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HR in 2020: A COVID-19 Timeline in Music
Turbocharging your HR impact with a data-driven culture
Digital transformation has caused an onslaught of data that organizations now collect and have access to. With the hope of improving employee experience, streamlining operations, and creating better strategies, HR leaders have invested in new technologies and new analytical capabilities. Yet for many organizations, a strong, data-driven culture remains elusive and often intuition and gut feeling continue to be the basis for a lot of the important decision-making.
To tackle this, UNLEASH is delighted to bring you this session, now on-demand, in partnership with Perceptyx where pioneering HR leaders discuss how to create and sustain a data-driven culture that unlocks the full potential of people analytics now – and in the future.
What makes an organization more data-driven?
When we talk about organizations being data-driven, on the surface it can seem abstract and intangible, especially when we then loop this in with the nuance of culture too. For many, a data-driven culture, because of these reasons, can remain elusive.
According to HBR, ”the biggest obstacles to creating data-based businesses aren’t technical; they’re cultural.”
In this webinar, Sue Lam, Global Head of People Analytics, Strategy, and Culture at The Coca-Cola Company delved into how they’re creating a data-driven culture, very much grounded and concreted in strategy and outcomes. She shared with the audience that Coca-Cola’s purpose is to “Refresh the world and make a difference.” To do this, she explained, employees need an environment and experience that inspires them and allows them to do work that inspires their lives so that they can contribute to the world. But how do they do this?
Sue explained that they have set up a people strategy that meets the business strategy and then they measure this. They look at things like leadership behavioral information that can help inform procedures and policies on knowing what areas of focus are more impactful. Knowing where the business wants to go and measure the current status enables them to drive initiatives for change.
Debby McIsaac, Global Head, Employee Engagement and Social Impact at HP had a similar story to share. She explained that at HP, they have a clear commitment to their people strategy and how that can inform the business strategy and what the goals are. She shared that they’ve made great strides in managing the natural tendencies of leadership to want to move fast. “When they are informed by what we really know is happening, it allows us to interrogate reality… we’re able to take the right signals from the data.”
And Dr. Brett M. Wells, Director of People Analytics at Perceptyx added that what separates good from great comes from these types of cultures that Debby and Sue shared. Moreover, data insights can provide leaders with choices – providing them knowledge about different trade-offs based on their decisions. There’s also particular strength Brett shared, in having the employee voice at the center of decision-making, so that actions can be based on that feedback and thus closing the feedback loop.
Breaking down silos
Brett shared with the audience and panelists that organizations have normally leveraged annual or bi-annual surveys to collect a lot of their people data. However, since the pandemic, many organizations have realized this is not frequent enough listening for actionable insights.
He explained that 4-5 organizations that have 2500+ employees are augmenting these types of surveys and adding more feedback opportunities. They are realizing that they need to be able to chart out the moments that are likely to impact outcomes the business is concerned about – like the Great Resignation. This can enable a design-thinking approach that can lead to breaking down silos in the business.
Sue and Debby both shared their experiences of how they are working to break down silos, by creating uniform mindsets towards data. At HP, for example, Debby shared that their HP Data “Rules of the Garage” mandate provides guidelines for managing and using data across the business. This has enabled, Debby explained, a connection with other areas of the business through their uniform use and perspectives around data.
The panel also considered why HR leaders, whilst not necessarily data-people, have some intrinsic skills and qualities that can make them great users and advocates for a data-driven culture. “So many things in their toolkit enables them to handle data,” Debby shared. The group touched on qualities like the capacity to listen and how data can amplify the ability of HR leaders to listen in an objective and curious mode to employees. Additional qualities were things like having a growth mindset, as well as the ability of many HR leaders to communicate the emotional side of a decision and not just the logical one.
How to set up your ecosystem and mitigate data privacy concerns
The panel moved on to share their unique ecosystems and what they believe works well for starting out in making a successful data-driven culture. Sue garnered that HR leaders need to start with strategy and the business problem first. “Whichever tech you choose should be in service of the problem. Define requirements ahead of looking for a solution.” Both Debby and Brett agreed, acknowledging that having one source of truth in where data is housed is a big differentiator to success levels.
