment to have a positive long-term return the only guaranteed way to accomplish this is by ensuring that any training initiative or approach takes the participants completely through a new approach.

Believe me, you can have the latest and greatest toys, software, products, and services, but if your employees lack the creativity, initiative, motivation, skills, attitudes, and empowerment necessary for effective performance - I will guarantee that these resources will be underutilized.

There are two ways to educate, train, or develop employees.

● The transactional approach

● The curriculum-based approach

Let’s take a brief look at each.

The Transactional Approach

A transaction is a single event, a one-time interaction, or a short-term approach, like a podcast or virtual event. Or, let us say you send your customer service representatives to a half-day seminar on how to improve customer relations and increase repeat business. These people are exposed to appropriate and valuable material for a few hours with little interaction or participation. They sit there all morning – and learn.

After lunch, they head back to work dealing with many of the routine customer issues that the training was designed to help them with.

Now I ask you, if a person has spent ten, twenty, or even only five years developing mindsets, attitudes, habits, routines, and approaches do you think they are going to permanently change these because of a four-hour seminar? Not going to happen.

The Curriculum-based Process

A curriculum-based process is a longer-term approach where there are ongoing gradual incremental increases of information that are covered as well as

some form of reinforcement, coaching, inspection, and/or accountability.

Let me give you an example. If you took algebra when you were in high school, how did you learn it? Let us say after your first 45-minute class on the topic of algebra the teacher gave you your final exam. Would you pass? Of course not. How do you learn algebra so that after three months of classes, three times a week you could pass the final exam?

Goes like this: Class, homework, next class two days later you discuss the homework, then new material is discussed followed by homework on the new material. Two days later this process and approach continue. Three months later, you pass the final exam. Now, let us apply this to a corporate learning situation.

You send your salespeople to a one-day training seminar on how to close more sales (the transaction approach) and then send them on their way. They might improve their ability to close for a few days or a couple of weeks, but I will guarantee that within a short period of time they will default back to previous attitudes, approaches, and techniques.

See the difference between these two training approaches?

The curriculum-based approach has four necessary stages if you want to ensure the success and/or improvement or change in any employee’s attitudes, skills, or behavior.

The stages are;

1. The awareness level

At this level of learning, employees have an awareness only of techniques, tactics, skills, and approaches necessary to be more effective in their roles. However, they need more clarity and understanding to embrace the learning in a way that will allow them to put the information into practice in an effective and sustained way for the long term.

At this level, the behavior will not change, and you will have essentially wasted corporate resources and the employee’s time. They will be alert and attentive during any training session, but will lack the knowledge necessary to know how, where, when, and why to use this new information. The awareness level can be described as sharing information only.

2. The understanding level

At the understanding level, employees get it. They see the relationship between the information they have learned and its value, but they still lack the ability and skill to apply what they have learned to their actual roles and responsibilities.

3. The integration level

Knowledge if it is not used, applied, or integrated into current mindsets, activities, responsibilities, or approaches is essentially useless information. Without a doubt, the biggest challenge in any training initiative is to ensure that the new learning is used, and used whenever and wherever appropriate for the long term. At this level - learning must include a variety of activities, such as customization of delivered material, interactive participation during training sessions, homework (take-away activities for participant implementation and testing), ongoing

coaching and inspection by management, holding participants responsible for implementing new tactics or approaches, management or supervision team attending the learning sessions so they are aware of what the participants are learning.

4. The mastery level

Mastery is the highest form of knowledge applied. This is where wisdom becomes the standard for learning and skill and attitude development. Mastery occurs when knowledge becomes wisdom and wisdom is utilized at every opportunity when the situation or circumstance warrants it. Participants in a typical “transaction” training session for several reasons will never achieve this level of knowledge or wisdom. Generally speaking, people who achieve mastery in their chosen field of endeavor have made mastery their goal and they have followed through with discipline, persistence, and planning.

That is it, so, keep wasting time and money, or start using the “curriculum-based training process” that works and gives you value for your time, money, and resources.

Tim Connor, CSP, is the CEO of Connor Resource. Tim is an international speaker and trainer who has done over 4,000 presentations in 28 countries. He is also a global bestselling author with over 75 books. Would you like to comment?

