Month: October 2018

The theory of Natural Selection proposed by Charles Darwin, and the AI robot apocalypse shaped by mass media, often hang at the back of a human’s mind.

Ken Goldberg, professor of engineering at University of California, Berkeley, and also the co-writer of Cognitive Diversity: AI & The Future of Work, suggests the threat of AI is unwarranted. With the help of HR leaders, AI can empower a workforce and improve the employee experience.

AI has the potential to discard mundane routines such as data entry, meetings scheduling, clerical paperwork and email filtering so employees can invest their energy on tasks they enjoy which emphasise originality, curiosity, imagination, human communication and many other traits that AI doesn’t possess so far.

For senior HR professionals, it is very likely that AI can optimise talent management. On talent acquisition, AI can create resume screening systems that analyse applicants’ strengths and weaknesses, and provide unbiased insights. On organisation transformation and talent planning, not only can AI track organisational cues and critical performance, but it can also strategically team up the workforce.

Professor Goldberg emphasises the importance of cognitive diversity in the report: “By building diverse teams through a combination of workers and machines, the number of new cognitive skills will be multiplied, increasing the ability to turn a problem around, look at it from different directions and deploy different skills to find creative solutions.

Artificial intelligence such as google maps and search engines has already slowly crept into our lives, and we have embraced it.

Since this technological advancement is constantly under development and is not ready to be fully deployed, the widespread agitation of AI taking over jobs will only hinder its growth. HR leaders hold the key to shift the workforce’s attitude towards AI.

 

Private employers in states and cities across the U.S. including California, New York City, Philadelphia, and Massachusetts were recently banned from asking candidates about their current and past salaries in order to set their pay for a new job. In theory, this provides someone who is currently underpaid an opportunity to break the cycle of underpayment and be paid fairly for their next role.

Although I wish this solved the issue around equity and pay gaps forever, it’s more just a step in the right direction.

Eliminating that salary history question from a company’s recruiting process attempts to solve only the problem of initial pay equity, which is a complicated, immense issue latent in bias and prejudice. When you peel back the layers, the salary history question is just one of many things that perpetuate systemic racism and prejudice, plaguing the financial success and professional development of those affected by it.

How do we know this? Let’s take a look at the premise of Equal Pay Day, which symbolizes how far into a year a woman must work to reach the pay of white men from the year before. April 10 was Equal Pay Day for white women, while August 7 was equal payday for black women. For Native American women, equal pay day is September 27, and for Latina women it’s November 1.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

The difference in dates to reach parity is staggering and underscores how hard we have to work.

While the conversation around salary history is important and the legislation related to it is critical to equity, the real issue at play isn’t the question of salary history–it’s equity history. The recently passed legislation doesn’t change bias and prejudice.

Women, especially women of color, are up against a lot. The deeply entrenched, unconscious biases that permeate society contribute, every day, to inequitable power structures that hold us back. These biases influence what happens on a micro level, at every organization. They impact who is deemed a leader, considered intelligent–who “belongs.”

The good news is equity doesn’t have to be a far-reaching, distant concept. There are actions that everyone can take to make equity and fairness more attainable and make a meaningful difference.

CREATE INTENTIONAL INCLUSION PRACTICES IN YOUR COMPANY
Creating processes and inclusive frameworks are necessary for companies to make sustainable and ongoing changes that can break those patterns of bias and begin to normalize equity.

At Zendesk, we make sure inclusivity efforts are threaded through our global recruiting practices, how employees are promoted, our formalized Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), various professional development opportunities, and manager training.

We encourage our employees, at a more personal level, to use our unconscious bias training programs to begin to adjust automatic patterns of thought with 2.5-hour in-person learning sessions.

Related: How Massachusetts’s new pay law will help close the gender wage gap (and how it won’t)

We also examine our promotion criteria by implementing a transparent career development program we developed called RISE, which examines Readiness, Influence/Impact, Scope, and Excellence, to make sure our framework is based on standardized merit. Having this in place has fostered fairness, mitigated bias, and helps leaders frame career mobility for employees in a tangible way, leading to higher engagement.

We also developed five different internal mentorship/sponsorship programs to help cultivate communities and opportunities for underrepresented groups. In the U.S., a significant percentage of the company participates in these opportunities–from individual contributors to C-level staff–which we believe is related to our employees telling us in our latest employee engagement survey that they believe our company is an inclusive place to work. This is because as important as it is for compensation and career trajectories to be fair, the work environment itself also needs to be built for everyone to win.

DON’T WAIT FOR THE RULES TO CHANGE–CHANGE THE RULES
On a personal level, when you are asked for prior salary information or to provide a preferred range during the interview process, you are still in the driver’s seat. You do not have to answer point blank. Instead, shift the conversation to the work with something like: “I’d actually still like to fully understand the company’s overall compensation strategy.”

Ask yourself questions such as: Is their compensation stock heavy? Bonus heavy? Does the company have the benefits you value most? How often do they evaluate performance and compensation? Who would your peers be? What is the scope of the role? Provide a range after you’ve done due diligence, and not based on the compensation leap you’d like to make.

