Talent Management Excellence - April 2023

FIVE WAYS TO BE A MORE INCLUSIVE CO-WORKER

FIVE WAYS TO BE A MORE INCLUSIVE CO-WORKER

- Amri B. Johnson, CEO & Founder, Inclusion Wins

- Amri B. Johnson, CEO & Founder, Inclusion Wins

The

Future of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2023

Sponsored by

Supporting Our Colleagues With Disabilities In A Post-Pandemic Era Building effective DEIB initiatives to support the future of disability employment

- Kevin Silva, Chief Human Resources Officer, Voya Financial

Top Picks 09 14

8 DEI Priorities To Focus On This Year

Building stronger, more inclusive organizations

- Brett Farmiloe, Founder and CEO, Terkel.io

How Employee Network Groups Can Help Further Your DEI Efforts

5 steps any company can follow to create an ENG program

- Alfredo Mendez, Vice President, Experience and Inclusion, Robert Half

53 61

Hiring

In A Neurodiverse World

Autism and the science of game-based assessments

- Dr. Colin Willis, Senior IO Psychologist, HireVue

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Implementing DEIB Initiatives in Talent Processes

Theconcept of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) is increasingly gaining prominence in the corporate world. Companies are beginning to understand that promoting an inclusive workplace is not only the right thing to do but also benefits the overall productivity and morale of employees. However, implementing DEIB practices can be challenging, especially when employees are not automatically considering inclusivity throughout all processes as a work culture.

One way to address this challenge is by creating employee network groups (ENGs). These groups can serve as safe spaces for employees to connect, find support, and advocate.. As companies strive to create a culture of belonging, prioritizing intersectionality and ensuring equal access and advancement across the organization should also be part of their DEIB priorities.

DEIB practices throughout talent management is a necessary step towards creating an environment where everyone feels respected, valued, and can thrive.

From critical DEIB priorities for all leaders to fostering a disability-inclusive environment in the post-pandemic workplace and the importance of AI adoption and the growing demand for AI talent, this edition of Talent Management Excellence includes articles that provide effective strategies and approaches that organizations can utilize to retain their valuable employees.

Also included are highlights and insights from an exclusive research study entitled The Future of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2023. The study explores the DEIB landscape, including program maturity levels and equitable pay, the extent to which key DEIB initiatives are developed and their perceived level of effectiveness, the practices that seem most closely associated with DEIB success, and much more.

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Moreover, supporting colleagues with disabilities is another crucial aspect of DEIB initiatives. As organizations shift towards remote and hybrid work, employers must ensure they do not negatively impact the progress made in advancing DEIB, including efforts to create and foster a disability-inclusive environment.

Creating a more inclusive workplace requires a deliberate effort on the part of managers and employees. Prioritizing

We hope you find the articles in this issue informative and helpful and, as always, we welcome your valuable feedback and suggestions.

Happy Reading!

In a world of unparalleled challenges (global pandemic, racial injustice, political rivalry, digital 4.0, emotional malaise), uncertainty reigns. Finding opportunity 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 actionable 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.

I regularly read and contribute to Leadership Excellence and Talent Management Excellence. I use many of the articles I read to augment my own presentations 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 different issues from the Excellence series of publications.

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Five Ways To Be A More Inclusive Co-worker

The DEI employee handbook

By Amri B. Johnson, Inclusion Wins

By now most leaders and employees know that focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) helps keep the workplace running smoothly. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do! But the reality is not everyone knows what inclusion looks like in action. When people are unsure how to make marginalized individuals feel welcome, their behaviors could hurt their vulnerable co-workers.

Knowledge is power. When employees know what to do—and what not to do—they can quickly and easily help create a safer, more inclusive work environment for everyone. So, people managers, share these tips with your team:

Actively Seek Out New People at Work

If you don’t, you might collaborate only with those who are just like you. (This can happen.) So go out of your way to forge connections with people you don’t know.

Give Others a Chance to Share Ideas Too

Refrain from interrupting, speaking over others, or holding the floor for too long during meetings. Instead, work on your active listening skills. It’s an excellent method for hearing others and being heard. When listening, give the speaker your full attention (e.g., put away your phone). If you are unsure of their meaning, wait until the speaker has finished and summarize

what you heard in your own words. Give the other person a chance to clarify if necessary.

Do The “Little Things” That Make People Feel a Sense of Belonging

Thoughtful gestures can show someone that they are seen and welcomed in the group. For example, if you’re getting yourself a coffee or tea, ask a co-worker you don’t yet know well if you can grab them one too (or, if you are remote, place an order at their local coffee shop via your app and then get on a video/ audio chat while you drink it). Instead of sharing a funny story with just your closest co-worker, invite the person within earshot into the conversation. When religious or cultural holidays roll around, don’t hesitate to say, “Ramadan Mubarak,” “Happy Easter,” or, “Happy Hanukkah,” to those who observe.

Ask People to Share Where They Are “Local”

While it is worthwhile to share personal preferred pronouns, it might be more impactful to hear about the places and spaces where people practice rituals, have formed meaningful relationships, and have also experienced restrictions in some cases. A TED Talk by author Taiye Selasi details more about this powerful mechanism to more meaningfully connect to people with different and, in some cases, surprisingly similar experiences to yours.

Be Authentic and Encourage Authenticity

Most, if not all, people do some level of “covering” or hiding their true identities to conform at work. It makes everyone fearful of being judged or discriminated against for being themselves. To break this cycle, bring your authentic self by cultivating a willingness to be influenced by people different from you.

Everyone wants to feel they belong at work. These are small but effective steps to make belonging a reality for people who have been left out of workplace culture for far too long.

If you hold significant influence or privilege in the most impactful decisions that business makes, you can help shift your organization toward greater inclusion. There’s no better way to use your power for the good of all those around you.

Amri B. Johnson is the author of Reconstructing Inclusion: Making DEI Accessible, Actionable, and Sustainable . For more than 20 years, he has been instrumental in helping organizations and their people create extraordinary business outcomes. He is a social capitalist, epidemiologist, entrepreneur, and inclusion strategist. As CEO/founder of Inclusion Wins, Amri and a virtual collective of partners converge organizational purpose to create global impact with a lens of inclusion.

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Supporting Our Colleagues With Disabilities In A Post-Pandemic Era

Building effective DEIB initiatives to support the future of disability employment

By Kevin Silva, Voya Financial

Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) initiatives are crucial to creating a culture in which all members feel visible, respected and have a sense of belonging. As the post-pandemic world continues to set in, and various pandemic-era workplace policies shift, it is critical that these shifts do not negatively impact the progress made advancing DEIB over the past several years — including efforts to create and foster a disability-inclusive environment.

As many organizations transitioned to remote and hybrid work during the pandemic, new employment opportunities opened up for people with disabilities. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment rate for those with disabilities was 21.3% in 2022, up 2.2% from 2021. Greater schedule flexibility and increased opportunities for remote work played a large role in this by eliminating some of the previous barriers to employment. As DEIB leaders, it is imperative that we look for ways to continue fostering and prioritizing this exciting employment growth.

This starts with creating an environment that helps employees with disabilities to feel at ease disclosing their conditions with employers. Enabling employees to be transparent about their disabilities is a key stepping-stone in setting them up for success. In fact, a 2020 Accenture survey found that engagement rates among employees with disabilities would be up to 1.5x higher if their employer created an environment where disability disclosure is met with support and inclusivity. However, a majority of individuals with disabilities – 76% of employees and 80% of leaders – are not transparent about their disabilities at work, leaving much room for improvement in employer support.

One key to creating an open and inclusive environment for people with disabilities is to have an intentional focus on integration into the workforce. In order to develop a robust DEIB structure and a disability-inclusive workplace, it’s critical to have a full understanding of how these employees can be best supported.

At Voya, DEIB leaders met with employees with disabilities at the onset of DEIB planning to determine the needs of the community and identify ways to integrate a holistic employer support system into the workplace. This support can now be seen from the very beginning of the onboarding process. When an employee with a disability is hired, we offer accommodations like assistive technology and software, modified work schedules, accessible workstations and equipment, customized job coaching and the option to enroll in a mentorship program.

Our people are also encouraged to join Employee-Led Councils, which offer key educational programming to encourage more diverse perspectives across the organization. Councils work together to create guides on how to stand up for and champion employees from a multitude of diverse backgrounds. While every organization’s approach to integration will be different, what’s most important is fostering an accommodating and judgment-free environment for employees.

The other key to a successful DEIB strategy that effectively supports people with disabilities is accountability. For employees across all levels of the organization to truly be engaged and for inclusivity to flourish, it is imperative that accountability be modeled from the top. Senior leaders need to act as catalysts and embrace DEIB across all business functions.

To encourage accountability for senior leaders, we place an emphasis on providing training on what inclusion for employees with disabilities looks like. All people managers go through mandatory training on disability inclusion in the workplace, including lessons on etiquette, vernacular, conversation, accessibility, accommodation and employee relations. Leaders are given tools to infuse these practices into everyday operations and team relations. True workplace allyship blossoms when DEIB efforts are seen as a shared responsibility among all employees.