5 Tips For Building The Best Talent And Unleashing Rapid Growth And Innovation

By Jill Stelfox, Panzura

The Age of the Great Resignation has been a huge wake-up call for employers to better understand what employees want, and to develop better strategies on how to attract, train and retain them. Our vision for Panzura was to reimagine

what it means to be an employer – to break the “bro-culture” that is commonplace (especially in the tech world), and to bring in compassion and empathy to create a workplace environment that is inclusive and values our employees not only for their work

performance and productivity -but holistically, as human beings.

Our motto is “bring your weird”. That means to just be who you are. We encourage a company culture where people can be their true authentic selves. Just be at

It’s good business sense to take care of people

work and think freely. And out of this mindset, has come incredible innovation.  We want to make employees feel valued not only in their contribution to the work they do but in who they are. Study after study shows that when employees are happy and cared for, you make money, so it’s not only a human-centered leadership philosophy but also a winning business strategy.

When employers take a holistic view of employment to provide good-paying jobs, career and personal development coaching opportunities, and transparent communication across supportive bosses, colleagues, and teams -- that’s when people will stay, because they feel a part of a culture where they feel a sense of value and belonging.

We re-founded Panzura the same day that California officially shut down due to Covid-19. While many companies paused when things shut down, we accelerated our efforts and had a “clear the road” mindset of rapidly innovating and hypergrowth, and as a result, we improved our margins. But we also knew that our employees would need extra support. So, we re-invested our profits in supporting our employees by giving them each a Better Up coach. Not just the leadership team, but every employee. But instead of coaching them on business topics, we encouraged them to do personal development training like stress management, parenting, nutrition, fitness, and sleep management. We know

that when their personal lives are great, they’ll spend their time here.

While recent economic shifts may indicate that the Great Resignation may not last much longer, the lessons learned should be carried forward into a new paradigm of more human-focused leadership and human capital management as a recipe for business success.

In summary, the 5 tips for building the best talent and unleashing rapid growth and innovation

1. Understand what employees want - The Age of the Great Resignation put this into sharp focus, as companies, especially in the tech sector have been vying for the best talent. Companies will not only attract but retain the best talent when they learn and then develop employment offerings that reflect what makes employees feel valued and cared for.

2. Promote diversity and inclusion – Most innovative teams bring together a diversity of people and talent. When people can be themselves for who they are, they feel they belong and are in the free-thinking zone of innovation. That is key in a rapid-growth startup environment.

3. Take a holistic approach – A more human-centered approach to human capital management is essential to the well-being and ultimately the retention of employees.

Seek to help employees fulfill their “human” potential in both their personal and professional paths.

4. Lead with compassion and empathy – Covid-19 brought about a new awareness of the human struggles we all share during the global pandemic like how to work and take care of your family, how to respond when employees are sick or when they are in crises, and how to keep employees safe. These lessons can and should be brought forward into the future of how to lead with employee wellness in mind.

5. Provide growth resources –Provide resources that can support employees in their professional or personal lives. When people’s lives are going well, they show up better and perform better, so it’s good business sense to take care of people, aside from it being the right thing to do!

Jill Stelfox is the Executive Chair and CEO of Panzura. Prior to joining Panzura, Jill founded and acted as Co-CEO of marketing consulting firm EDGY, where she helped companies from McAfee to Adobe to USAA to transform business and technology processes.

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Decoding The Connection Between Employee Development And DEI Progress

By Amy Lavoie, Torch.io.

For organizations that want to improve their retention and make progress towards DEI goals, the first step is to invest in developing greater individual and organizational awareness.

A common high-priority demand from customers, C-Suites and increasingly energized Gen Z employees is for U.S. companies to get real with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Yet when we analyzed the responses of over 500 HR and L&D managers and leaders across the country in June, the majority of respondents were telling us that they had achieved all of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals.

We did a double take. We normally hear from organizations that they are still struggling to achieve goals around building inclusive culture as well as hiring, retaining, and promoting underrepresented talent. And in fact, what was actually going on was a misalignment across these companies, with some groups thinking the DEI problem was more or less solved, but a lot of their colleagues disagreed.

Specifically, we found that executives were more optimistic than managers that all or most of their DEI goals had been achieved. Similarly, men were more likely to report that most of the DEI goals at their organization had been achieved, compared to women who were more likely to report closer to half of the DEI goals being achieved.

Is the Power Paradox Blurring the DEI Picture?