Related: How to dodge questions about your salary history on job interviews

At an organizational level, companies that are not located where salary history legislation exists should take action anyway. From a recruitment perspective, ceasing to ask about salary history should not be a big deal. It does force hiring managers to calibrate more thoughtfully before giving someone an offer, and requires paying a lot more attention to the researched market rate than legacy company pay practices.

At Zendesk, we were methodical about communicating why not to ask about past salaries to all of our recruiters (“Asking for salary history can propagate the wage gap and here’s why that matters”) and to the entire company at a town hall meeting, so that the new way of thinking stuck.

This sets you up to be able to investigate other palpable ways to make pay parity a reality and inclusivity a best practice. This year at Zendesk, for instance, we conducted our first-ever annual internal pay audit across gender globally and racially in the U.S. We then made compensation adjustments based on that audit. After we’d made the adjustments, we took time to explain why it was important that we do this at our companywide town hall, where the news was generally well-received by both those affected and not affected.

TAKE A HOLISTIC LOOK TO ENSURE PAY EQUITY AND ACCELERATE CHANGE
If you are a C-level or senior leader at your company, commit to using your agency and influence to create opportunities and challenge the status quo. And if you are not, consider ways to raise this important issue to your leadership and advocate for the change you’d like to see. Systemic biases will only keep disparities thriving across industries for as long as we allow it. If we commit to the measures outlined above, we can change lives, break cycles of inequity, and create a workforce where everyone belongs and succeeds.

Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/90236197/not-asking-for-salary-history-wont-ensure-workers-will-be-paid-fairly

According to one industry report, U.S. companies spent over $90 billion dollars on training and development activities in 2017, a year-over-year increase of 32.5 %. While many experts emphasize the importance and benefits of employee development — a more competitive workforce, increased employee retention, and higher employee engagement — critics point to a painful lack of results from these investments. Ultimately, there is truth in both perspectives. Training is useful at times but often fails, especially when it is used to address problems that it can’t actually solve.

Many well-intended leaders view training as a panacea to obvious learning opportunities or behavioral problems. For example, several months ago, a global financial services company asked me to design a workshop to help their employees be less bureaucratic and more entrepreneurial. Their goal was to train people to stop waiting around for their bosses’ approval, and instead, feel empowered to make decisions on their own. They hoped, as an outcome, decisions would be made faster. Though the company seemed eager to invest, a training program was not the right way to introduce the new behavior they wanted their employees to learn.

Training can be a powerful medium when there is proof that the root cause of the learning need is an undeveloped skill or a knowledge deficit. For those situations, a well-designed program with customized content, relevant case material, skill building practice, and a final measurement of skill acquisition, works great. But, in the case of this organization, a lack of skills had very little to do with their problem. After asking leaders in the organization why they felt the need for training, we discovered the root causes of their problem had more to do with:

• Ineffective decision-making processes that failed to clarify which leaders and groups owned which decisions
• Narrowly distributed authority, concentrated at the top of the organization
• No measurable expectations that employees make decisions
• No technologies to quickly move information to those who needed it to make decisions

Given these systemic issues, it’s unlikely a training program would have had a productive, or sustainable outcome. Worse, it could have backfired, making management look out of touch.

Learning is a consequence of thinking, not teaching. It happens when people reflect on and choose a new behavior. But if the work environment doesn’t support that behavior, a well-trained employee won’t make a difference. Here are three conditions needed to ensure a training solution sticks.

1. Internal systems support the newly desired behavior. Spotting unwanted behavior is certainly a clue that something needs to change. But the origins of that unwanted behavior may not be a lack of skill. Individual behaviors in an organization are influenced by many factors, like: how clearly managers establish, communicate, and stick to priorities, what the culture values and reinforces, how performance is measured and rewarded, or how many levels of hierarchy there are. These all play a role in shaping employee behaviors. In the case above, people weren’t behaving in a disempowered way because they didn’t know better. The company’s decision-making processes forbid them from behaving any other way. Multiple levels of approval were required for even tactical decisions. Access to basic information was limited to high-ranking managers. The culture reinforced asking permission for everything. Unless those issues were addressed, a workshop would prove useless.

2. There is commitment to change. Any thorough organizational assessment will not only define the skills employees need to develop, it will also reveal the conditions required to reinforce and sustain those skills once a training solution is implemented. Just because an organization recognizes the factors driving unwanted behavior, doesn’t mean they’re open to changing them. When I raised the obvious concerns with the organization above, I got the classic response, “Yes, yes, of course we know those issues aren’t helping, but we think if we can get the workshop going, we’ll build momentum and then get to those later.” This is usually code for, “It’s never going to happen.” If an organization isn’t willing to address the causes of a problem, a training will not yield its intended benefit.