As we all continue to transition into a post-pandemic era, it is crucial to consider the impact any changes may have on DEIB initiatives and progress, particularly on disability inclusion. There has been considerable progress in creating an inclusive environment for these employees and we cannot let the desire to ‘return to normal’ allow us to go back to overlooking the unique talent, experience and values that people with disabilities bring to the table. We all benefit when diverse perspectives are uplifted, celebrated and respected in the workplace.

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Kevin Silva is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Voya Financial

The AI Talent Market Is Hot Right Now

The importance of AI adoption and the growing demand for AI talent

By Nick Shah, Peterson Technology Partners

Most of us are already familiar with the more public-facing AI initiatives like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the beta version of which launched in November last year, garnering over a million users within the first few days.

But ChatGPT or Dall- E 2, impressive though their capabilities are not yet in a space where they can create industry-wide change. Both the technology and the market for it are still nascent. The story of

commercial-use AI is developing much more rapidly elsewhere.

Shell, the petrochemical and energy conglomerate, has been heavily invested in AI since the mid-2000s and has been implementing cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to their operational challenges. To handle global customer inquiries about their products, Shell partnered with Artificial Solutions to build two AI assistants—Ethan and Emma—that can use generative

programming to respond to customer queries about over 3000 products.

Shell has also successfully incorporated AI into their core industrial operations, creating AI systems that use drones and computer vision to analyze its vast infrastructure of pipelines and refineries. AI can complete in weeks a task that previously would have taken years.

Shell’s strategy of AI implementation is important. It indicates that-

● Legacy businesses, ones that don’t traditionally operate in tech spaces, have also understood the importance of AI adoption and are investing heavily in keeping their company future-ready

● The strongest demand for AI talent isn’t coming from tech giants, or even the IT departments of large employers, but rather from other business units within the organization.

AI use cases aren’t limited to pure technology anymore. There is a growing demand for AI implementation in multiple areas of business. And we need a supply of AI talent to match this demand.

AI Adoption is Growing Rapidly

A recently published Gartner report on AI adoption shows that although the IT departments’ need for AI talent has tripled in recent years, the total number of AI jobs in IT is still less than half of those originating from other business parallels.

These business units are using AI talent for uses such as customer churn modeling, profitability analysis, consumer segmentation, cross-sell and upsell recommendations, demand forecasting and analysis, and risk management.

According to the report, a significant portion of AI use cases revolves around building supporting projects for key asset-focused industries such as predictive maintenance, workflow, and production optimization, supply chain optimization, and QA/QC.

This translates to uses across multiple parallels such as marketing, sales, and finance. Concurrently the departments which are most interested in recruiting AI talent in high volumes include marketing, sales, customer service, finance, and R&D.

As I wrote in my previous piece about AI in recruitment, the industry has seen incredible growth over the last few years thanks to the growing use of AI. AI has powerful applications in practically every stage of recruitment, especially for smaller to medium-sized businesses. SMEs are realizing that AI can help them overcome many traditional barriers to executing a comprehensive recruitment strategy in-house.

...and So is the Demand for AI Talent

Accompanying this growing demand for AI software and services is the need for AI talent. Experts with the skills needed to build and deploy automation and machine learning systems. Most AI teams require multiple specializations working together to build a single system or platform. A holistic AI team requires:

● Machine learning engineers to implement ML models

● AI architects to integrate the models into production systems

● Software developers to build APIs and user interfaces

● Data scientists and engineers to process data, build data sets, and identify use cases

to integrate AI use into your other business units.

To put it simply, AI integration isn’t an isolated, one-and-done activity. Unlike run-of-the-mill IT operations, you cannot parachute an AI team in for the occasional tech upgrade and still expect to maintain cutting-edge efficiency. AI integration requires a commitment to re-platforming your organization to operate within the AI ecosystem.

And currently, we just don’t have the numbers to back up this demand.

But that Demand Isn’t Being Met

After nearly a decade of steady growth in AI adoption, we are reaching a plateau. While growth has not stalled, and the market is far from saturated, there is a bottleneck developing in the talent procurement process which is slowing down hiring. Too much demand, too quickly, and we don’t have the supply to keep up. AI talent pools are still small and limited to a few regions such as the USA, China, and Western Europe. Within Western Europe, almost all AI talent is limited to the UK.

But it doesn’t stop with just AI-based skills. AI teams don’t operate in isolation. You also need business domain experts, IT experts, and other stakeholders,

This shortage is compounded by the fact that AI is a relatively new field, and there are few programs or institutions that focus on training AI professionals. As a result, most AI experts are self-taught or have learned through experience.

I have clients who need a regular supply of AI talent to work on their projects and maintain their existing systems. As a recruiter, it is my job to ensure that not only do they have a supply to match their demand but that the quality of candidates provided matches up to the high standards which my company is known for. The challenge for me then is assessing the qualifications of potential AI hires, in a field where expertise is scarce to begin with.

Until the field grows to a point where AI expertise becomes widely available, I have two short-term solutions for AI implementation, that I recommend to my clients:

Start with Strategic Implementation

As much as we would love to have a little bit of AI power in every department, a more realistic strategy would see AI being implemented in a few key areas where they could generate growth or create efficiency, without

having to overhaul the entire operation.

Train Your Own Talent

Online courses, boot camps, and executive and part-time college programs, all offer ways that working professionals can upskill themselves in AI. With organizational support, and maybe a contractual-learning program, employees with a background in software development or computer programming could be taught the right skills.

If You Can’t Hire Expertise, Rent It

Not every company needs to build a customized AI system from the ground up. If you don’t have access to the AI talent you need, or can’t afford to hire them en masse, a much simpler solution could be to rent the system. Software-as-a-service AI models give companies access to the power of AI and the talent to back it up, without having to commit to the long-term costs of building and maintaining the product yourself.

Conclusion

AI research and development is becoming everybody’s priority, and the market is expanding to keep up, but the talent supply just isn’t enough to meet the demand. Businesses like Shell are beginning to realize that organization-wide AI adoption is impossible without the team, and the talent, to back it up.

Despite this AI still has the most popular IT roles going, and AI jobs are at a premium. To attract and retain AI talent, employers need to offer competitive compensation packages and provide opportunities for professional development. That being said, if hiring AI talent full-time is not a cost-effective option for your organization, or you need access to AI services in a hurry, there are steps you can take to adopt AI to suit your particular needs.

Nick Shah is the CEO and Founder of Peterson Technology Partners

8 DEI Priorities To Focus On This Year

Building

stronger, more inclusive organizations

By Brett Farmiloe, Terkel.io

Frominvesting in resources to learn about DEI to engaging in intentional recruitment efforts, here are eight answers to the question, “What are priorities that every DEI leader should focus on this year and why?”

● Know Your True Authentic Focus

● Prevent Diversity Fatigue in the Workplace

● Decentralize Your Hiring Department

● Address Pay Equity and Opportunity Gaps

● Work Hard to Create a Culture of Belonging

● Focus on Bystander Intervention

● Prioritize Intersectionality

● Ensure Equal Access and Advancement Across a Company

Know Your True Authentic Focus

Make sure the chosen DEI focus is authentic rather than catering to the market norms. These market norms appear disingenuous and invite companies to exercise half-hearted DEI objectives to appear favorable in the commercial space.

While some companies have made improvements in their presence and worth by investing in resources to learn about DEI and applying those principles, which yield an increase in sales, others have struggled because they’ve applied the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative like lipstick on a pig.

The people who get cheated in such circumstances are the contributors in the organization who are trusting the management and leadership to integrate dignified DEI elements holistically that can yield sustainable results over time, not just in the present moment to appease disgruntled audiences. If the leaders care about the results, they need to know if they are playing to win in the long run, or else it’s a waste of time and resources.

Prevent Diversity Fatigue in the Workplace

To promote a fair and inclusive workplace, DEI leaders must recognize the importance of addressing diversity fatigue. Diversity fatigue is a phenomenon that occurs when individuals become overwhelmed by the amount of effort it takes to take part in diversity-related initiatives.

DEI leaders can create more effective and lasting change by proactively working toward preventing diversity fatigue. They can ensure employees have an avenue for feedback and dialogue, and provide regular check-ins and updates on DEI efforts to create more effective and lasting change.

Establishing clear goals for DEIB initiatives helps ensure everyone involved has a sense of purpose and direction and provides motivational incentives.

DEI leaders must support exhausted employees who feel overwhelmed or disconnected from work. Organizations can create an environment where everyone feels safe.

Sasha Laghonh, Founder, Sasha Talks

Vivian Acquah, Certified Diversity Executive, Amplify DEI

Decentralize Your Hiring Department

It isn’t about placing one expert in HR or management; rather, it’s a comprehensive shift that begins with the entire hiring department. Decentralization is the priority right now; recruiters should evaluate every worker with diversity and inclusion in mind.

A top-down approach can only go so far. If your workforce is resistant to such policies, you’ll be facing an uphill battle.