Such a striking disconnect points to a key barrier to achieving DEI goals: lack of real awareness, which operates on both an individual and organizational level. This is an issue, as organizations cannot address problems they are not aware of, or believe no longer exist. And while the kind of culture change required to move the needle for DEI is a ‘whole organization’ effort, it is often spearheaded by the CHRO’s team.

Disagreement about whether problems even exist, and whether DEI goals have been achieved, makes it harder for HR leaders to secure the necessary budget and support that DEI progress requires.

Organizations that offer coaching or mentoring to underrepresented groups achieve DEI goals faster

So why does this awareness gap exist? Social science research about the impact of power on perceptiveness offers clues. As individuals rise in rank, their ability to empathize and understand someone else’s perspective starts to decrease. This is sometimes referred to as the Power Paradox, a term coined by Dr. Dacher Keltner, a Stanford psychology professor.

Other workplace research has found that those who are more affected by these issues directly are less likely to think DEI goals were attained. Additionally, women holding senior-level positions are twice as likely to engage in DEI work outside of their job descriptions than their male counterparts—and consequently, can have a greater window into the problems present in the organizations.

Our research also suggests that workplace leaders can close these perceptual gaps by:

● Increasing transparency of DEI efforts Making your DEI goals clear and reporting on progress to everyone within your organization will increase the circle of awareness and ensure everyone is on the same page. Offering insight into organizational efforts in this way is an evidence-based strategy to improve DEI efforts.

● Offering opportunities to increase selfawareness Providing 360 assessments to employees can help increase individual self-awareness by improving leadership skills like perceptiveness, in spite of the Power Paradox. Leaders who receive feedback from other colleagues are more likely to clue into what’s happening with their employees.

Development Opportunities Signify Commitment

Intriguingly, organizations that offer coaching or mentoring to underrepresented groups reported reaching significantly more of their DEI goals. And they were more likely to report achieving most of their DEI goals compared to those who did not offer coaching and mentoring, and who were more likely to report achieving half of their DEI goals.

Why are relationship-centered programs so powerful when it comes to moving the DEI needle? Unlike traditional training and e-learning courses, coaching drives meaningful behavior change for senior leaders because it is personalized to their needs, relevant to their daily work, and makes them accountable over time. In turn, mentorship creates new organizational connections and relationships that help underrepre sented employees gain visibility in their organization.

Decoding The Connection Between Employee Development And DEI Progress

Decoding The Connection Between Employee Development And DEI Progress

For the latter talent pool, these development opportunities signal an important investment and commitment. Research has shown that formal, democratized mentorship programs in particular support the retention, promotion, and engagement of underrepresented groups. Mentorship programs can offer women and people of color access to institutional knowledge and visibility with leadership, as well as give them the tools they need to both succeed in their current roles and prepare for their next one.

Coaching and mentoring programs deliver benefits at a personal level, as well as an organizational one. Mentoring leads to increased engagement for mentors as well as new perspectives on the workplace, addressing the issue of the perception and awareness of DEI progress. Coaching similarly helps equip underrepresented leaders facing unique barriers in the workplace.

And research has shown that after receiving coaching, women felt a greater sense of belonging. Coaching and mentorship recipients also report growing in their feelings of legitimacy in their leadership positions, equipping them with the confidence to be successful in their roles, for example.

Who’s More Likely to Fall Short on DEI Targets?

It is not surprising that organizations that do not provide coaching or mentoring are significantly more likely to struggle with their DEI goals. In fact, our study showed that the organizations that do not offer coaching or mentoring were 63% more likely to report struggling with providing equitable pay, and are 58% more likely to report struggling with providing promotions, and 33% more likely to report struggling with retention.

We also found something that may seem counter intuitive at first: organizations that measure their programs’ impact on retention using multiple metrics are more likely to report struggling with achieving key HR goals.

While this surprised us initially, one way of interpreting this is that measurement is a key way to better understand the nuance of a problem—which often leads, in a virtuous circle, to more accurate estimations of progress towards solving it.

This reminds us that measurement is a crucial part of any L&D strategy, including- or perhaps especiallyaround DEI. It is also critical for establishing a broad level of awareness of what is working and what’s not, especially as misaligned perspectives like the ones we have discussed may lead to different perceptions of progress on DEI goals.

Most Successful DEI Initiatives Have Multiple Components

You can’t really change as either a person or a workplace until you know the reality of your situation. That means measurement is essential to providing a window into DEI progress. It is also fundamental to align your progress towards these goals.