3. The training solution directly serves strategic priorities. When an organization deploys a new strategy — like launching a new market or product — training can play a critical role in equipping people with the skills and knowledge they need to help that strategy succeed. But when a training initiative has no discernible purpose or end goal, the risk of failure is raised. For example, one of my clients rolled out a company-wide mindfulness workshop. When I asked a few employees what they thought, they said, “It was interesting. At least it got me two hours away from my cubicle.” When I asked the sponsoring executive to explain her thought process behind the training, she said, “Our employee engagement data indicated our people are feeling stressed and overworked, so I thought it would be a nice perk to help them focus and reduce tension.” But when I asked her what was causing the stress, her answer was less definitive: “I don’t really know, but most of the negative data came from Millennials and they complain about being overworked. Plus, they like this kind of stuff.” She believed her training solution had strategic relevance because it linked to a vital employee metric. But evaluations indicated that, though employees found the training “interesting,” it didn’t actually reduce their stress. There are a myriad of reasons why the workload could have been causing employees stress. Therefore, this manager’s energy would have been better directed at trying to determine those reasons in her specific department, and addressing them accordingly — despite her good intentions.

If you are going to invest millions of dollars into company training, be confident it is addressing a strategic learning need. Further, be sure your organization can and will sustain new skills and knowledge by addressing the broader factors that may threaten their success. If you aren’t confident in these conditions, don’t spend the money.

Training can be a powerful medium when there is proof that the root cause of the learning need is an undeveloped skill or a knowledge deficit. For those situations, a well-designed program with customized content, relevant case material, skill building practice, and a final measurement of skill acquisition, works great. But, in the case of this organization, a lack of skills had very little to do with their problem. After asking leaders in the organization why they felt the need for training, we discovered the root causes of their problem had more to do with:

Ineffective decision-making processes that failed to clarify which leaders and groups owned which decisions
Narrowly distributed authority, concentrated at the top of the organization
No measurable expectations that employees make decisions
No technologies to quickly move information to those who needed it to make decisions
Given these systemic issues, it’s unlikely a training program would have had a productive, or sustainable outcome. Worse, it could have backfired, making management look out of touch.

Learning is a consequence of thinking, not teaching. It happens when people reflect on and choose a new behavior. But if the work environment doesn’t support that behavior, a well-trained employee won’t make a difference. Here are three conditions needed to ensure a training solution sticks.

1. Internal systems support the newly desired behavior. Spotting unwanted behavior is certainly a clue that something needs to change. But the origins of that unwanted behavior may not be a lack of skill. Individual behaviors in an organization are influenced by many factors, like: how clearly managers establish, communicate, and stick to priorities, what the culture values and reinforces, how performance is measured and rewarded, or how many levels of hierarchy there are. These all play a role in shaping employee behaviors. In the case above, people weren’t behaving in a disempowered way because they didn’t know better. The company’s decision-making processes forbid them from behaving any other way. Multiple levels of approval were required for even tactical decisions. Access to basic information was limited to high-ranking managers. The culture reinforced asking permission for everything. Unless those issues were addressed, a workshop would prove useless.

2. There is commitment to change. Any thorough organizational assessment will not only define the skills employees need to develop, it will also reveal the conditions required to reinforce and sustain those skills once a training solution is implemented. Just because an organization recognizes the factors driving unwanted behavior, doesn’t mean they’re open to changing them. When I raised the obvious concerns with the organization above, I got the classic response, “Yes, yes, of course we know those issues aren’t helping, but we think if we can get the workshop going, we’ll build momentum and then get to those later.” This is usually code for, “It’s never going to happen.” If an organization isn’t willing to address the causes of a problem, a training will not yield its intended benefit.

3. The training solution directly serves strategic priorities. When an organization deploys a new strategy — like launching a new market or product — training can play a critical role in equipping people with the skills and knowledge they need to help that strategy succeed. But when a training initiative has no discernible purpose or end goal, the risk of failure is raised. For example, one of my clients rolled out a company-wide mindfulness workshop. When I asked a few employees what they thought, they said, “It was interesting. At least it got me two hours away from my cubicle.” When I asked the sponsoring executive to explain her thought process behind the training, she said, “Our employee engagement data indicated our people are feeling stressed and overworked, so I thought it would be a nice perk to help them focus and reduce tension.” But when I asked her what was causing the stress, her answer was less definitive: “I don’t really know, but most of the negative data came from Millennials and they complain about being overworked. Plus, they like this kind of stuff.” She believed her training solution had strategic relevance because it linked to a vital employee metric. But evaluations indicated that, though employees found the training “interesting,” it didn’t actually reduce their stress. There are a myriad of reasons why the workload could have been causing employees stress. Therefore, this manager’s energy would have been better directed at trying to determine those reasons in her specific department, and addressing them accordingly — despite her good intentions.

If you are going to invest millions of dollars into company training, be confident it is addressing a strategic learning need. Further, be sure your organization can and will sustain new skills and knowledge by addressing the broader factors that may threaten their success. If you aren’t confident in these conditions, don’t spend the money.

Source:https://hbr.org/2018/10/when-companies-should-invest-in-training-their-employees-and-when-they-shouldnt

Every employer is expected to create employee compensation and benefits plan for their employees. It’s a vital part of the employer-employee relationship that can never be neglected. These compensation and benefits do vary in different organizations. However, there are mandatory and necessary benefits that must be in place. They include social security contributions, worker’s compensation insurance, medical insurance, unemployment insurance, etc.