Teaching inclusion is possible, but weeding out workers who don’t want to learn is the first step toward truly creating a welcoming workplace for everyone.

Address Pay Equity and Opportunity Gaps

I strongly believe we should start with the basics. Are you looking to create a more inclusive workplace? Then you must address pay equity and opportunity gaps. It’s all about fair compensation, regardless of who you are, where you come from, or what you do.

You must address pay equity and opportunity gaps in order to create a more inclusive workplace by conducting regular pay audits and analyzing pay data by gender, race, and other relevant factors. And, if you find any disparities, take action to correct them!

Rob Reeves, CEO and President, Redfish Technology

Piotrek Sosnowski, Chief People and Culture Officer, Natu.Care

Work Hard to Create a Culture of Belonging

I think that this year we should see more organizations working towards creating more of a culture of belonging. This involves ensuring that all employees feel valued, and included, regardless of their background, identity, or experience.

DEI leaders can implement strategies such as providing inclusive training and development programs, creating employee resource groups, conducting regular diversity and inclusion assessments, and fostering open communication channels to promote a sense of community and support.

By working towards building a culture of belonging, DEI leaders can create a more fair and inclusive workplace that attracts and keeps a diverse talent pool and drives more positive business outcomes.

Focus on Bystander Intervention

Bystander intervention is an important part of creating a safe and inclusive workplace. It involves teaching employees how to recognize when someone is in distress and how they can take action to help those in need. This includes intervening when witnessing verbal, mental, or physical abuse, as well as harassment or other forms of discrimination. Learning this skill empowers employees to stand up for what is right and to create a culture of respect.

Bystander intervention also encourages employees to take action if they come across any form of discrimination. An example of this might encourage a team member to speak up when they observe another employee making a sexist joke or using words that are not inclusive. This helps foster an environment where it is okay to challenge the status quo and can make employees feel more comfortable challenging oppressive systems or behavior.

Julian Taylor, Employment Lawyer, Julian Taylor HR

Darren Shafae, Founder, Resume Blaze

Prioritize Intersectionality

Companies must prioritize promoting intersectionality in their DEI initiatives this year and beyond. This involves recognizing and addressing the unique experiences and challenges faced by individuals with multiple identities, such as women of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities.

One way to promote intersectionality is through education and training programs for employees and leaders. These programs can provide information and resources on topics such as unconscious bias, microaggressions, and cultural competence, and help build awareness and empathy for the experiences of people with diverse identities.

By prioritizing intersectionality in their DEI initiatives, companies can create more effective and inclusive programs that meet the needs of all employees and foster a safe and fair workplace culture.

Ensure Equal Access and Advancement Across a Company

Develop effective systems and structures to ensure equal access and advancement across a company. This includes creating transparent hiring, promotion, and development policies that are free from bias to promote diversity within the workplace.

DEI leaders should engage in intentional recruitment efforts to attract diverse talent and create professional development plans to help all employees thrive in the workplace. By making these changes, DEI leaders will create a more inclusive environment for everyone in the company.

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Brett Farmiloe is the Founder/CEO and currently, the CHRO of Terkel.io

Tara Furiani, CEO and Host, Not the HR Lady

Scott Orn, Chief Operating Officer, Kruze Consulting

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5 Ways To Develop And Retain Women In Leadership

By Jennifer Colosimo, FranklinCovey

Supportingwomen in their career growth isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s also the strategic thing to do. Companies thrive when they build leadership teams with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and identities, where each member of the team can state with confidence, “I’m a valued member of a winning team doing meaningful work in an environment of trust.”

Research backs up the business value of inclusion efforts. According to the World Economic Forum, organizations leading their geography and industry on measures of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are 25–36% more likely to outperform on profitability, have an up to 20% higher rate of innovation, and see better employee engagement and retention, across all employees, compared to the market average.

Yet we’re in a challenging moment when it comes to women in leadership, particularly women of color. Over the course of the pandemic, millions of women left the workforce across all levels. For many, the responsibility for caring for family members forced them into a painful decision — providing support for loved ones or work.

Now that we’re heading back to something like normal, we’re still failing to give women the support and opportunities they need to grow into leadership positions or stay in them. The result? According to McKinsey and leanin.org’s annual research on women at work, women leaders are switching jobs at the highest rate since the study began eight years ago. McKinsey calls it a “Great Breakup.” For companies that want to avoid their own Great Breakups, it’s time for a relationship overhaul.

How to Support Women at Work — So They’ll Stay

The pandemic was a catalyst for many women to leave work, but the fundamental problems were there all along: workplaces that don’t consider the whole person, fail to make strategic investments in their people, and let unconscious biases shape opportunity. To develop and retain talented women, managers need to focus on the timeless principles upon which high-trust, inclusive cultures are based.

Here are five key things leaders can do right now to begin building a more inclusive, DEI-focused culture to support women (and everyone else, too).

To achieve inclusion in the new world of work, companies need age-old leadership principles

1. Build a culture of trust

When members of a team trust each other, they feel empowered to pursue big goals and grow. To cultivate trust, leaders need to model it. They must communicate clearly and explicitly and create a safe place for everyone to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.

2. Take a whole-person approach

To build an honest, inclusive work culture, leaders need to see each employee as a whole person — including their minds and hearts — and understand that work is one part of a much fuller picture. Then, lead with whole people in mind to create an environment where people want to stay and give their best.

3. Invest in career development and retention programs

When leaders see each employee as a whole person, they’re in a better place to evaluate individual

strengths and cultivate opportunities for growth, whether it’s through education or new roles and responsibilities. As a leader, take time to connect personally with each member of the team, even if it’s just a 30-minute meeting each week, to help them find their own unique paths. Bigger opportunities to connect, like employee resource groups (ERGs), are also powerful ways to help employees feel seen and work together to create a culture that supports diversity.

4. Foster inclusivity

For DEI to be meaningful, every team member needs to feel that they are genuinely valued and respected, encouraged to contribute, and recognized for their efforts. Leaders can build this kind of culture by making room for everyone to participate in meetings, regardless of their communication style or seniority. And they can build systems to publicly recognize a job well done, whether it’s calling out successes in meetings or creating messaging groups to celebrate big wins.

5. Fight biases with clarity

Figuring out our unconscious biases takes work. We have to honestly ask ourselves, what kinds of assumptions do we make about who should fill a role or speak up in a meeting? How do our pre-existing ideas shape who advances? Without recognizing our biases, we can’t make the necessary changes for DEI.

One key step to eliminating unconscious biases is building transparent processes. Be crystal clear about how you measure performance and how advancement happens in your organization. And put it all in writing so the whole team understands how decisions are made and each member can see their own path to advancement.

Creating a Culture That Fosters DEI

When you build a culture of trust and see each individual for their strengths and potential, you create a workplace where women want to stay. And when you show a clear and fair path to growth, your employees will be ready to give their all toward the team’s common goals.

The secret is the same as it’s always been — to build a diverse team, benefit from that diversity, and retain your best people, you need to go back to the fundamentals of principled leadership. It’s how you win the loyalty of women leaders so they’ll grow with you and bring their best to the table.

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Jennifer Colosimo is the President of Enterprise at FranklinCovey, the most trusted leadership company in the world. In her role, she leads FranklinCovey’s strategic planning, sales, marketing, consulting, customer experience, culture, and revenue operations in more than 160 countries.

The Future of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2023

Sponsored by:

The HR Research Institute, powered by HR.com, the world’s largest social network for Human Resources professionals, is a key part of our mandate to inform and educate today’s HR professionals. Over the past three years, the HR Research Institute has produced more than 85 exclusive primary research and state of the industry reports, along with corresponding infographics in many cases, based on the surveys of thousands of HR professionals. Each research report highlights current HR trends, benchmarks, and industry best practices. HR Research Institute Reports and Infographics are available online, and

The Future of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2023

Maintain the momentum of DEIB during times of uncertainty

In light of recent social justice movements, corporations have responded by making bold statements and pledging money and efforts towards diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB).1, 2

Real change toward equity requires more than just diversity programs. It often requires a paradigm shift in the way businesses are run and deep cultural change that can be extremely challenging to achieve. Also, with the growing mobility of people across the globe, DEIB must be viewed through a different lens depending on varying cultural contexts.

To better understand the complex topic of DEIB, HR Research Institute conducted a study entitled, The Future of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2023.

Exclusive Study By The HR Research Institute

Key Findings

● DEIB in most organizations is immature and initiatives are seen as ineffective.

● While HR is responsible for DEIB in the majority of organizations, two-thirds spend just 20% or less of their average workweek on DEIB-related work.

● Organizations aim to build a culture of trust through DEIB initiatives but are hampered by a lack of time and leadership support.

● Organizations increasingly rely on basic workforce data to measure the current state of DEIB.

● Roughly half of the organizations are actively invested in understanding pay equity.

● Under two-fifths of organizations offer DEIBrelated learning and development (L&D) programs to all employees.

● Organizations use specific DEIB initiatives infrequently and rely on benefits to incentivize equity-deserving groups.