Effective and sustainable DEI work requires alignment on problems, solutions, and perceptions of progress. With deeper organizational awareness and alignment, CHROs can get there through the right DEI programs to drive desired behavioral shifts and organizational change.

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Amy Lavoie is VP of People Success at San Francisco-based Torch.io

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Why Bother With Career Development?

The business case for a manager’s time

investment

By Dr. Beverly Kaye, BevKaye&Co.

Premise:

● Every organization will need to make employee development a top priority.

● Every manager will need to bring their best coaching game to their employees.

● Every employee will need to bring their best capabilities forward.

Leaders play a key role in employee development. They have the power to motivate, inspire and lead. They also help employees thrive, remain competitive and develop their unique skills. knowing what to do, how to do it, and then doing it is what is called for today’s economy.

Update Your Knowledge of Their Talents

Mastering this ability enables managers to use the talent on their team more effectively. It supports better matches between business needs and responses to those needs. Too often, we assume we know the skills and capabilities of the people who report to us. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, and valuable talent is underutilized or not used in the best way. The more managers understand the talents of every individual on their team, the easier it is to grow and retain employees and the more effectively challenges can be assigned.

Candid Conversations

Feedback is a fundamental part of effective management and leadership. Leveling with employees

Why Bother With Career Development?

is a direct route to growth, development, and career success. Retention research suggests that employees leave because they have no idea of their value to the organization and can’t envision career growth inside the organization. Many reports that they have never had candid conversations about their abilities and how they can leverage their strengths, develop new skills, and polish rough edges as they work toward their career aspirations. Clear feedback allows individuals to make appropriate choices to know how they are perceived in the organization and to manage that perception. And this critical function is in the domain of every manager.

Spotlight Impending Change

Employees must constantly consider changes that affect their careers in the short term. Understanding long-term trends and the opportunities/implications of those trends are equally important, helping employees identify information sources prepares them to stay in tune with trends and up to date with the forces that will impact their careers.

Managers who talk openly and honestly about the future with their teams help employees envision the future and prepare for success. Constant and continuous change makes this strategy a critical piece in building a resilient team-a team that will be ready to meet the challenges ahead and succeed. Managers use their experience and wisdom to prepare employees for what may become tomorrow’s realities is essential.

Plan for Contingencies

Employees’ commitment and contribution to the organization can increase when they recognize opportunities and multiple ways for them to grow and develop. Creating development goals that align with the organization’s direction positions your team for success. Goals should include contingencies for shifts and changes that arise. Setting specific goals motivates employees to pursue professional development and provides a vital link to the utilization of talent. Job satisfaction results when employees feel that they are part of the organization’s future. Employees can then align their goals with the organization’s goals.

Encourage Continual Learning

Organizations that are not learning cannot be competitive. Individuals need to grow, develop, and add new skills to keep themselves and the organization on the competitive edge, ready to excel in a world of rapid and constant change. Managers must build an environment that supports learning, encourages inquiry, rewards growth, and challenges employees to pursue their own definition of success. Managers who create links to the resources and experiences employees need will create a community of learners equipped to achieve the organization’s goals, mission, and vision. Talented people want to work with talented people. A second, but equally important outcome of creating a developmentfocused environment, is that the word gets out. Talent will be attracted to your organization.

Beware the Knowing-Doing Gap

None of this is probably new to you – nor should it be. The real question is – are you actively doing it? All of it? Would your employees agree? The difference in closing the knowing-doing gap is directly related to the number of employees who grow and develop under your guidance.

Dr. Beverly Kaye is recognized internationally as one of the most knowledgeable and practical professionals in the areas of career development, employee engagement and retention. Her contribution to the field of engagement and retention includes the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay, which is now in its 6th edition. Her recent books in the career development field include Up is Not the Only Way and Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, which provides overwhelmed managers with a way to blend career conversations into their everyday routines. Would you like to comment?

Talent Mobility: From Career Development To Agility

By Edie L. Goldberg, Ph.D., E.L. Goldberg & Associates

I’ve worked in organizations developing career management processes for over twenty years. But I’ve noticed the following problem with traditional career development methods: managers see employees only in terms of the skills they have to do their current job. They rarely know (or remember) skills employees developed in previous jobs that are not relevant to their current role; nor do they know skills they may have through their interests and hobbies.