As you design employee benefits package template, the interest of the employee must be paramount. There should be an understanding that the benefits offered to employees are vital components when it comes to the total compensation costs of the employee. On that basis, employers can learn how to create employee benefits that meet the need of the employee and employer objectives. Below are tips on how to create employee compensation and benefits.

1. Find out the organizations budget for compensation and benefits
Every organization must have a budget that accommodates all its expenses. It is practically impossible to create employee compensation and benefits outside the budget of the organization. Hence, when creating employee benefits, the first thing you must do is to know the allocated budget for compensation and benefits. This knowledge gives you an idea of templates to design moderate benefit plans for the team. In the absence of a budget for employee’ benefits, there is a need for the employer to obtain a quote to help carry-out key benefit functions.

2. Create a pay philosophy
The pay philosophy helps in determining what your employee compensation plan should look like. In creating this philosophy, the factors taken into consideration is not just the amount to pay. Others component factors such as overall benefits, incentives, performance bonus, free medical check-up, free lunch, and others. All these factors are considered to come up with the total plan the organization has for its employees. As these philosophies are drafted, care must be taken so as to ensure that the needs of the employer, the employee and the clients are met.

3. Communicate with the employees
As organizations create employee compensation and benefits, they also pass the plan across to the employees. The communication of the created benefit plan to the employees is also a critical part of the process. Organizations employ fantastic strategies that will ensure the actual understanding and acceptance of the package by the employees. This is because unless the employees’ buy-in willingly to the benefit plans, the effort of the organization is wasted. Along with the communication, should also be a feedback mechanism. This is to help the employers know the employees’ opinion towards the plan created.

4. Monitor the effectiveness
Employers are required to set up a periodic evaluation process to help monitor the effectiveness of the plan created. There is a need to examine this plan so as to determine whether they are meeting the original objectives or not. There are tendencies that the effectiveness of the designed plan can be affected by various business changes. So, when there is a need to make adjustments to the plan, it should be done immediately. This may seem like a post-creating step. However, it is essential in maintaining the plan created.

Just a generation ago, working for the same employer for decades made sense. The timeline went something like this: Employer hired employee, employee got raises, employee maybe got promoted a time or two, employee enjoyed stability.

These days, work life has a different rhythm.

Not only are businesses dealing with unforeseen disruptions, but traditional corporate ladders have disintegrated. Consequently, workers often find themselves without a clear way to rise through the ranks because the ranks aren’t well-defined or aren’t inherently part of the culture. Is it any wonder, then, that half of employees feel like they can’t advance within their current companies?

Of course, many analysts suggest advancement does not rest solely in the hands of the employer. Today, workers have a responsibility to take charge of their career route by being proactive, smart, and creative.

Installing The Rungs Of Your Career Ladder

Although many organizational leaders have a plan for role succession, many of them never share that plan with their team members. At the same time, employees don’t always tell their managers what they want in terms of advancement. Imagine how much better it would be if both parties — the employer and the worker — made their wishes known. Two-way communication would create clearer routes to new positions.

That’s why the onus is on you, as an employee, to get the ball rolling. At the end of the day, employers will focus on business objectives and filling seats. While that could get you the raise you desire, you may end up filling a position that is completely misaligned with your career goals and interests.

“Bottom-up career pathing, on the other hand, places a greater emphasis on the employees’ career goals,” says Linda Ginac, CEO of TalentGuard, a talent management software-as-a-service provider. “Paired with succession planning, this method lets managers and HR professionals tailor their employees’ objectives to those of the company, not the other way around.” This approach works because it gives everyone a holistic view of how to retain good workers while meeting corporate objectives.

Career pathing, in which employees chart out possible vertical and lateral moves at their company, allows individuals to take charge and construct their own ladders rather than waiting for an employer to notice their desires to achieve more. Getting started is fairly straightforward, as long as you’re willing to take some calculated leaps of faith.

1. Adopt a “possibility” mindset.

The employment landscape is rapidly changing, thanks to everything from outsourcing to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and chatbots. Find out all you can about your industry and investigate departments in your company that are new to you — maybe operations, IT, marketing, sales, or customer service. Then, project a few steps ahead: How can you be an asset to the business? What are the possibilities for you based on gaps you see?

Take time to think about your findings. Hash out some ideas with friendly contacts in your network. When you’re ready, you can bring them to your supervisor or HR manager to discuss your future. The meeting shouldn’t be about a hostile “This is what I need or I’m leaving” ultimatum. Instead, you should aim for a conversation about opportunities that would let you stay with an employer you like.

2. Target your bliss.

What do you absolutely love about your job? Write down all the tasks you perform that keep you motivated, even when you have to work overtime or you’re having a rocky day. Use this document as a springboard to consider what else you would like to do to turn your position into a true dream job.

You might discover that you can’t fully explore some of your wish list skills — like leading a team, creating killer content, or analyzing legacy data to jumpstart sales revenue — in your current position. Take these thoughts to your boss to figure out how you might try on some new skates. Consider accepting additional projects related to your ideal role. At the same time, be sure to pay attention to your regular responsibilities; your work ethic shouldn’t lapse for a moment.