● DEIB leaders outperform laggards on several dimensions of prioritizing, measuring, and implementing DEIB.

ineffective (1). Just 6% rate themselves an 8 or above and an overwhelming majority (86%) rate themselves a 6 or below. In fact, more than half (52%) rate themselves very poorly (4 or below).

The poor effectiveness of DEIB initiatives can be tied back to the lack of maturity of the DEIB function in organizations today. Just 6% say DEIB in their organization is at the expert level where it is an integral part of the culture and intrinsically linked to strategic goals of the organization. Just one in ten organizations say they are at the advanced stage where they have a strategic framework and utilize metrics.

More than a third place themselves at the intermediate stage which means they have some DEIB initiatives, but they lack strategic importance and there is no measurement of success. A lack of strategic importance of DEIB is likely to curb investments in the form of time and money and this will have a negative impact on effectiveness.

Are Women and Ethnic/Racial Minorities Represented at Leadership Levels?

For all the talk surrounding DEIB, there are only six Black CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies. This is just 1% of businesses  in 2022.3

Has DEIB Made Progress Over the Last Year?

We asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of DEIB initiatives in their organizations on a 10-point scale from perfectly effective (10) to extremely

Our results indicate that women represent less than 20% of top leadership in one-third of organizations, and another quarter say women represent just 21% to 40% of top leadership. Just one-fifth of organizations are women dominated, with women representing 61% or more of top leadership.

Survey Question: About what percentage of your organization's top leaders identify as women?

Note: this would include C-suite, senior managers, directors, VPs, etc. It would not include mid-level managers.

The underrepresentation of women is overshadowed by the dismal proportion of racial/ ethnic minorities in top leadership positions. A vast majority (73%) say not even 21% of their top leaders are ethnic/racial minorities. In fact, just 13% say ethnic/racial minorities represent 41% or more of their top leadership.

Should HR be Solely in Charge of DEIB?

HR plays quite a pivotal role in DEIB in many organizations. In about half of the organizations, the HR department as a whole (25%) or a specific team or person within the HR department (21%) is primarily responsible for DEIB issues, programs and/or policies. However, in about a quarter of organizations, the responsibility falls on the DEIB function, either the Chief of DEIB (14%) or the DEIB department (12%).

When asked about the connection between HR and the DEIB function, a third say there is no DEIB department, function or representative in their organization. This means that DEIB is either non-existent or is taken on as an additional responsibility by HR professionals.

Is DEIB Today All Talk and No Action?

Roughly a quarter stress DEIB in the talent acquisition process (25%), consistently

communicate the importance of DEIB throughout the organization (23%) or include DEIB-related training during onboarding (22%) to a high or very high degree. Even fewer say they are embedding the topic of DEIB in all or most talent development materials (12%), have a formal budget allocated to closing pay gaps (13%) or take action on DEIB analytics (12%).

Survey Question: To what degree does your organization use the following initiatives?

Stress DEIB in the talent acquisition process

Suppor t employee resource groups (ERGs)

Include DEIB-related training during onboarding

Include DEIB in the succession management process

Have a formal budget allocated to closing pay gaps

Take action on DEIB analytics

Embed the topic of DEIB in all or most talent-development materials

Consistently communicate the impor tance of DEIB throughout the organization

Implement DEIB-specific EAPs and wellness programs

Analyze turnover using a DEIB lens

Do Organizations Understand and Prioritize Equitable Pay?

Remedying pay equity gaps first requires understanding it. Only half of the organizations say they are actively investing in understanding the pay equity gap in their business/industry to a high (34%) or very high (20%) extent. Slightly fewer are invested to a moderate (38%) or low (8%) extent.

Measuring gaps in pay among employees of comparable jobs (81%) or within the same pay bands (79%) are popular techniques since they are straightforward ways to uncover pay inequity. However, pay gaps also arise from inequity in pay progressions and pay for performance. This means that not just the recruitment team must be trained in DEIB to hire employees at equitable pay, but training must also be given to supervisors and managers who are in charge of performance management and pay progression recommendations.

To learn more about how organizations can improve their DEIB practices and for key takeaways and recommendations on the topic, check out the full report.

Notes

1 Ben & Jerry’s. Silence is not an option. Retrieved from https:// www.benjerry.com/about-us/media-center/dismantle-whitesupremacy

2 Barrabi, T. (2020, June 5). Nike pledges $40 million to support the black community after George Floyd’s death. Fox Business. Retrieved from https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/nikepledges-40-million-support-black-community

3 Giacomazzo, B. (2022, May 30). The Fortune 500 list has a ‘record number’ of black CEOs - but there’s still only 6 of them. AfroTech. Retrieved from https://afrotech.com/fortune-500black-ceos

Your Guide to Understanding Climate Surveys and Gaining Insight Into Climate’s Effect on DEIB

Patrick McNiel, PhD, Affirmity

Basic demographic data can only tell you so much about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in your organization. Greater insights await with climate surveys and in this article, Affirmity’s Principal Business Consultant, Patrick McNiel, PhD, explores how to get the most out of this powerful analytical tool.

Climate survey methodology lets you ‘take the temperature’ of your organization. There are two main groups of climate study that organizations typically use:

● Molar climate studies focus on the overall, cross-organizational sentiment in your work environment and its effect on employees.

● Focused climate studies can instead concentrate on specific areas of concern such as safety, ethics, innovation—or diversity and inclusion.

Both are useful when measuring DEIB, and because climates are always subject to change, you should conduct surveys at least annually and iterate upon them. When designing your climate study, your diversity and inclusion environment can be divided into four main areas:

● Diversity Climates

● Inclusion Climates

● Prerequisite Climates (i.e. prerequisites for strong and sustainable D&I climates)

● Support Climates (i.e. further climates that complement or undermine positive D&I climates)

Each of these areas have subclimates—which can be measured with questions such as those shown below:

1. Diversity Subclimates

i) Representation

Is diversity visible to your people across job groups and levels, and do they think of the company as diverse?

Example question prompt: “There are a number of prominent women at the company.”

ii) Support and Intentionality

Do your people believe that leadership, their peers, and HR want diversity, and that all functions are pushing for it and are supportive of it?

Example question prompt: “The company leadership is committed to facilitating diversity.”

iii) Programming and Implementation

Do your people interpret your policies, procedures, and processes as fair to different groups and free from bias?

Example question prompt: “The company has policies and procedures that fairly account for the needs of diverse employees.”

iv) Group dynamics

Are people of all types treated with respect, consideration, and fairness?

Example question prompt: “People here seem to be at ease with others who have different backgrounds than their own.”

2. Inclusion Subclimates

i) Belonging

Is there a sense of camaraderie, do people like each other, and do they make each other feel like they belong?

Example question prompt: “People here feel like they’re an integral part of their workgroups.”

ii) Authenticity

Are your people able to be themselves, or are they only able to “belong” if they change how they naturally act or present themselves?

Example question prompt: “People here encourage each other to present themselves the way they are.”

3. Prerequisite Subclimates i) Justice Climate

A negative justice climate can cancel out any positive diversity and inclusion signals your organization otherwise has, so it’s an important prerequisite climate.

Example question prompts: for the subcomponents of a Justice Climate include:

● Distributive: “Compensation/rewards/ resources here are distributed fairly.”

● Procedural: “At the company, HR systems

and processes are applied equitably to all employees.”

● Interpersonal: “Harassment at the company isn’t tolerated.”

● Informational: “Leadership here is candid in its communications with employees.”

ii) Trust Climate

If your people feel they can rely on one another, that they have each other’s backs, and that everyone around them acts with integrity, you have a positive trust climate.

Without this prerequisite, it’s considerably more difficult to be inclusive and to have confidence in the intentions and actions of leadership in relation to DEIB.

Example question prompt: “Leadership at the company is good, which helps our future success.”

iii) Molar Climate

A generalized negative perception of the effect your organization has on the well-being of its members can undermine your efforts in other climate areas. In DEIB terms, it can cause a fixation on inequities and unfairness, cause your people to question your motives, and create resistance or opposition to DEIB programs.

4. Support Climates

It can be helpful to cultivate the following complementary climates:

● Openness to experience: Are your people (and your organization) keen to explore new ideas, examine information, and engage with efforts at positive change?

● Psychological safety climate: Are your people constructive when mistakes are made, do they feel safe taking reasonable risks, and are they willing to seek support?

● Support climate: Do employees feel they have the resources, support, and information needed to work effectively?

Final Thoughts on Climate Surveys

While we recommend seeking expert assistance in developing your investigations, understanding the climates described above will be the first step on the path to using climates to better understand and nurture DEIB as it exists in your organization today. Once you have a complete study, you can then set about rebalancing resources or working to leverage the positive climates you’ve already built in areas that require attention.

If you’re ready to begin creating your own D&I climate investigations, contact us at info@affirmity. com to talk to an expert today.

