Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

The Future of Compensation in the Age of Adaptability

In ManpowerGroup’s 2024 Age of Adaptability report, we discussed how workers are expecting greater customization in all aspects of the employee experience – which, of course, includes compensation and benefits.

Since the business world became more structured more than a century ago, fixed and consistent compensation among groups of employees has been the standard, but increasing hyper-personalization is a thread that runs through all our considerations about the future of total rewards.

In HR.com’s 2024 report on the future of compensation and total rewards, 70% of leader respondents agreed that updating their organization’s total rewards strategies will help keep pace with changing attitudes around compensation. In addition, 85% said that it’s important to modify reward strategies for individual contributors.

In this piece, we’ll explore compensation best practices as we approach the quarter mark of the twenty-first century, such as agile compensation models, pay transparency and equity strategies, lifestyle and financial wellness offerings, and the involvement of AI in decision-making – which could paradoxically make compensation more uniform at a time when employees are demanding the opposite.

Pay Grades and Salary Bands No More

Traditionally, organizations made compensation decisions based on pre-set pay grades and salary bands, but in the post-pandemic business world, many question whether this model is fair, equitable, or well-suited to rapidly evolving conditions.

My research suggests that the most effective compensation strategies are more agile and allow organizations to recalibrate total rewards based on real-time factors inside and outside the company.  And rather than being assigned a one-size-fits-all title, salary, and benefits package upon hiring, employees can now customize the total rewards package that best matches their individual preferences based on an a la carte menu of options.

As Anita Lettink, a global future of work expert and the author of Equal Pay for Equal Work, told me, this approach works better because we can no longer view employees in homogenous groupings when offering rewards. “People don’t adhere to specific life stages anymore – for example, needing childcare in one’s 30s – so it makes sense to let employees pick and choose on a monthly basis,” she said.

In practice, a new hire may exchange lucrative stock options or company-funded retirement for a lower base salary. In tandem with this trend, more organizations are offering company equity to individual contributors rather than reserving it for senior leaders. Lettink said companies are also launching “employee sharing” initiatives in which workers receive payouts for something the organization created or revenue they helped to generate. “These programs encourage behaviors that are beneficial to company growth,” she added.

Agile compensation models don’t rely on a once-a-year performance review to determine an incremental salary bump or bonus, but rather leverage technology to auto-adjust rewards frequently in keeping with industry and market developments, larger economic factors like inflation, and peer feedback. These nimble strategies involve a broader range of metrics for assessing value including specialized employee skills, innovative contributions to company growth, and supervisor effectiveness.

Pay Transparency and True Equity Will Sweep the Globe

Pay transparency, which refers to openly disclosing the salary range for a given position, is considered a critical step in the journey toward pay equity. Although Lettink correctly noted that pay transparency is driving positive change for employees – especially at the lower levels – many organizations tend to drag their feet until they are mandated to deploy it. However, the concept is gaining momentum all over the world and we should prepare for it to be universal in the coming years.

Despite increased attention to the issue over the last decade, pay disparities based on race and gender remain stubborn problems. In response, a bevy of equal pay regulations designed to promote fairness have taken root. Organizations are ensuring compliance with these regulations by increasing their use of pay equity software to run statistical analyses of their compensation models, develop benchmarks, and derive core insights by comparing internal and external data.

Equity analysis isn’t just for leveling the playing field for women and underrepresented minorities. These tools may also illustrate pay disparities between employees at a specific location, function, or level and employees with similar characteristics inside and outside the company. Objective and ongoing reporting of pay gaps facilitates their immediate resolution and prevents these gaps from becoming systemic and leading to legal liability.

For the rest of this piece, check out the full blog series at ManpowerGroup.

HR Compliance Developments Going into 2025

According to Dayforce research, nearly half (48%) of surveyed leaders believe that increased compliance and regulatory complexity will impede their organization’s ability to achieve its business objectives. This could be due in part to the sheer number of emerging workforce compliance trends and how many different areas they impact. 