3. Define the relationship.

You may remember when you and your significant other had the “Where is this relationship going?” talk. You might need to have the same kind of serious discussion with your supervisor. Explain where you see yourself in a year, two years, five years. Talk about your desires to move ahead in your career path, and be forthright about any concerns you have regarding whether your employer offers upward mobility.

Of course, your mindset shouldn’t be “My way or the highway.” Start the conversation with a matter-of-fact description of your expectations. You’re doing your boss a favor by being honest, because he or she now knows that you’d like to stay, but you need some give-and-take.

4. Seek out a career advocate.

We can all use someone in our corner, and that’s where a career advocate comes into play. Career advocates are folks in your business who push for you to advance, even if you aren’t technically ready for a job opening or don’t have all the prerequisites.

Obviously, the more influential your career advocate, the better. Still, don’t overlook same-level colleagues in other departments who have your back. Not only can they put in a solid word for you, but they can tell you when openings are about to happen so you can prepare ahead of time. And if you do end up moving to another company? You can be allies for each other. Your ally might even end up joining you at your new employer.

If you love your organization but aren’t getting raises, more responsibility, or greater influence, you don’t necessarily have to leave the company. Explore your home-base options first. You may have far more choices than you thought.

William Arruda is the cofounder of CareerBlast and creator of the complete LinkedIn quiz that helps you evaluate your LinkedIn profile and networking strategy.

There’s an old story about a tourist who asks a New Yorker how to get to the storied concert venue Carnegie Hall and is told, “Practice, practice, practice.” Obviously, this is good advice if you want to become a world-class performer — but it’s also good advice if you want to become a top-notch leader.

Over the past year we have been writing the HBR Leader’s Handbook — a primer for aspiring leaders who want to take their careers to the next level. As part of our research for the book, we interviewed over 40 successful leaders of large corporations, startups, and non-profits to get their views about what it takes to become a leader. We also explored several decades of research on that subject published in HBR; and we reflected on our own experience in the area of leadership development.

Our research and experience have shown us that the best way to develop proficiency in leadership is not just through reading books and going to training courses, but even more through real experience and continual practice.

Take the case of Dominic Barton, who served as the Global Managing Director of McKinsey & Company from 2009-2018. In an interview with us, reflecting back on his own development as a leader, he didn’t cite education programs or books he had read, but rather described several “learn-by-doing” experiences that would shape his successful career.

As the office leader of McKinsey Korea, for example, he realized he had “a small playground to… try new stuff” — and against all advice of local colleagues to be cautious and follow cultural norms, started writing a provocative newspaper column that challenged traditional ways of working among local businesses as their markets continued to globalize. “I took a risk, and it helped put us on the map, as never before.” His tenure in Korea also taught him that he was better at some things than others: “My performance evaluator used to beat me up regularly during those days, because I was better at opening up new initiatives than bringing them to completion. When I later became head of McKinsey Asia, he helped me see that I had to hire a solid COO to work with me—which substantially increased my leadership effectiveness in that bigger role.”

Our research also pointed to six leadership skills where practice was particularly important. These are not mysterious and certainly aren’t new. However, the leaders we talked with emphasized that these fundamental skills really matter. Aspiring leaders should focus on practicing these essential basics:

Shape a vision that is exciting and challenging for your team (or division/unit/organization).
Translate that vision into a clear strategy about what actions to take, and what not to do.
Recruit, develop, and reward a team of great people to carry out the strategy.
Focus on measurable results.
Foster innovation and learning to sustain your team (or organization) and grow new leaders.
Lead yourself — know yourself, improve yourself, and manage the appropriate balance in your own life.
No matter where you are in your career, you can find opportunities to practice these six skills. You’ll have varying degrees of success, which is normal. But by reflecting on your successes and failures at every step, and getting feedback from colleagues and mentors, you’ll keep making positive adjustments and find more opportunities to learn. Research by Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats published in HBR shows how important this reflection can be to your improvement: they found that workers were able to improve their own performance by 20% after spending 15 minutes at the end of each day writing reflections on what they did well, what they did wrong, and their lessons learned. Leaders often have a bias for action that keeps them from stepping back in this way — but it is the reflection on your practice that will help you improve.

Don’t wait for learning opportunities to be handed to you. Seek them out and volunteer to take them on. And if you don’t see the opportunities in your own organization, find them outside your professional work in a community group, a non-profit, or a religious organization, which are often hungry for leaders to step in and step up. For example, Wharton’s Stew Friedman has described how one young manager who aspired to become a CEO joined a city-based community board, which allowed him to hone his leadership skills; three years later, he was on a formal succession track for CEO.

Eventually, as you progress, you’ll reach a level of capability in these areas such that you’ll start seeing results: you’ll successfully make things happen through the people who work for you on your team or in your division. As you succeed, these results will begin to build upon one another—you’ll oversee a new product that becomes a runaway hit or take charge of a transformational initiative that redefines a major market. More and more people will want to sign up and work with you. Clients or customers will ask for you by name. You’ll be invited to represent the company at major industry conferences. Whether you use this momentum to guide a new initiative or to start your own company, you’ll have begun to truly deliver major impact. You’ll have become a leader, capable of rallying an organization of people around a meaningful collective goal and delivering the results to reach it.