Patrick McNiel, PhD, is a principal business consultant for Affirmity. Dr. McNiel advises clients on issues related to workforce measurement and statistical analysis, diversity and inclusion, OFCCP and EEOC compliance, and pay equity. Dr. McNiel has over ten years of experience as a generalist in the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and has focused on employee selection and assessment for most of his career.

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The Top 5 Recruitment Trends for 2023

Katie Coleman, Circa

In the past several years we’ve seen a significant shift in the job market and labor force, and predictions for 2023 suggest that the Great Resignation will extend into the foreseeable future. In fact, the unemployment rate is projected to reach almost 4.5 percent in 2023 and about 900,000 jobs could be lost in the first half of the year.

There are several factors that explain this projected state of unemployment, including a tight US labor market, understaffing, expected declining participation, and an aging workforce. On top of that, the recession is projected to be short and the demand for workers may increase again in the second half of 2023. Once the US economy starts growing again, severe labor shortages could soon reappear. Here are five important trends recruitment professionals should keep in mind as the year progresses.

1. The emergence of employer branding

According to Talent Lyft, the employer brand is the position of a company’s reputation and popularity from a potential employee’s perspective and describes the company’s values. Employer branding does not only speak to potential employees, but also existing ones.

Strong employer branding results in higherquality talent and more satisfied employees, as well as longer employee retention. In fact, 83% of employers say that employer branding plays a significant role in their ability to hire talent and can positively contribute to a candidate’s interview experience. On the retention side, 83% of employees say they would leave their current positions if they were to receive an offer from a company with a better reputation.

This is where recruitment marketing plays a key role — in other words, applying marketing tactics to showcase your employer brand in places such as your career site, email campaigns, social media, and any other avenue that increases brand awareness.

2. Data-driven recruiting

Talent organizations that don’t embrace the power of data in 2023 (and beyond) will continue to have difficulty sourcing talent, nurturing job seekers, and hiring top candidates in an efficient, predictable manner.

With the mass amounts of data companies now have access to, recruiters and hiring teams no longer need to guess whether or not their hiring methods are effective. Instead, they can use software and analytics tools to inform their hiring decisions and create functional hiring plans. Datadriven recruiting also allows companies to identify which recruiting avenues bring in the most qualified candidates, determine the most effective stages of the hiring process, and make any necessary adjustments to the recruiting process that may be falling short.

3. Relying on AI-powered recruitment

Automating recruitment helps improve the process from end to end. It simplifies and adds consistency to recruitment, improves the productivity of the HR team and saves time by eliminating manual processes, and optimizes data collection. Additionally, it can help to identify more qualified candidates quickly.

For example, Circa’s AI recruitment tool sources from a database of 169 million candidates to instantly provide you with 300 candidates ranked based on how well their skills match your job requirements. Our Diversity Sourcing allows you to recruit authentically, remove job description bias, and amplify your recruiting outreach.

4. The rise of the proactive recruiter

Proactive recruiting is all about sourcing and attracting qualified candidates before hiring demand is critical. This includes utilizing a variety of avenues like job boards, career fairs, local community-based organizations, universities and

colleges, and more to ensure you are reaching diverse candidates. This allows companies to establish relationships and create interest around employment opportunities even before positions become available.

After, expanding the avenues for outreach to candidates, a few steps that are key in the proactive recruitment process include creating an ideal candidate profile, engaging with your ideal candidates in a personalized manner, nurturing a conversation with potential candidates by staying in touch, and keeping them informed of the recruitment process. When the time comes to convert, the process will already be well in the works thanks to proactive recruiting.

5. A developed DEI strategy

Long before job seekers apply or connect with a company, they are educating themselves on the organization’s inclusivity and diversity (or lack thereof). Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has grown in importance not only for job seekers, but also for employee satisfaction and retention.

DEI has also evolved significantly in its definition. For example, employers and recruitment teams should go beyond race and gender in their DEI initiatives. Other forms of diversity include culture, age, disability, sexual identity, and more. And with that, employers should be sure that every stage of the employee lifecycle (job postings, sourcing, hiring, onboarding, etc.) is focused around a candidates qualifications and skill sets rather than any facets of their identity.

It’s important to make sure you are expanding your reach with different avenues, including leveraging state workforce agencies (such as Local Veterans Employment Representative (LVER), Disabled Veteran Outreach Program (DVOP), Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR), One-Stop Career Centers, State Job Banks), communitybased organizations, and diverse colleges and universities.

Reach out to us today to see how Circa can help accelerate your success towards building more diverse, innovative, and high-performing teams.

is the Product Marketing Manager

She works to produce webinars and write articles on diversity and other employment-related topics to guide employers, employees and job seekers in their professional endeavors.

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Katie Coleman

at Circa.

Onboarding New Employees in Today’s World

Carol Cohen, Infopro Learning

I

mproving the onboarding process is a common concern among many companies. Often this is based on a low retention rate or maybe a drawnout time to proficiency. Both of these outcomes are wonderful business metrics, but unless we examine the changes in the current workforce, success is far off.

COVID impacted all of us in many ways, some very surprising, and some we just realize now years later. That period has come to be known as the Era of the Great Resignation. Turnover rates shot up across the nation. In January of 2023, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 5.9 million separations. This is compared to 3.5 million in December 2019. According to new benchmarking data from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost per hire was nearly $4,700. But many employers estimate the total cost to hire a new employee can be three to four times the position’s salary. Knowing that replacing employees can cost this amount, this phenomenon places a huge financial burden on many companies. In some cases, it dramatically impacts production and even the ability to stay in business.

One big change has to do with the way employees look at their jobs and their employers. Their expectations have changed, and this is not just based on salary. This is based on workforce experience. At first, COVID felt like a big slowdown machine. It seemed everything had come to a stop. In reality, the pandemic turned out to be an accelerator of sorts. Companies that had been putting off consolidating their software systems, digitizing their training, or supporting a hybrid workforce found themselves forced to begin the transformation. Employees, for the most part, began to work from home. If their company didn’t provide them with support for making that transition, their children’s school did. Many parents were thrown into working with their children on the computer for their lessons. Many towns provided the children with tablets to use. In a way, the children were modeling the behavior of the hybrid worker. According to the US Census Bureau, between 2019 and 2021, the number of people working from home tripled to about 9 million. There is an expectation that the number will grow to 36 million by 2025. Globally, almost 20% of companies have gone fully remote.

Some of us have worked from a remote home office for decades, but for almost everyone, the work-from-home experience was new and seemed very daunting. In reality, they realized that it actually enabled them to work better, eliminating long, arduous commute times and those endless social interruptions that occur in the office. Additionally, our technologies supported our online communication through video conferencing. Employees began to realize they could live anywhere, be productive, and reap the financial and emotional rewards of a great job well done. Therefore, it has become the norm that a new hire comes to a job and expects flexibility in the work environment, expects to be skilled, has a succession path to grow, and hopes to be nurtured with a supportive network of supportive colleagues.

So, why would anyone ever hold a boot camp where they firehose information at a new hire or possibly give them hours and hours of reading to do when they get hired? Up until a decade or so ago, the thinking was that the new hire came with the exact skills required and fulfilled the profile of the perfect employee. That meant the only thing missing was

information, and many people with good intentions loaded the firehose and doused the new hire with this requisite information. Over time, a more student-centered approach to training was adopted. By focusing more on the learner, it changed the nature of training to look at the context and understand what you want that learner to be able to do, to say, to show, or to find differently than they do now. So, the transition here was from a contentdriven straining exercise to a learner-centric training exercise. In many ways, the collision of student centricity with a disruptive pandemic has brought us to this great day.

At Infopro Learning, we approach every training intervention by establishing a success plan. This is essentially Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model, but our focus flips it to look at levels three and four first. That means we’re looking at behavior change and business results. Now, if you think about hiring for potential and passion and recognizing that the knowledge and skill required for the job can be taught, the onboarding process becomes easier. Our approach is to look at it as people who need people and learners who need context.

One key element of an effective onboarding program is to establish a weekly huddle to just check-in. What that did was provide a network of peers, the class of some month and year, providing a kind of bond with those people so they didn’t feel alone. This eliminated that moment that we have all experienced when the hubbub of the first day ends and the new hire does not quite know what to do next.

There are some very good reasons to offer the huddle with rolling admission so those in the first week are with those in their sixth week. This practice provides confidence to those in their first week and empowerment to those who know the ropes a bit. It is also good to mix roles, so managers can be with individual contributors if possible. Most companies support a collaborative culture, and this practice emphasizes that. In parallel, more formal training was offered both in synchronous sessions and in asynchronous modules online. That insinuates the training into their context. If they only were going to do something once a year, then we would introduce

that to them and provide a job aid they could quickly find when that time was right. If it was something they had to know every day, then that required a different training intervention, but the reality was we were looking at the context, so they understood why they were learning about something.

This means they could grow in their job. It means they understood why they were there. It aligns with the mission of the company. And guess what? They want to stay. There’s your retention rate. They grow in their jobs and there’s your succession plan. They quickly understand what they need to be doing and that’s your time to proficiency. So, thinking about your success plan at the front end, considering your new hires as people who need context, and then hiring them for potential and passion enables you to unlock that potential and build a successful team.