The panel also shared some great, actionable advice around data privacy concerns.
Clearly, this is a topic of deep concern and interest, given, for example, some GDPR penalties have been hefty enough to make global headlines. For example, in 2020, H&M was fined €35 million for tracking its employees and building detailed profiles about them. One key pointer the panel provided was to only measure things if there’s an action plan to act on those results. If organizations know what they are intending to do with that information can be a good indicator of knowing what to measure or not.
Listen to this on-demand session to learn more about how to create and sustain a data-driven culture to unlock the full potential of people analytics in HR.
To find out more visit: www.perceptyx.com/
Northwestern Mutual’s talent transformation: Navigating market shifts
Why watch on demand?
- Get the inside story of this recent talent transformation journey
- Discover the impact of a new talent strategy on Northwestern Mutual’s growing workforce of over 7,500 people
- Hear first hand how to take a different approach to attracting, developing and retaining talent in a rapidly evolving environment
- Explore how to assess where your talent strategy is in terms of present market shifts and headwinds – and what you’ll need to tackle next
- What you need to prioritize when it comes to the changing expectations of the employee-employer relationship – from improved user experience and technology shifts, to greater flexibility and new ways of working
The realities of talent transformation
The last two years have been marked by sudden and significant changes – particularly in the talent acquisition space. And we now know that these unexpected swings are likely to become part of business as usual. But it’s business-critical that the company has maintained its commitment to its people. So, how can talent teams transform to face the unexpected in the future?
UNLEASH and our friends at Beamery are delighted to bring this on-demand webinar session with Northwestern Mutual, telling you all about their talent transformation. They shared how they are framing their recruitment conversations around these market challenges and how to bring the rest of your business along on the journey to becoming a more responsive and more agile talent organization that’s ready for anything!
The talent market headwinds
Kelly Culler is currently VP, Global Talent Acquisition and Human Resources Business Partner for Northwestern Mutual. She holds nearly two decades of HR experience, within the areas of HR strategy, organizational development, performance management, leadership coaching and, talent acquisition.
Kelly’s spread of HR skills and background in recruiting has clearly given her amazing levers to lean on to completely upend and transform HR, and hiring specifically, within a sector and organization that is oftentimes cast with the assertion of being outdated and stale. Unlike many of its rivals in the financial sector, Northwestern Mutual has taken a progressive approach with its talent strategy.
The organization’s deep-seated cultural roots were certainly one of the big challenges that Kelly and her team have had to overcome, she shared with us. Being one of the greatest wealth management companies on the planet – the legacy and history was something that needed to remain a cornerstone, but also be totally upended in order to be attractive and competitive and enticing to new talent, whilst also retaining current employees. These industry challenges, as well as the struggles within the financial market itself, have created a melting pot for pain with recruiters in the sector and their respective workforces.
Kelly also shared, as many will be able to relate, the overnight challenges created by the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns meant their workforce at Northwestern, which was not used to working from home due to their high-touch, high-relationship oriented culture, was thrown into an entirely unknown and untested territory of ways of working.
At breaking point?
We heard from Kelly during this session, a story that many industries and talent leaders will recognize. Come June 2020, Northwestern Mutual began a phased approach back to the office. They had seen trends of hyper-productivity whilst employees were working virtually but knew that this had downfalls too when it came to burnout and their workforce’s wellbeing and mental health. This “back to campus” operation demonstrated the need to find resilience and balance in the management of the workforce.
Kelly also recognized there was a clear shift in the recruitment conversations they were having. Candidates were now overtly asking, “What is your stance on a flexible work model?”. These shifts in expectations, coupled with the shock of a substantial number of early retirements – boomers choosing other roads because the pandemic challenged their thinking and what they want to do long term – as well as concern over the skills of the future and how to obtain and sustain these, led to a drastic rethink about how to get ahead of some of its competitive threats.