Furthermore, managers have very little ability to see beyond the opportunities within their own team or function. This limited perspective doesn’t allow employees to develop except in one silo. Managers have a little line of sight into how to leverage employees’ skills in other parts of the organization in ways that could help them to achieve their career development goals while contributing to the organization’s needs.

Internal talent mobility has traditionally referred to moving employees to new roles in order to facilitate learning. However, given today’s talent marketplace technologies, we now have the ability to break jobs into projects and then allow employees to opt-in to projects where their skills and contributions are

needed the most. While ITM can still facilitate career development, it can do much more than that.

Internal Talent Mobility And Agility

The ability to know your talent so thoroughly that you can move people to those projects where you most need them is a key capability for the future of work, given the relentless pace of change.

During the pandemic, we learned that business conditions and related priorities can turn on a dime. Customer demand for a new feature, or a new competitor entering the marketplace, requires no less agility. Internal talent mobility is an approach that enables you to quickly respond to changing business dynamics.

Further, ITM helps you to develop the skills you need in-house, without the need for expensive hiring cycles. By giving employees access to project-based work on other teams, while keeping their ‘day jobs,’ you enable learning. You expose your people to new situations and new mentors that enable you to upskill employees in the flow of work.

Leveraging an internal talent marketplace can also facilitate greater equity and inclusion. Managers

ITM’s promise goes far beyond career development alone, it makes your company more agile

can draw the skills they need from a pool larger than their own team, function, or business group. This means that managers are looking more at competencies than the politics of who has them or how well-known an employee is internally. You’ve seen organizations where the same favorites got most of the opportunities. It was who you know, not what you know. Internal talent mobility opens up those valuable opportunities to more people. It helps foster equal opportunity across the organization.

Also, research says that only about one-third of employees are fully engaged at work. That means that most companies are leaving productivity on the table because two-thirds of employees are not fully engaged, and research tells us that engaged employees are more productive.

Talent mobility has the potential to help employees tap into their interests and their passions, by enabling them to work on projects of their own choosing. It increases engagement, which boosts productivity. Employees receive career development and learning, while managers receive more engaged, more passionate employees.

Implementing an Internal Talent Mobility Strategy

How can organizations implement an ITM strategy? The first step is to know what skills you have. Most organizations do not have an inventory that captures the totality of skills they have in-house. A complete accounting of your internal talent includes not only the skills people have to do their jobs – but what people can do or want to do.

As much as possible, an ITM strategy requires dividing the work you do into projects and then identifying the skill sets necessary for each of them. Finally, you need the means to connect projects with the people who have the required skills, no matter where in the organization they work.

Fortunately, the enabling technologies for ITM have come a long way. There are now technologies that will ingest a LinkedIn profile, a resume, or what’s already in your human capital management system, as a basis for a skills inventory. And then employees can improve this inventory by adding or modifying the skills in their profile. Smart technologies will even prompt employees regarding related skills that they may have forgotten.

Talent Mobility: From Career Development To Agility

With a comprehensive inventory in place, managers can then input both the skills required for specific roles or projects and the needed skill level. These tools can then connect the right person, at the right skill level, to the right project.

Developing Adjacent Skills

Internal talent mobility tools can also help people to develop adjacent skills. For example, it’s obvious that a programmer fluent in one language would have an easier time learning to code in another than someone who’s not a programmer at all.

Your employees have a host of skills that are adjacent to the ones you need, even if these skills don’t appear on their resumes. Using an AI-driven talent marketplace, you can upskill more quickly by leveraging these adjacencies.

This means that talent mobility technology connects employees to learning opportunities. It can connect them to other people they can learn from, people outside of their team or function they might never have come across otherwise. Thus, ITM fosters a learning organization.

It’s About Change Management And Not Just Tech

Talent marketplace technology vendors will tell you that their solutions have reached the point where implementing ITM is as easy as flipping a switch. You can approach the implementation in this manner if you are using it only to allow employees to opt-in to projects in addition to their full-time role.

But the real power of this technology is that it helps you to change the way you distribute work. You must first convince managers to allow their employees to volunteer to work on projects outside of their normal jobs for at least a few hours a week. Managers must understand that there is value for their own team in an exchange of skills. Managers come to find that, in the internal talent marketplace, they receive as much as they give.

