What HR has to really do to meet its new priorities

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By Tom Starner

From retention and recruiting to budget gaps, HR leaders have their work cut out for them in 2022, according to a recent report from the Hackett Group.

The strategic consultancy firm’s 2022 Human Resources Key Issues—based on a survey of more than 250 executives in HR, finance, IT, procurement, supply chain and global business services at midsize and large enterprises—suggests that HR leaders have to refocus their agenda this year on several key issues, says Hackett Group’s Global HR Advisory Practice Leader Harry Osle. Of particular concern, he explains, respondents said they lacked confidence that seven of the top 10 HR priorities identified are actually achievable.

“The majority of HR organizations have launched or are launching major initiatives to improve their capabilities to enable enterprise-growth strategies, digital transformation, creating a high-performing organizational culture and improving talent management,” Osle says. He adds that in order to close capability gaps, HR organizations must take greater advantage of digital technology to improve service delivery and insights.

The HR priorities survey participants identified as most challenging include:

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Making Sure That Everyone Knows Their Place

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Andy J. Yap, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour; Nikhil Madan, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at ISB; Phanish Puranam, the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Strategy and Organisation Design at INSEAD

 

 

Why formal structures and greater diversity create status disagreements and how to fix the issue.

Organisations are becoming increasingly complex beasts. Globalisation has led to the rise of vast multinationals made up of diverse business units and teams operating across many countries and time zones. Perhaps unsurprisingly, such growth brings with it a series of management issues.

One pervasive challenge is the potential for disagreements between employees regarding who has higher status and who should defer to whom in situations where there are differences in views and opinions. Organisational scientists have documented that upward status disagreement (USD), a situation in which individuals disagree about who has higher status, is particularly harmful to organisations. Research shows that USD may result in a rise in interpersonal and status conflicts (i.e. attempts to assert dominance, forming opposing coalitions and making political plays). It may also increase focus on individual goals rather than collective objectives. Continue reading →

Turn the “great resignation” into the “great renegotiation”

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by Denise Hamilton

Encouraging employees to approach you with their wish lists might seem counterintuitive, but it may just be the key to retention.

The events of these past two years have been like a tornado, throwing everything into disarray. Many businesses have been trying to get back to normal. But there’s no going back. Workers are leaving their employers in droves, seeking greater fulfillment and better pay, among other opportunities. This great resignation, though, could instead be a great renegotiation. Leaders have a chance now to redesign their organizations in a way that’s more exciting and fulfilling for employees.

Doing so requires businesses to rethink their fundamental ways of operating. It means putting everything on the table, including roles, schedules, key performance indicators, individual performance metrics, and more. It takes time, energy, and work. But the incentive is clear.

I speak regularly with people who’ve recently quit their jobs and to those at all levels of organizations who are considering leaving their jobs. Many tell me they would happily stay with their employer if they could work out some changes, whether in pay, hours, opportunities for advancement, the freedom to work from anywhere, or other diverse factors. One of the big challenges for employers is understanding that different people value different things; there’s no one-size-fits-all remedy. To find solutions, employers need to listen to their employees. Continue reading →

Beyond the Great Resignation, 7 trends that will shape work in 2022

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By Brian Kropp and Emily Rose McRae

At the start of 2021, many of us expected the world to return to normalcy, including a large-scale return to the workplace for many employees. But 2021 proved more volatile than anticipated given the rise of new COVID-19 variants, a massive war for talent, quit rates at an all-time high and the highest inflation level in a generation.

The level of volatility is only increasing in 2022 as the world confronts new waves of COVID-19 variants, the continuation of hybrid work and the reality of real wage cuts for employees as annual compensation increases fall behind inflation. These realities will be layered on top of longer-term evolutions around technological transformation, continued DE&I journeys and ongoing political disruption and uncertainty.

Here are seven underlying trends that will shape the workplace this year:

1. Fairness and equity will be the defining issues for organizations.

According to our analysis of S&P 500 earnings calls, the frequency with which CEOs talk about issues of equity, fairness and inclusion on these calls has increased by 658% since 2018. Debates that have fairness at the core—around gender and race, climate change or other socio-economic, social and workplace issues—have become flashpoints in society. Continue reading →

Should Employees Be Allowed to Choose What They Want to Do?

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 by Phanish Puranam

The degree of specialisation is the deciding factor.

As far as workplace trends go, several topics have dominated popular attention and discussion, from workspace design, digitalisation, Agile methodology, to the pandemic favourite of remote working. But there’s another important aspect of work that is being pushed increasingly to the forefront of organisation design: self-selection-based division of labour.

Essentially the process of matching workers with tasks, division of labour in organisations was, until recently, a top-down allocation exercise presided over by managers. These days, workers are increasingly empowered to assign tasks to themselves – a far cry from the pin factory labourers immortalised by Adam Smith. At software firm Valve and French auto parts maker FAVI, for example, employees select tasks as well as project teams based on their own perceptions of best fit. In fact, at many software firms and other less hierarchical organisations, self-selection has become the norm for its positive effect on employee motivation.

Yet traditional task allocation remains dominant and continues to flourish even in innovation-intensive sectors. Evidently, both methods of divvying up work have their merits and drawbacks. Knowing which to apply and when to apply it can have a direct impact on organisational performance and employee morale.

In our new paper, co-authored with Massimo Warglien, we looked into the conditions in which self-selection would outperform the managerial allocation of tasks even if there were no motivational benefits: when employees are highly specialised, the tasks are independent of each other, and employee availability is unforeseeable.

As self-selection becomes more mainstream, our findings could help organisations aspiring to this process assess whether it is the right choice, or how it could be modified for a better fit. Continue reading →