This shift requires substantially more oversight than the compliance function needed in the past. To help simplify the situation, I’ve rounded up key workforce compliance trends that should be top of mind for HR professionals through 2025.  

Non-compete agreements 

In certain nations, including Malaysia and Mexico, most post-termination non-compete agreements have generally been prohibited for some time. Then, in the spring of 2024, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission published a final rule that would effectively ban all non-compete agreements between employers and workers. The exceptions to the rule pertain to existing agreements with senior executives, sale-of-business non-competes, and causes of action that accrued before the rule’s effective date of September 4, 2024. 

Expanded leave requirements 

Globally, the parameters of paid and unpaid leave are constantly in flux. Most interesting is the increase in laws that allow employees to take paid time off (PTO) for any reason. Generous accommodations for new parents and senior caregivers are also becoming an expectation for employers of a certain size. Just this spring in Japan, Parliament passed legislation requiring companies to offer flexible working options to employees with young children to help them balance work with child rearing. 

Minimum pay thresholds 

In the U.S., the beginning of 2024 was marked by an increase in the minimum wage in more than 20 states, and more changes are occurring in individual states and localities as the year progresses. Canada continues to raise its minimum wage every year, while European countries continue to realize the effects of 2022’s Minimum Wage Directive, which took aim at in-work poverty. If you have employees in the U.S., you should note that in April, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a rule updating overtime pay requirements. This rule increases the minimum salary threshold for employees to be exempt from overtime pay, with the first phase having taken effect on July 1, 2023 and the second phase on January 1, 2025. 

For more compliance happenings, read the full article on Dayforce.com.

Essential New Read: The Skills-Powered Organization

My friend Ravin Jesuthasan is a leading voice on skills-based employment. His latest book, The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise, which he cowrote with Tanuj Kapilashrami, is an essential read for leaders who are in the difficult spot of touting the importance of skills without fully understanding how to shape their organization accordingly. This Q&A with Ravin captures some of the highlights, and I hope you’ll pick up a copy for a deeper dive.

Ravin, now did you come to collaborate with your co-author?

Tanuj and I have known each other for about 4 years. We both sit on a couple of committees at the World Economic Forum and have long had a common interest in how skills can unlock significantly greater productivity, agility and engagement. My interest and the ideas in this book stem from and build on the four books I have written with my good friend John Boudreau. Perhaps most importantly, we wanted to write a practitioner’s guide. A book that was rigorous with research and frameworks AND clearly demonstrated how leaders can make these changes in their organizations

Can you share why you have focused your content on skills?

The growing volatility and velocity of change in the world necessitates a different set of building blocks for work. The IMF estimates that uncertainty over the last 3 years is up 2.5X over the previous 30 years. For companies, crisis is no longer a one-off event, but a recurring one. Think of the 4 shocks we are experiencing today: 

• The climate crisis
• The energy impact from the invasion of Ukraine.
• Geopolitical issues with China and the Middle East
• The technology shock and especially AI

All independent events but with massive feedback loops. Each of these 4 shocks is world shaking, but cumulatively happening in a 18 month period, puts us in unprecedented times. In Work Without Jobs, John Boudreau and I introduced the concept of a new work operating model and this books builds on an extends that idea with a deep dive into why skills need to be the currency of work; in order to enable organization to respond (and thrive) in this rapidly changing world of ours

What does this journey look like for a typical organization?

In our research we identified 3 core capabilities of the skills-powered organization. The capability of work design is essential to understanding the true demand for skills and how they can best be connected to work. Talent development is pivotal to ensuring skills are acquired in a timely and efficient manner based on the demand signals from work design. Last, talent deployment is the critical capability of enabling the expression of the demanded skills across a variety of work engagements with optimal efficiency, effectiveness, and impact

How did Standard Chartered Bank get started and what can its experience teach us?

As I mentioned, the thing that was attractive to me about partnering with Tanuj was to tell the story of a progressive organization that was bringing these ideas to life and fruition. Standard Chartered is a 170-year-old, leading international banking group with a rich history and legacy.