Internal talent mobility also means that your organization must think not in terms of jobs, but in terms of skills that are associated with projects.

The selling point for employees here is that you’re no longer limiting them to contributing to the organization’s success by tying them to a specific job. You are allowing them to use all of their skills, passions, and their interests to deliver value to the company.

Changing from a mindset of talent scarcity to one of talent abundance is no small task. It requires change management and a commitment from senior leaders.

Talent Mobility: Giving Access To A Gold Mine

You’re sitting on a gold mine of talent. All you have to do is allow your employees to bring their full selves to work – all of their skills and experience. Then, simply give them access to new opportunities that are already happening within your company.

An internal talent marketplace helps you to identify the expertise you have in-house, and exponentially improve it while accelerating the pace of work. Along the way, employees have access to career development opportunities without looking for a new job. Even a few hours a week spent on a team outside of their usual space can enhance learning and productivity.

But talent mobility isn’t only about career development – it’s also about agility. It’s the organizational magic that can help companies become more effective.

Edie L. Goldberg, Ph.D. is the Founder of E.L. Goldberg & Associates and is a future of work expert and talent management consultant based in Menlo Park, CA. She is the co-author of The Inside Gig: How Sharing Untapped Talent Unleashes Organizational Capacity (Wonderwell, CA)

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Talent Mobility: From Career Development To Agility

How To Design An Organization That Thrives On Social Capital And Organizational Learning?

By Mostafa Sayyadi & Michael J. Provitera, Deloitte

Agility is a key component of business success in today’s hypercompetitive world. To achieve a high level of agility, organizations need to create a high level of social capital. This emphasizes this issue to show how organizations can achieve a new order that is necessary for innovation and survival. We need a new form of social capital-based organizational structure.

Organizations today must strive to be agile. The sad reality is that as organizations grow in their business environment, they move away from helping society because their main incentive is, in general, to prosper, and, in other cases, they place their focus on survival. Survival sometimes brings inertia and less agility. Innovative and creative ideas in this bureaucratic environment are quickly suppressed and efforts of the organization are focused only on achieving a high level of efficiency.

A handful of companies like Apple, Toyota, Mitsubishi Motors, and Samsung Electronics are still focused on the original idea of helping society through technological breakthroughs. Social capital manifests itself in the form of trust, interaction, and the sharing of ideas and concerns of not only the people in the organization but also the community at large.

Social capital can play a very important role in achieving agility and reducing the gap between external changes and the proper response to these changes. Building a social capital-based organizational structure that strengthens trust and interaction between organizational members should become the task of innovative and transformational leaders in today’s business environment.

To achieve a high level of agility, social capital-based organizational structures factor into this complex

The social capital-based organizational structure is the missing link for realizing the potential of turning human capital into social capital.

equation by designing the power of trust and interaction between human resources and society. This type of organizational design increases the exchange of ideas among employees and leads to the growth of knowledge flow and causes the realization of the learning organization.

Some organizations must redesign the organizational processes and events to maximize the interaction of human resources from all parts of the organization to achieve a systemic approach among them to volunteer, give, and offer support to the communities that they serve. The organization becomes more compatible with its business environment, through more effective, timelier, and more innovative responses to external changes in society.

Redesigning organizational processes and events to further align volunteer and donation ideas, and other resources are necessary to transform human capital into social capital. Through the more effective sharing and application of organizational knowledge, social capital can be enhanced and utilized today more than ever.

Human capital is a vital and necessary factor in achieving agility and reducing the gap between changes and the response time to them, it is social capital that uses this human capital and ultimately leads to agility. The analogy between human capital and social capital is what we call power and politics in organizational behavior which is an interesting perspective of management. Power is the same as human capital and politics to use the right sources of power to enhance social capital.

While many organizations do not suffer from a lack of ideas (human capital), they do not have effective mechanisms for sharing these ideas and using them (social capital). The social capital-based organizational structure is the missing link for realizing the potential of turning human capital into social capital.

Mostafa Sayyadi Ghasabeh works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies, and helps companies— from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

Michael J. Provitera is an internationally-recognized management consultant, an associate professor of organizational behavior, and an author of the book titled “Mastering Self-Motivation” published by BusinessExpertPress. He earned his MBA in finance from St. John’s University in Jamaica, Queens, New York. He obtained his DBA from Nova Southeastern University.

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