Carol Cohen is Vice President of Strategy and Sales Enablement for Infopro Learning leading both the strategy and sales training practices. She is the author of the book REAL Selling, a Simple Solution to a Complex Problem. Her focus has been on success planning and learning strategy for today’s learners. In addition, her passion to enable sales success has empowered her to develop a new sales approach and associated customizable training modules.

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Why Learning to Pronounce Your Colleagues’ Names Will Build a More Inclusive Workplace

Firstly, let’s acknowledge that our names are a crucial part of our identity. They shape our sense of self, our family and cultural background, and our individuality. When someone mispronounces our name, it can be a jarring experience that leaves us feeling uncomfortable, disrespected, and unseen.

Unfortunately, name mispronunciation is all too common in the workplace. According to a recent Namecoach study, 74% of workers have experienced struggles with name mispronunciation at work. These experiences can create a sense of mistrust, discomfort, and even lead to employee turnover.

Namecoach

In recruitment, it’s especially important to make a good first impression with candidates. Name mispronunciation can quickly sour a candidate’s experience, leaving them feeling unwelcome and undervalued. By taking the time to learn and respect their preferred name pronunciation, you’re not only showing them respect but also communicating that your organization prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The same principles apply to current employees. By taking the time to learn and recognize each other’s names, you’re building a more connected and inclusive workplace. When employees feel a sense of belonging, they’re more likely to stay in the organization and contribute to its success.

This is where Namecoach comes in. Namecoach is a tool that helps everyone at your organization learn each other’s names and build stronger relationships. By utilizing Namecoach’s email integrations, you can access a comprehensive

database of accurate audio name pronunciations, saving you time and hassle. With Namecoach, you can ensure that everyone in your organization feels valued and respected.

In conclusion, proper name pronunciation is an essential aspect of creating a more inclusive and respectful workplace. By taking the time to learn and respect each other’s names, you’re building stronger relationships, boosting employee retention, and ultimately contributing to your organization’s success. With tools like Namecoach, it’s easier than ever to make this a priority in your workplace.

To learn more about how Namecoach can benefit your organization, visit www.name-coach.com

Making a world of a difference, one name at a time.

Namecoach provides a simple and effective soltuon to the common problem of name mispronunciation. Accurate audio name pronunciations are seamlessly integrated with your online tools to easily learn and remember how to say themperfectly.

Start off every interaction on the right foot. Promote a sense of belonging across your organization. Ensure prospective employees feel respected from your first interaction. Help build stronger relationships between colleagues. Avoid the time and hassle of searching for inaccurate name pronunciations.

name-coach.com

Why Measuring Job Competencies is Critical for Employee Retention

Employees are leaving their organizations in record numbers. Discover why measuring job competencies is key in retaining critical talent.

Nadine Butler, SHL

Organizations globally are grappling with the challenge of both finding new talent and retaining existing employees. We are all familiar now with ‘The Great Resignation’, more recently termed ‘The Great Reassessment’, with up to 4.5 million Americans quitting their jobs every month and similar numbers of resignations challenging organizations in Europe and Asia too. In a Global Talent Trends Report for 2022 released by LinkedIn, they revealed that 41% of the global workforce have said that they are likely to consider leaving their jobs within the next 12 months—if they have not already.

Employee retention is more critical than ever. Organizations need to find more effective ways to ensure that employees stay with the organization and are engaged and productive. This is where job competencies play an important role. Job competencies are commonly understood as sets of behaviors, values, motivators, skills, and abilities that define the requirements to perform in a role or organization successfully.

One way to ensure that employees are engaged, perform, and ultimately remain with the company is

to establish that they fit well into the competencies required by the role they are in and that they have a clear development and career path for their future in the organization based on their natural strengths and competency potential.

How can measuring competencies help in retaining your employees?

1. Focused, individualized development

Employees often rank the opportunity to learn and develop in their roles as among the top drivers of both attraction and retention. To engage and retain people, particularly your ambitious high potentials and top talent, employees want to know about and have a clear plan for their individual development path.

Never block individual development—by enabling employees to keep growing and learning, one wins loyalty and increased retention. Also, do not just focus development on your top talent or seniorlevel employees. Not everyone needs a promotion to feel like they are developing and growing in their careers, but every single employee does need to have a growth path of some kind.

Employees need to also know what to grow!

Common mistake organizations make is starting development programs that are very generic and not focused on each individual; or starting programs without a clear view of where the competency gaps are and how their employees’ bench is against what is out there in the market. Development becomes so much easier if an organization and each individual have an objective view of their weaknesses and strengths that can be leveraged, by incorporating a job competency measurement to include behavior, motivation, and natural ability.

With a clear picture of how each employee fits to the key competencies of both their current role and future roles, the organization is then able to identify and fill gaps with focused competency development initiatives, mentoring, coaching, and job rotation or exposure opportunities.

2. Individualized career paths

Career paths have become increasingly fragmented and unclear for both organizations and employees in recent years, despite their relation to employee retention. Employees want more flexibility, transparency, and control over their careers and want to be able to see and understand what the next opportunities are for them in the organization. Without a view of where they could go in their career with a company, employees are likely to plateau in their current role and start looking for new opportunities, often outside of their organization.

of the company. It further allows the organization to uncover hidden potential by getting a view of what latent talent is available in the business already and how this can match business priorities.

LinkedIn research has found that where organizations have a high level of internal mobility opportunities, employees stay at these companies twice as long. Without a clear vision of what your employees’ aspirations and competencies are, which has been made increasingly more difficult to visualize with remote working, organizations are unable to adequately engage with each employee to plan out potential vertical or lateral career paths for them based on their individual needs and the organization’s needs.

To engage and retain people, particularly your ambitious high potentials and top talent, employees want to know about and have a clear plan for their individual development path.

3. Role performance and engagement

Fitting people into the right role in the organization is critical for employees to ultimately perform in their jobs. Many organizations are fairly good at matching people to role competencies when recruiting new employees, but often do not have a good and objective view of what their current employees look like in terms of competency fit on either an individual or group level.

Understanding employee fit with key job competencies is also a great opportunity for an organization to tap into the aspirations of its people and use their aspirations and strengths for the good

Poor alignment and fit to the role typically lead to lower overall engagement, motivation, and commitment. The employees are likely to underperform and eventually move on to greener pastures where they fit the requirements better. Job competencies help employees in the role understand what ‘good’ or even ‘great’ looks like

and provide clear standards of excellence of what they need to achieve and perform. Having this clarity can lead to increased job satisfaction and motivation. Employees are likely to do much better in their jobs, be more engaged and happier, and far likelier to stay with the organization for longer.

Tips for using job competencies to retain talent

● Competency frameworks used to define roles should be rooted in psychological theory and research and developed to a rigorous and comprehensive standard. They need to be future-focused and relevant to your organization.

● Ensure that your organization uses valid and objective ways to measure employees against the job competencies.

● Implement flexible and innovative technology to quickly visualize competency fit across your organization enabling you to respond proactively to the talent retention challenge.

● Act on the insights gained through focused individual and group competency development initiatives and career path planning.

● Use approaches to understand competency fit throughout the talent lifecycle from hiring and onboarding to development, performance management, and succession planning.

● Communicate with employees! Employees increasingly wish to own their development and careers and a lack of transparency and communication on plans and initiatives will lead to lower engagement and unwanted turnover.

Not all employee turnover is bad for the business of course and not every employee who leaves your organization is unsatisfied with their development and career path. However, high turnover is costly, time-consuming, and detrimental to employee morale. By effectively adopting some of the above strategies and tips to ensure a fit of employees to the job competencies of today and tomorrow’s job, organizations are likely to see an improved employee retention rate.

SHL’s Talent Management solution, Mobilize, delivers organization-wide actionable people analytics—helping you understand if your employees fit with the job competencies required for now and in the future.

Book a demo with us today and let us help you retain critical talent in your organization!

Nadine Butler is a registered I/O Psychologist with over 15 years’ experience as a senior specialist talent advisor helping organizations across diverse industries achieve business value through assessment-led talent interventions. She has consulted in areas ranging from assessment and development projects across organizational levels, work and job analysis, designing competency models, providing integrated assessment feedback, to advising clients on assessment solutions to assist in talent management, acquisition and mobility. In her current position as a Senior Talent Management Specialist for the EMEA region, she partners with both internal teams and C-Level Executives, Functional Heads and HR leaders to help identify, advise on and accelerate opportunity within the Talent Management space. As the key Talent Management expert in the region, she assists SHL’s clients with impactful solutions to help them identify, develop and mobilize their people with unrivalled insight and predictive power. Would

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How Employee Network Groups Can Help Further Your DEI Efforts

5 steps any company can follow to create an ENG program

By Alfredo Mendez, Robert Half

Many employees look for fellowship and community in the workplace as well as in their private lives. This urge to connect not only explains the gravitational pull of the watercooler (or its Slack channel equivalents) but also a trend toward more structured forms of workplace community known as employee network groups (ENGs).