For Standard Chartered, the skills-powered journey started with transitioning the narrative from jobs to skills. It began with a commercial business case based on its own strategic workforce planning analysis, highlighting the jobs and skills within the organization that would soon no longer be relevant (which it refers to as “sunset” roles). This might be due to changing client expectations or the evolution of technology and automation of tasks. New jobs and skills would also be created and demanded as a result (“sunrise” roles). The strategic workforce plan (SWP) also highlighted the broader impact of the changing demand for skills—the disproportionate displacement of junior roles and the resulting cost implications as the organization shifted from a pyramid to a diamond shape.

Additionally, it highlighted the potential impact on gender diversity due to the higher number of women currently employed in sunset roles and with many sunrise roles being currently more male dominated. The tangible economics of “build” versus buy versus borrow versus bot,” and the far-reaching impact of decisions related to upskilling and reskilling, created a compelling foundation for the board and the global management team who made skills a critical element of the overall strategic plan.

What do you believe leaders who want to build a skills-based organization should do first?

As we often say, you have to eat the elephant one bite at a time. There are 3 things we defined as being pivotal to this journey:

1. Establish a North Star to anchor your journey: So, what do we mean by a North Star? It is a clear statement about your vision to guide your direction and program of work to becoming a skills-powered organization. A North Star is simple and enduring—it is your touchstone to ensure you remain on track and is clearly aligned to addressing specific business needs.
2. Experiment, experiment, experiment: We have seen through the Standard Chartered examples the power of prototypes and experiments in enabling the shift in mindset, skill set, and toolset. Experiments are critical for testing and applying the design principles underpinning the skills-powered organization before they are deployed across the organization
3. Focus on the key enablers of success: Too often organizations believe the answer to any problem is to throw technology at the problem. We define 8 critical enablers for this journey (including AI and technology):

•  Leadership (where every change journey starts)
•  Governance
• Employee engagement in the journey
• Culture and change management
• The HR function and its role
• Functional processes, such as finance, IT, and legal
• Technology and AI
• Foundational enablers (e.g., skills taxonomy and data)

Thanks, Ravin! 

The Future of Leadership in the Age of Adaptability

In ManpowerGroup's 2024 Age of Adaptability trends report, we discussed how the pandemic forced an immediate overhaul of management as we knew it. While societal disruption, advancing technology, and sustainability reshaped work, leaders needed to steer organizational change without tangible models from which to draw. They also needed to promote upskilling and reskilling, inclusion, and satisfaction among their employees while managing a geographically dispersed and distributed workforce.

Leaders who had done things more or less the same way for two centuries were suddenly operating in the dark. It takes a special kind of person to do this effectively, and this person is what we will refer to as the 2030 Leader.

The 2030 Leader

In 2030, the majority of leaders will be members of the millennial generation, or those born between 1980-95. In the early aughts while entry-level workers, the millennials made their mark early with their insistence on a more empowered, enlightened business world. As an ethnically diverse generation raised on computers, the millennials have adapted seamlessly to the integration of smart machines into the workplace and more naturally engage with diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) issues.

In general, these circumstances make millennials the ideal candidates to shepherd our organizations into the second half of the 21st century. But of course, everyone is different and some leaders will be more competent in 2030 than others.

I believe that the future of leadership will be co-created by young trailblazers with several core traits including flexibility, humility, emotional intelligence, global perspective, and technological curiosity. Let’s describe these one by one.

Flexibility: The years 2022 and 2030 were characterized by what many termed the “RTO wars.” Entrenched baby boomer leaders wanted the workplace to return to post-pandemic norms, while many employees weren’t having it. Although a majority of organizations settled on a compromise of 2-3 days in the office per week, the RTO wars still exist.