Source: https://hbr.org/2018/10/the-6-fundamental-skills-every-leader-should-practice

An old saying sums up the data skills of most HR professionals: “The shoemaker’s children go barefoot.”

In today’s tightening labor market, HR leaders must work relentlessly to develop and recruit people who advance digital transformation across their organizations. Yet most have struggled to advance their own digital competencies. This neglect has hindered their ability to leverage data into talent strategies that can help transform their businesses.

We base this claim about HR’s digital skills gap on the results of our latest global leadership survey. Co-produced by our three organizations, the survey gauged nearly 28,000 business leaders across industries about the state and trajectory of leadership. Among the findings: On average, HR leaders lag far behind other professionals in their ability to operate in a highly digital environment and use data to guide business decisions.

It comes as no surprise that this skills gap has spurred a credibility gap between HR professionals and their colleagues. Only 11% of business leaders trust HR to use data to anticipate and help them fill their talent needs. When we last fielded the same survey three years prior, 20% of business leaders felt that way — still a low number, but nearly twice what it is today.

Finding ways to improve HR’s digital acumen and data skills can challenge even the most well-resourced companies. HR leaders can start by upskilling their teams in areas that impact two critical business outcomes: building bench strength and tying HR metrics to financial success. To achieve both, companies can support their HR leaders in taking these steps:

Forge internal partnerships. At most companies, other departments use data and technology in ways that HR could apply to their own work. For example, HR can work with marketing for guidance on search engine optimization (SEO), a skill that can help HR improve its recruitment efforts. They can also consider partnering with colleagues proficient in finance technology for guidance about blockchain, a technology capable of transforming how HR stores and verifies private employee data. Such internal collaborations may not only help HR attain new skills, but also help to foster a data-driven culture across the organization.

Map talent analytics to business outcomes. HR should learn how to tie its data about people to performance and business outcomes. This process must begin with gathering data about the skills, capabilities, and behaviors of the existing leaders and workforce, often done through assessments. For example, a hospital seeking to improve patient safety might look to HR to discover that the highest rates of patient safety are tied to nurse units where supervisors showed specific behaviors, such as demonstrating empathy. By collecting data on employee skills and experience and tying it to business outcomes, HR can highlight key areas of risk and opportunity for the company.

Develop data visualization skills. Simply collecting data and analyses won’t help HR leaders advance their efforts unless they know how to leverage that data to influence others. One study found that when presenters supplemented their stories with visuals, audience members had around a 40% greater likelihood of taking the desired course of action versus those who received non-visual presentations. As such, HR should learn how to create graphical presentations of data. HR needs to get more proficient with sophisticated software programs such as Power BI, Tableau, or R Studio, all of which give visual context to data.

Implement leadership planning models. Beyond using data to highlight current talent trends and gaps, HR should use it to fuel predictions about future talent needs, especially for leadership positions. HR professionals should employ leadership planning models to map a business’s long-term strategic plan to the leaders it will need to implement that plan. Leadership planning models enable HR to create data-driven projections for the quantity of leaders needed, the skills they will require, and where they will be located. On an ongoing basis, these models can compare the leadership talent it has against what it needs. As such, HR can course-correct when necessary by revising or shifting its priorities among hiring, development, and performance-management systems.

Taking these four initial steps can yield big dividends. Our research shows that companies excelling in using data and analytics to drive their talent strategy are more than six times more likely to have a strong leadership bench. Moreover, those with the strongest digital leadership capabilities outperform their peers by 50% in a financial composite of earnings and revenue growth.

And when HR executives use their digital savviness to advance their companies, they often move up themselves as a result. We found that HR professionals who leverage advanced analytics are over six times more likely to have opportunities to climb the corporate ladder.

Today, unemployment stands at the lowest level in nearly five decades. As the economy continues growing and Baby Boomers retire in droves, the labor market will further tighten and increase the pressure on HR. These demographic and economic dynamics will push HR to be better, faster, and smarter about how it finds and develops the talent their organizations will need to execute their business strategy. Investing in developing HR’s data and technology skills should be a top priority if companies want to win the war for talent.

Source: https://hbr.org/2018/10/hr-leaders-need-stronger-data-skills

Although having the perfect resume is necessary for job-seekers to get a foot in the door, the most important step in securing a new job is successfully navigating the job interview.

As the first, and most important, impression, interviews require candidates to stand out from the hundreds of other applications vying for the position.

And while having the relevant skills and experience is fundamental, knowing what to say and what phrases employers want to hear is key.

To find out what job-seekers should always say during an interview, we spoke to career experts – who shared their tips and advice for coming across as the perfect candidate.

The most common interview question is the one that trips people up the most, according Carolyn Betts Fleming, the CEO and founder of Betts Recruiting, who told The Independent: “It’s very important to have a clear pitch when the person asks you to tell them more about yourself.

“It’s usually the first question asked in an interview, and shockingly many people are unprepared to answer.”

Ms Fleming advises job-seekers to “practice and prepare, and keep it to one minute or less” to successfully move past the simple question.

“It should be a high-level overview of what you’ve done in your career and where you want to go – and it doesn’t hurt to mention a few things you like to do in your spare time to add colour,” she told us of the perfect response.