These networks, also called employee or business resource groups (ERGs/BRGs) or affinity groups, focus on historically underrepresented communities and bring together colleagues with shared interests for meetings and events. ENGs can be safe spaces where employees can find support, advocacy and allyship.

While large companies like Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce have heightened support and resources to bolster their ENGs, more midsize and

small businesses are creating intentional pockets of community among people.

Why ENGs Are Good for Business

Let’s review some ways ENGs can build connections among employees and help drive long-term change, no matter the size of the company. Included are examples of how these groups are furthering diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at Robert Half:

● ENGs support each element of your DEI program. Diversity? Companies looking to promote women into leadership positions might benefit from an ENG like Robert Half’s GWEN, which champions and amplifies women’s perspectives. Equity? There’s strength in numbers, enabling ENGs to act as powerful advocates for

leadership development and equal opportunities. Inclusion? It’s much easier to be your true self at work if you can draw strength and inspiration from colleagues with shared identities or life experiences.

● ENGs can educate your entire workforce. ENGs are safe spaces, but they’re not silos. Groups often organize meetings and events for all employees, helping to break down social and cultural barriers. By recognizing heritage months, like Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May or Pride Month in June, ENGs can lead the way with increasing representation and celebrating the accomplishments, contributions and histories of historically underrepresented communities.

● ENGs bring global workforces together. Employees from traditionally underserved groups may have different experiences depending on the country and culture they work in. Especially at larger companies, digital technology can make it easier to bring people together as part of a global ENG, reducing the potential for employee isolation and providing a forum for dispersed workers to discuss any challenges they face.

● ENGs help to identify future leaders. An ENG leader planning events such as a Black History Month speaker series has plenty on their plate! They must set out a vision and strategy, build the program, manage the budget and coordinate with parties ranging from caterers to guest speakers. These are complex, skill-building responsibilities that can boost the employee’s visibility across the organization, showcase how they are candidates for promotion and make them more effective in their regular duties.

drives or coordinate trash pick-ups. Such initiatives allow workers to hone their collaboration and problem-solving skills in cross-organizational teams and can boost your company’s reputation in the community.

A Five-Step Plan for Creating Employee Network Groups

According to a Robert Half survey, ENGs exist in around 46% of large companies and 33% of small businesses. The discrepancy based on company size is not a huge surprise, as ENGs are typically volunteer-led and might lack a sustained budget or administrative support.

However, with small businesses making up over 99.9% of businesses in the United States, the collective effort of organizations starting ENGs at the start could greatly enhance diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across businesses, regions and industries.

Here are five steps any company can follow to create an ENG program.

1. Survey Your Workforce to Gauge Interest

interested in joining each potential group. Make clear that ENG involvement is entirely voluntary. Employees who feel pressured into joining an ENG are unlikely to be energized about its mission.

2. Identify Your ENG Champions

As well as pin-pointing potential ENG members, your surveys and meetings should help you identify ENG champions — employees who are genuinely passionate about the project and want to shape its development. Encourage these evangelists to spread the word since their enthusiasm for the program is more likely to inspire fellow employees than promotional efforts from human resources or senior management. You can also ask them to join the launch team, but don’t pressure anyone into committing more time than their workload allows.

3. Secure Executive Sponsors

● ENGs raise morale and foster team spirit. Events like Pride Month tend to grab the headlines, but ENGs can also bring people together to serve in shelters for individuals experiencing homelessness, host blood

ENGs are employee-led, so engaging your workforce in the process from day zero is key. Surveys, team meetings, or town hall-style meetings allow workers to suggest ideas for ENGs and should also give you an idea of how many people would be

To maximize executive buy-in, try to garner leadership support by finding an executive sponsor for each ENG, as an example. These high-level champions give the group increased credibility and visibility across the organization and can function as advocates to ensure the ENG gets the resources it needs. Although sponsors tend to be members of the community represented by the ENG, they can also be allies, for whom the main criteria are a genuine belief in the group’s mission and a willingness to commit some time to drive that mission forward.

4. Formalize ENG Mission Statements

The membership of your ENGs will change as people come and go in your organization. By adopting formal mission statements or group charters, each ENG ensures that progress toward its short, medium and long-term goals survives any changes in group leadership and personnel. Encourage ENG leaders to delegate tasks and act as mentors

to younger, less experienced group members. This will help ease transition pains if those leaders leave the company.

5. Spread the Good News!

Because the goal of every ENG is to foster inclusion, going the extra mile to reach all potential members is crucial to the group’s success. Circulate invitations widely to avoid giving the impression that you’re “targeting”

demographics for recruitment — not everyone with a Spanish last name identifies as Hispanic, and who’s to say a Black employee wouldn’t be more interested in joining your LGBTQIA+ group than your BIPOC one?

Focus on the medium as well as the message: Word-of-mouth promotion is less likely to reach remote workers, so push communications across all your digital channels and ensure that any kick-off events are accessible to remote attendees.

Whether a company is large, small or somewhere in between, the success of ENGs is an example of how the signs marked “do the right thing” and “gain competitive advantage” often point along the same road. By giving workers a support structure to be their true selves at work, you are also giving them a springboard to reach their maximum levels of performance and productivity.

The article first appeared on the Robert Half blog

Alfredo Mendez is the Vice President, Experience and Inclusion at Robert Half In this role, he sets strategies and programs that support a culture of growth and inclusion for over 14,000 employees globally. Mendez was previously at AECOM, overseeing global talent, experience and DEI efforts. He’s held leadership roles at Raytheon, Levi Strauss and Warner Bros., and has consulted with Fortune 100 companies. Mendez is actively involved with the Association for Latino Professionals for America and is a board member with the National Hispanic Corporate Council and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. He is also an advisory board member for HR.com and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (I4CP).

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For Your Organization

Certified HR professionals help companies avoid risk by understanding compliance, laws, and regulations to properly manage your workforce.

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Why Corporate Training Subscriptions Are A Bad Investment: A Talent Leader’s Perspective

Embrace a more effective approach to learning and

development

By Keri Barnett-Howell, Mission Cloud

The subscription model of training is dead. If you are a talent leader and your inbox is anything like mine, you get constant spam from companies peddling subscription-based training. Only $20 a month per employee, and access to thousands of self-paced training modules! All the training you could ever need, in one easy purchase! Why wouldn’t you buy something that makes your life that much easier?

Trust me: don’t go down this road. Three main reasons to never buy a corporate license for training:

● It’s expensive as all heck. Most subscriptionbased training companies offer tiered pricing depending on how many employees you sign up, but it can be deceptively cheap. Let’s say you have 500 employees and LinkedIn Learning offers you $10/month per employee. Holy cow, all that content for only $10 a month? Unfortunately, $10 x 500 employees x 12 months = $60,000. That’s a big chunk of change and will burn through even a large training budget.

● There’s too much content. Yep, much like the million appetizers at a steakhouse, it’s all unnecessary. What you actually need for your

company gets buried under a mountain of mediocre content. (Just bring out the ribeye! Enough of these limp Brussels sprouts.) As a training leader, you’ll have to watch thousands of videos to find the training that fits your needs, or assign modules at random and hope something sticks.

● There’s also, hilariously, too little content Every company has so much variety in what training they need, that no one platform can contain it all. Your sales team needs completely different training than your product engineering team, which means you’ll have to spend time and money creating training in-house or go shopping for even more training on the marketplace. So that $60k? That’s just the starting point of what you’ll have to spend.

So here’s what you - the talent leader at your small company - will need to do. First, ignore everyone who whines that they want a license to the learning equivalent of a puppy mill. Really, Shareef? You want me to spend $500 so you can spend 30 minutes searching for the perfect course through “A Cloud Guru” and then giving up? Not a chance - because you know what? It’s my job, as the talent leader, to find that perfect course for you. So the question you have to ask every single person who comes to you wanting training is: why?

Let me give you an example: everyone at my company is required to take an AWS certification examination. I am not a technical person, so when I first started at Mission Cloud and people came and asked for study materials, I gave them access to the corporate license my predecessor had purchased for Linux Academy (which has since been swallowed by A Cloud Guru). I didn’t know any better, and it certainly made my life easier! After a while, though, I started to get requests for certification study materials outside of Linux Academy.

Why? I asked those engineers. Isn’t the corporate license giving you everything you need? As it turns out - no, not even close. The study materials themselves got outdated quickly, the practice exams didn’t accurately reflect the actual exam, and - cruciallynot everyone learns in the same way. On these large platforms, information is almost always packaged similarly for every course. By only offering one study platform, I was excluding and ignoring everyone who could not absorb information that way.

Here’s what I did: I decided to look at as many different study materials for the foundational level certification as I could and assess for myself what the best materials were. I polled everyone at the company who had taken a certification course and asked what their favorites were. After a couple of months, I had a wonderfully comprehensive list of the best courses and practice exams out there - most of which retailed for under $50 - and gave my team options so they could use what worked best for them. (I also canceled the Linux Academy subscription!)