A combined approach to talent and recruitment
Here are some of the strategies that Kelly shared with our audience that led to them bettering their talent experience at Northwestern Mutual, in turn helping their recruitment efforts:
- Investment in the digitization of the employee experience.
- It has settled on a flexible work model that reflects a few days in, a few days out, enabling individuals to operate how they need to, to get the job done.
- As 60% of its workforce has +20 years of tenure, and it has 150 retirees per year, they have created detailed succession plans, that include upskilling and cross-training.
- They have hosted engagement events to get people back into the office and to regain cultural affiliation and a sense of purpose.
- They have done a lot of work and analysis on DE&I and created a strategy on how to provide the right opportunities to the right talent.
- They are putting a lot of emphasis on internal promotions and encouraging employees and line managers to talk about those next career steps. This has been solidified in their newly created internal mobility tool, which they call their “talent market navigator.” This is a platform that sits on top of LMS. All of the jobs within the organization sit in there so they’re searchable. It also includes assessments for internal employees and planning tools that help them to think about their next career move. Previously, employees would have to have a conversation with someone that’s in the know about the skills that match certain roles, but the tool completely democratizes the opportunities and removes the fear, providing an accessible and easy platform.
- The organization has also appreciated the emphasis on total human wellness and the importance of a purposeful culture, realising that to retain top talent, they need to be providing a purpose-driven company for employees to feel valued and like they are working towards a bigger goal. To solve this, Northwestern Mutual has reflected on being able to communicate and drilling down more successfully on the noble purpose they already had in play, “to save Americans from financial anxiety.”
Attracting and engaging new talent
Northwestern Mutual has undergone a significant project to find, attract and convert new talent. One key piece of advice that Kelly shared with the audience, is the biggest breakthrough and tangible results they had from any of their talent projects, was their overhaul of the approach to sourcing. She explained that creating specialized sourcing talent enabled the fastest lift, for the most acute problems and they saw rapid progress. It also enabled them to make great waves in their bid to hire more diverse talent, as talent “hunters” have the ability to match diversity with skills. Creating a sourcing model based on diversity and critical skills, encompassing new sourcing talent, as well as tools that provided the means to intersect location and talent pools and the information for where to look for the best-fit talent provided this new talent with the means to expand Northwestern Mutual’s talent pools.
Kelly shared, that this approach, coupled with a new CRM that provides more stickiness; an approach that was more multi-channel for their recruitment marketing; and the addition of candidate stories to their career sites, has meant their marketing results and candidate experience has accelerated.
They are reinforcing their progress in the HR and recruitment teams by using surveys and performance analysis to measure the outcomes of their new tools and strategies, measuring whether they made the right priorities. They use measurements like hiring manager sentiment, candidate sentiment, close rates, and other top metrics and lagging indicators. These provide Kelly and her team a continuous cycle of review and calibration, garnering true insights into employee and candidate feedback from these metrics.
“If you don’t prioritize, you’ll end up being a mile wide and an inch deep, and you’re gonna make a lot of progress on a lot of little things, but you might not get the outcomes you want.”
Kelly Culler, VP, Global Talent Acquisition and Human Resources Business Partner, Northwestern Mutual
If you want to hear more about Kelly and Northwestern Mutual’s amazing transformation journey, watch our on-demand video now. And if you’d like to find out more about putting talent transformation at the heart of your business, check out www.beamery.com
Harnessing employee voices to prevent attrition and power engagement
The days of beanbags and pool tables being enough to recruit and retain the best talent are long gone. The past 18+ months have given us some enormous shifts in the way people and organizations operate, especially in recruitment.
Now, as we all strive to understand how we can win the war for talent, the employee’s voice matters more than ever. But you need to listen actively and continuously, far above and beyond the traditional employee survey. And more than that, organizations need to connect the dots with this information about their people and apply it to talent pipelines, career development, skills and training, benefits and rewards – the entire employee lifecycle!