Once the pleasantries are out of the way, it is time to sell yourself.

According to Erin Kennedy, CEO at Professional Resume Services, the one phrase that does this and ensures you stand out during a job interview is: “I can fix this for you.”

“Nothing says ‘hire me’ more than letting the interviewer know you know what issues they are facing and you also know how to help them fix them,” she told us.

By conveying an understanding of a company’s problem areas, and explaining how your individual abilities can help them improve, you will come across as a valuable and indispensable addition to the team.

Georgia Adamson, CEO of A Successful Career, reiterated the advice – and emphasised the importance of proving how you can help the company.

“It’s a case of an attitude or approach that focuses on the value you can bring to the employer,” she told us. “You need to clearly indicate potential value and relevance to the employer’s needs.

“If you don’t, someone else probably will.”

Although it is not necessary to have related job experience prior to securing a new career, having a proven track record of success can be helpful.

To convey this, executive career coach, leadership consultant, and CEO of Executive Coach NY Jane Cranston recommends telling interviewers of past accomplishments – especially ones where your skills meant you were the best.

According to Ms Cranston, the one phrase that stands out to interviewers is: “I was ranked number one…”

Prior to leaving an interview, job-seekers should make their stance on the job clear – and ask potential employers to do the same.

“At the end of the interview, ask where you stand,” Ms Fleming advises – as “most employers appreciate somebody who is going to close the deal, whether you’re going for a sales role or something in another department altogether.”

To do this in a professional manner, Ms Fleming recommends asking the interviewer “for their thoughts on you as a candidate and whether you’re a good fit within the organisation.”

“This will increase your chances of knowing where you stand when you walk out of that interview,” she told us.

Interviewees should also clearly convey they will accept the job if offered, according to certified career management coach and founder of the Career Success Coach Joellyn Wittenstein Schwerdlin, who told us job-seekers should say: “I would be happy to accept this job, if offered to me.

“Many candidates forget to do this, especially if they really want the job.”

For a lasting and positive impression, Ms Schwerdlin said candidates should say the phrase after they’ve asked the interviewer questions of their own – just before the interview concludes

“He/she could say: ‘Thanks for answering my questions. I just want to add that I would be happy to accept this job, if offered to me,” she said.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/job-interview-tips-how-to-stand-out-key-phrases-experts-career-coach-a8598151.html

You’ve stayed late, skipped taking lunches and worked over the weekends. Finally, the project is finished.

The accolades are rolling in … just not to you.

Not getting recognition for work — or having someone else get the credit — is a common problem in the office. And most of the time, it’s unintentional.
“You might think all the great work you’re doing is evident to everyone, but everyone else including your boss and your boss’s boss is so busy they don’t always know what you’re doing,” said career management coach Amy Wolfgang.
But there’s a fine line between standing up and getting the recognition you deserve and coming off as arrogant. After all, you are all on the same team.
“For some, self-promotion doesn’t feel natural to them or just feels gross,” said Wolfgang. “But it’s not about being braggy, and it’s not about being self-centered, it’s about advocating what you do and the value you bring.”

Speak up
If you’ve spent countless hours on a project and don’t get as much as a thumbs-up from your boss, ask for a private meeting to talk about your work.
The key is not to be defensive or emotional. Explain the importance of the project and your contributions in a very clear way.
If you are in a meeting and someone is taking unfair credit for your work, speak up, but be tactful.

“You need to shut that down, but remain calm,” said Vicki Salemi, Monster.com’s career expert. “You don’t want to stoop to their level and throw them under the bus or badmouth them, but you still want to make yourself shine.”
She suggests inserting yourself into the conversation with something like: “When I worked on these numbers originally I found the same thing.”
After the meeting, approach the offender calmly and privately and ask why he or she wrongly took credit or didn’t extend any acknowledgment.
Schedule regular check-ins
Set up regular meetings with your manager to discuss ongoing projects, your performance, your career path and any workplace issues.
These meetings are the perfect setting to tout your hard work without coming off as vain.
It’s not about highlighting the day-to-day stuff that you are expected to do in your role. “Showcase your work that is going above and beyond what your boss expects,” said Wolfgang.
Ask yourself: Is it worth it?
Sometimes you aren’t going to get credit for your work, and you have to move on.
“Letting it go might be worthwhile, especially if you aren’t going to work with that person again or it’s not going to affect your career,” said Robert Sutton, professor of management, science and engineering at Stanford University and organizational psychologist. “Everyone should know when you break bad news to bosses or anybody else, they tend to like you less.”

Another question to ask yourself is whether you are seeking too much credit.
It’s common for team members to inflate their contributions to a project, according to Sutton. After all, you are aware of all the long nights and hard work you put in, but you aren’t always aware of everyone else’s sacrifices.
“If your first reaction is someone is taking more credit than they deserve, you might be doing the same thing as well.”
Be the advocate you want others to be
When you acknowledge and celebrate your peer’s achievements, they will be more likely to return the favor.
“If you want others to recognize value, be the person who recognizes value in others,” said Wolfgang.
When you extend recognition to others, it’s a win-win situation.
“If you give other people credit, two things happen: You get as much credit as if you said: ‘I did this myself,’ and you also get the additional attribution of generosity and making people feel better that you gave them credit,” said Sutton.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/23/success/take-credit-at-work/index.html

With all the time and resources businesses allocate to training, it’s important to get it right the first time.