Now, when Shareef comes to me and says he wants a personal subscription to A Cloud Guru, I can ask: why? Maybe he really needs it for long-term study of a particular technical subject important for his role, and I’m happy to fund his request. Or maybe he wants to study for an AWS certification and I can tell him to purchase something cheaper and better. No matter what, I’m no longer locked into providing only one source of training.

If you are, as I hope, nodding vigorously along as you read and mentally canceling all your corporate subscriptions, the fly in the ointment may be making itself known. My clever example of certification training showed the amount of work it took to curate content for one subject out of the universe of training the team might need. Most talent departments operate pretty leanly, and you may not have the

bandwidth or the staff to curate content for every possible subject someone on your team might need.

But here is where all of your money savings pay off. Once you are not locked into one learning provider, you can afford to be generous with the team. Use the broader company as an extension of you: let people explore! Send them to different courses, let them purchase training one time, and follow up to find out how valuable the training was! I can’t tell you how many trainings I’ve purchased that have been dudsbut heck, who cares, it was worth knowing not to ever go to that provider/instructor/company again.

Once you go down this road, you’ll also be surprised by how repetitive learning needs are. Even in tech, the same topics will come up over and over again, and you’ll be able to develop a solid list of recommended courses and instructors. You’ll also find out where the gaps are - what types of training external vendors don’t do very well, and that’s where you can focus your time on building internal training.

Here is my point: as talent leaders, we are never the subject matter experts in all things that our teams need to learn. But we are the experts in training. We know what good training looks like, and we definitely know what bad training looks like. It’s up to us to make smart choices about where to invest our time and our money.

Keri Barnett-Howell is the Director of Talent Development at Mission Cloud where she leads employee growth initiatives and strategies to help every Mission team member achieve their professional goals. She has created training and development programs for all career levels, with a particular focus on early career and career transitions. Keri learned how to teach as an English instructor in Peace Corps China, after which she achieved a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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Hiring In A Neurodiverse World

Autism and the science of game-based assessments

By Dr. Colin Willis, HireVue

Thirty-five percent of 18-year-olds with autism attend college, but a staggering 85% of college graduates with autism are under-employed or unemployed. Over one million people with autism in the United States will reach adulthood in the next decade, most of whom will be searching for work. Hiring processes consistently overlook autistic candidates, favoring neurotypical candidates who are better prepared to navigate the unspoken social rules implicit in the hiring process. The sheer volume of candidates who are overlooked by hiring processes is one reason it’s critical that companies start paying more attention to attracting, hiring, and

retaining people on the autism spectrum. In addition to the moral imperative for hiring equity, college-educated autistic candidates are as qualified as their neurotypical peers and there’s evidence that autistic employees contribute above-average attention to detail, dependability, and focus to their roles.

My team’s research, Examining the Use of GBAs for Hiring Autistic Job Seekers, found that autistic candidates scored functionally the same as neurotypical candidates in game-based hiring assessments.

Why Is This Important?

Inclusion starts with hiring; talent decision-makers are the gatekeepers of opportunity and by adopting practices that are grounded in evidence, these leaders have a chance to truly diversify their workforce. This research is all the more significant as we see greater numbers of employers emphasizing skills over resumes by incorporating pre-hire assessments into their hiring. Based on this research, it appears that games are one way to design a process that is more inclusive - particularly for groups, like autistic individuals, who are regularly screened out by traditional hiring methods.

For instance, it is well-documented that organizations that do not mention disabilities in their diversity initiatives are less likely to attract disabled talent and job boards themselves may discourage candidates if their designs are not accessible to people with disabilities.

A Changing Hiring Landscape

HireVue’s 2023 Global Trends Report found that employers are rethinking not just how they’re hiring,

but who. Nearly half (48%) of the leaders surveyed are adopting a skills-first approach to talent acquisition, forgoing educational and past work experience unless they’re actually relevant to the job at hand. Not only have these methods widened the talent pool, they’ve also raised the quality of that pool by attracting a more diverse workforce. In fact,  61% said they’re now targeting neurodiverse candidates. Additionally, 32% say they have adopted game-based assessments in the past year to up their talent game.

Why Study Games?

The research team focused on games because the gameplay has been considered in multiple contexts in the autism literature. Most frequently, research has focused on games to deliver early treatment or skill development in autistic children or, recently, to deliver traditional diagnostic assessments earlier to autistic children. Game-like smartphone applications have also been explored as a method for supporting autistic workers by delivering instructions to them in real-time. In short, games appear to be a promising medium for delivering content to autistic individuals in various conditions and applications.

Furthermore, novel assessments can be an opportunity for organizations to signal that they are forward-thinking in their selection process. Game-based assessments not only possess features that make them more engaging and accessible but they can also be taken at any place and at any time, as they are delivered by either computer or smartphone, making them highly accommodating relative to traditional screening methods, such as interviews.

As the proportion of autistic job seekers grows, the results of this study suggest that measuring cognition via game-based assessments can fairly

assess autistic and neurotypical candidates and give organizations a head start when hiring in a neurodiverse world.

Conclusion

At HireVue, we acknowledge the impact of work and believe that every person deserves an equal opportunity to thrive when searching for a new job. We’ve seen firsthand how dismantling biases in the hiring process can change the lives of candidates and we hope that more people will join us on this journey to democratize hiring in 2022.

Dr. Colin Willis is a Senior IO Psychologist at HireVue , the global leader in video interviewing, assessments, and text-enabled recruiting tools.

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How Can A Workplace Begin To Look At Inclusion Through The Lens Of Intersectionality

Moving beyond labels

By Dr. Liz Wilson, Include Inc.

For years, we have promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), but only recently have we examined it through the lens of intersectionality. In a workplace rife with buzzwords, you may ask whether we really need another. The answer is a resounding “yes!”

Intersectionality finally acknowledges that labels are not enough. Each of us is made

up of more than a single identity, and we all experience the world differently.

How Labels Interfere with Intersectionality

Traditionally, organizations have approached inclusivity by focusing on singular identities such as gender, race, LGBTQIA+, or disability. These labels create the illusion of simplicity. A

single-pronged approach feels tidy and manageable.

As a result, today’s legislation and compliance measures are driven by labels. Typically, we boil our DEI efforts down to the labels we find most relevant, focusing on more prominent ones such as gender or ethnicity. Yet, all the while, we still know the range of inequity is far broader.

This fractured approach to inclusion leads organizations to prioritize their “favorite” underrepresented groups. In one business, gender surfaces thanks to a sudden turnover of women in senior leadership roles; in another, legislation shifts attention to individuals with disabilities; and in a third, passionate employees draw attention to LGBTQIA+ concerns.

The problem with this label-driven approach to inclusion is its exclusivity. Instead of including everyone, the approach focuses on a few and excludes the rest.

Focusing on one or two labels is unproductive, but focusing on every label is impossible. Creating inclusion for everyone in your organization based on every possible label amounts to an unmanageable workload. Our fixation with labels is the reason we are still miles away from achieving inclusion and equity.

How a Workplace Can Begin to Look at Inclusion through the Lens of Intersectionality

Intersectionality meets resistance because it appears messy. Still, diversity cannot be addressed through any other means. This is because a label cannot adequately address the inclusion needs of any one person.

-focused intervention to increase the representation of women in the workforce falls short when addressing any individual woman. It will not account for the lived

experience of a woman who is also part of an underrepresented ethnic minority, has a physical disability, is a veteran, is gay, or any combination of these and other possibilities.

Label-driven intervention does not address the inclusion of the whole person, only one small element of the person. This, by definition, is exclusion. We cannot ask people to bring their “authentic selves to work” when we create an inclusive environment that accepts only part of who they are.

I am not just a woman. I am a woman who is a mother, an immigrant, a cultural minority, and an abuse survivor. I am a woman who has a chronic illness and mental health needs.

The Benefits of Intersectionality in Workplace Inclusion Programs

The lens of intersectionality does not see differences as boxes to tick. It accounts for everyone’s needs and ensures that everyone thrives. As an approach to diversity, intersectionality makes

inclusion relevant to everyone. When there is something to be gained by everyone, everyone gets on board. That’s Organizational Change Management 101.

In addition, intersectionality simplifies our approach to DEI. Rather than complicating diversity and inclusion interventions, intersectionality consolidates label-focused objectives into everyday needs for all people and all identities. This way of looking at inclusion reduces duplicated efforts, wasted resources, and employee fatigue. It ensures practical solutions that meet everyone’s needs, aligns diversity efforts with one common goal, and sheds light on the fractured policies allowing needs to go unmet.

We are all more than the product of a single identity. A unique combination of characteristics makes us who we are and creates how we experience the world. We will only achieve inclusion when our efforts to decrease discrimination can account for a whole person.

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Dr. Liz Wilson — Behavioral Scientist, Organizational Transformation Expert, and Founder of Include Inc. Originally from Australia and now based in the United States, Dr. Liz is well known for her authentic, honest, and pragmatic approach to everything she does. This includes her simple yet powerful, Include Change Method that has achieved amazing results for her clients throughout her 25+ year career.

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