Following one of the biggest HR tech acquisitions of the last year, Patrick Cournoyer, Workday Product Director for Peakon Grow, led this webinar to unpack the power of this newly extended brand. Learn how the solutions can help you, plus how to maximize the value of your investment if you’re an existing (or potential!) customer. He is joined by Jon Kennard, Editorial Content Manager at UNLEASH.
Watch the on-demand webinar today, or read on for some of the key takeaways from this session.
Shift your focus beyond the immediate future
“Change is absolutely the new normal.”
Patrick Cournoyer, Workday Product Director, Peakon Grow
Patrick attests that the current pace of change, accelerated by the pandemic but visible even pre-pandemic, is unlikely to slow for the foreseeable future. “With the change we’ve had in the past year, some of us are probably feeling a bit tired. But change is not stopping – 2022 is right down the road, and there is going to be more change coming. We need to find a way to handle and action change in a way that is not going to be disruptive to our business.”
The challenges of the past 18 months are not likely to go away anytime soon; instead, they are likely to accelerate as uncertainty continues and organizations become more adapted to the “new normal.” Returning to the pre-pandemic status quo no longer seems possible or even desirable. Organizations need to learn from their challenges, figure out how to solve them, and incorporate their learnings into their future strategies. In short, organizations must shift their approach from firefighting to developing a future-focused process that accommodates regular evolutions, planning for the next 2-3 years instead of the next 2-3 months.
Identify the signs of coming attrition early enough to nip it in the bud
“Attrition is happening, and there will be more to come.”
Patrick Cournoyer, Workday Product Director, Peakon Grow
Attrition is a significant threat to nearly every organization. In a poll taken during the live webinar that asked about the biggest challenges facing participants’ companies today, preventing unwanted attrition was “the runaway leader,” beating trending topics including hybrid work, wellbeing, and DE&I.
According to Patrick, while this comes as no surprise, there are ways to circumvent coming attrition. Workday’s comprehensive research, which comprises 185 million responses from 160 countries, has uncovered the key signs for trouble on the talent horizon. “We can look at levers from organizations from 6 months ago and see what their scoring trends and habits were as an aggregate group, and we can see if there are current scoring behaviors that are clear indicators that more attrition is on its way.”
The point of identification for employees who plan to leave the company shifted from 6 months to 11 months during the pandemic. But while employees may stay longer than they would have in the past, those additional months should be considered “borrowed time.” If nothing is done for employees who show early signs of disengagement, you are only offsetting future problems; active listening is the key to turning this threat around. A sophisticated listening solution is often the most effective and reliable way to gauge your potential future attrition – and mend it before it becomes a reality.
Turn the “Great Resignation” into the “Great Regeneration” with active listening
“We have this amazing opportunity in front of us to set our path for the future by having our employees be at the center of everything we do.”
Patrick Cournoyer, Workday Product Director, Peakon Grow
Patrick laid out some grim statistics: replacing employees ranges in cost from 50-250% of their salary, and 27% of current employees show similar scoring behaviors to recently resigned employees. The attrition rates for most organizations polled present an intense challenge for both HR teams and the company’s bottom line.
But there is still time to rectify. While the “Great Resignation” obviously comes with myriad difficulties, it also presents unique opportunities for intelligent organizations. With new technologies, HR leaders are increasingly empowered to identify and understand the kaleidoscope of issues that impact the employee experience and, consequently, retention and productivity.
The key to creating the “Great Regeneration” is active listening. Employees want to have their voices heard and know that their wants and needs are being addressed. Even if their specific concerns cannot immediately be fixed, recognizing them goes a long way. A lack of response from the organization often makes employees less likely to participate in the future, and reduced participation is one of the critical indicators of coming attrition.
According to Patrick, the way to resolve infeasible employee concerns is through open communication: “Transparency and vulnerability have never been more of a strength. Identify actionable areas and communicate that you have heard their other concerns and will address them when possible.”
Listen to the full webinar to catch all of Patrick’s insights and learn how to utilize technology to prevent attrition and power engagement in the new talent landscape.
Workday’s privacy statement can be found here: https://www.workday.com/en-us/privacy.html