Training mistakes can do more than translate incorrect information; they can de-motivate staff, set employees up for failure and even put them at risk. HR Dive spoke with some experts in the field to find out the top training mistakes employers should avoid as they prepare their materials for the coming year.

1. Not knowing your audience or their needs
Knowing what your audience knows before you even design training is critical. If you make the training too easy and a teacher may be preaching to the choir, which will soon be bored and zone out. But if you make the content too far above their knowledge level and a teacher may turn them away from learning altogether. Having a grasp on what the employees understand before they start training may be job one for L&D professionals.

“Don’t be afraid to ask your employees what types of learning they’d find most valuable. Truly listen to what they have to say — then tailor your programs to fit their needs,” Laura Lee Gentry, vice president of talent and learning at Ultimate Software, told HR Dive in an email.

2. Not training for specific outcomes
“When delivering training, it’s critical that all participants (and facilitators) are aware of the objective of the training session and the steps to take to get there,” Colleen Kerr, senior career management consultant with Right Management, told HR Dive via email.

She recommended that employers set a concise agenda and make clear what is intended throughout the training. When teaching a lesson through a slide deck, for example, the learning objectives should be clear on each slide so the group can see their progression toward the goal. Another training must-do, according to Kerr? “Staying on track and on time sends the message that you value the participant’s time and will ensure mutual respect in the room,” she said.

3. Preaching instead of facilitating
Effective training is as much about asking powerful questions, gaining buy-in, and leveraging the knowledge of the group to work towards the goal as it is about creating experiences that are engaging, informative and fun. “Adults learn much better in an experiential learning environment with a variety of modalities: visual, kinetic and auditory,” Kerr said.

4. Recycling on old methods and materials
Recycling old training videos and scenarios that don’t reflect the work is one of the quickest ways to disengage learners, Meredith Ferguson, managing director at DoSomething Strategic, said.

“They know the training was not made for them,” she said in an email, “and will feel there’s less they can take away from the training overall.” With so many new modalities available for L&D, from gamification and mobile learning, to VR and beyond, there really is no reason to dig those old instructional videos out, except to put them in the recycle bin.

5. Too much of anything
Making the training too passive, or too cookie-cutter-interactive is another training faux pas Ferguson has encountered.

“Both ends of the spectrum turn off millennials and Gen Z because they’ve gone their entire lives seeing the tacky extremes: passively watching a video with no interaction is just as bad as starting off an interactive training with weird icebreakers and corny role-playing,” she said. Learners have seen these extremes spoofed on social media dozens of times.

“Once you start training this way, they’ll take it as a joke rather than a serious initiative, mostly because it looks like no effort was put in on the facilitator’s end,” she added.

6. Not enough internal input
“A common mistake we see is the over-reliance on outside expertise,” Jonathan Lau, SVP for skills at Cengage, told HR Dive in an email.

Developers and vendors are helpful in providing frameworks, structure, approaches, and fine tuning, but “experts at the company need to devote the time and energy to ensure the training is relevant. Internal experts know the context, key challenges, goals and specific skills that need to be honed in order to upskill employees,” he added.

7. Not taking time to assess
Lau suggests launching a training initiative without first piloting the program is a common mistake. “Context and relevancy, especially in a corporate setting, is key to effective training.” As with any product rollout, he writes, testing and learning is critically important to ensure the training delivers the right outcomes.

8. Creating training that’s easy for the trainer, instead of the learner
“In instructor-led training, on the highest level, I’d say that the biggest mistake I’ve seen is designing the training for those delivering the training, rather than those receiving the training,” Kevin Gumienny, senior learning architect at Microassist, said in an email.

The temptation is strong to put a subject matter expert in front of the group and let them share, but it’s rarely the best way for people to gain knowledge, skills or abilities, he said. When experts share, they tend to lecture, providing one-way information delivery; that type of training rarely changes behavior — which is the goal, after all.

9. Foregoing experiential learning
“The way to engage with adult learners is to encourage them to relate new knowledge content to their existing, hard-won knowledge,” Gumienny said. He suggested activities — lots and lots of activities. There are ample resources available to find effective training activities for small to large groups, or even independent learners. Experiential learning has been proven to help absorb and retain knowledge.

10. Treating training like a one-and-done
One of the most common training mistakes Gentry sees is how often training is provided. For most, it’s a one-time activity, typically at the beginning of a job when an employee is provided with the basics. There’s much to be said for learning firsthand, she said, “but organizations should shift their focus from offering one-time, job-specific training to providing all employees with ongoing learning and development opportunities.”

Companies benefit greatly from continuous learning programs, developing in-house experts who can better serve colleagues and customers while building their own knowledge and careers. “People and businesses should grow together concurrently,” Gentry said.

Source: https://www.hrdive.com/news/the-top-10-training-mistakes-employers-make-and-how-to-avoid-them/540179/