But by 2030, millennial leaders are likely to have put an end to them. Rather, they will be more inclined to accept a reality that includes a variety of employment arrangements that are to some degree customized to each employee. These leaders will be comfortable with the constant change inherent in a rapidly evolving world and are likely to staff accordingly – creating project-based, time-bound teams from a variety of internal and external sources (retired part-timers, fractional executives, subject matter experts, etc.) as business needs require.

As time goes on, leaders will become more proficient in best practices for managing distributed and remote workforces. And millennials will be the first generation of leaders to successfully model effective work/life integration, with a holistic orientation toward work, family, and leisure.

Humility: Back in the 1970s, a management researcher named Robert Greenleaf proposed the notion of servant leadership, a style in which leaders display personal accountability and put the needs, aspirations, and interests of their followers above their own. Never has the concept of servant leadership been more relevant, as ManpowerGroup Chief Innovation Officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argues that the challenges of this century mandate that leaders are selected on competence rather than confidence, humility rather than charisma, and integrity rather than narcissism.

In 2030, organizations will still be in the position of needing to pivot quickly if an established strategy isn’t working, which means that leaders will need to adopt an agile mindset, admit when they’re wrong, and solicit advice from a much wider range of stakeholders – including individual contributors deriving insights from AI-based tools – than they have in the past.

For the rest of this article, visit ManpowerGroup's Global Insights blog.

The Future of Jobs in the Age of Adaptability

Around 20 years ago, leaders started to ask me if nascent AI-based technologies would eliminate the need for human workers. My response then was the same as it is now: not quickly and not totally.

Nevertheless, human jobs are transforming at a rapid rate. According to a 2023 McKinsey report, in the period from 2019 to 2022, the labor market in the U.S. alone experienced 8.6 million occupational shifts. This is a 50% increase from the prior three-year period, and by 2030, an additional 12 million shifts are projected. McKinsey also estimated that 30% of all hours worked by humans today could be automated by 2030.

It might be simpler if the march toward an AI-driven future meant that all human workers would eventually lounge their lives away on cruise ships – depending on technology for their very existence as in the 2008 Pixar movie WALL-E. In reality, though, humans will continue to work as we always have. The work will just look different.

The exact manner in which human jobs are evolving is driven by organizational concerns around profit and productivity. As we shared in our 2024 Age of Adaptability trends report, companies seeking to boost flagging human productivity must focus on finding the right blend of people and technology. We can do this with a thoughtful approach to job redesign and how human work can best be distributed and evaluated in the near future.

Job Redesign

I briefly talked about job redesign in the first article in this series. Job redesign is the process of rearranging or replacing tasks to better align work with real-time conditions inside and outside the organization.

While leaders may be focusing a lot of attention on job redesign now, the need for it is not unprecedented. For example, the bookkeeper job, once essential for every organization no matter how small, was redesigned in the 1980s to reflect the widespread adoption of accounting software. Back then, if you were a bookkeeper who wanted to remain gainfully employed, you had to determine how to add value beyond the software’s capabilities.

To be fair, job redesign is a more complex proposition today because the onslaught of AI-based technologies in our workplaces is impacting a larger number of jobs. But the transition shouldn’t be overwhelming, as the progression to more complete AI integration is occurring more slowly than most people think. Despite the excitement around generative AI, for instance, practical use cases are still limited. Industry analysts at Gartner even predict that in the next few years, we are likely to fall into a “trough of disillusionment” regarding what AI-based partners can do and what they can’t.

Many organizations have already learned the hard way that strategic job redesign does not involve blunt force – or bringing in a new piece of automation or an AI-based software program and letting go of all of the human employees related to that function. The most effective job redesign initiatives assign smart technology components to handle straightforward, repetitive tasks while human employees remain to provide essential oversight.

Firms like Accenture have already quantified how this shakes out. According to a recent analysis on the impact of generative AI, a current human customer service role can be broken into 13 distinct tasks. Of those 13 component tasks, four must still be fully performed by humans, four could be fully automated, and five involve human and machine partnership. Although Accenture didn’t say this, I’ll point out that the five partnered tasks require substantially more human skill than the four transactional tasks technology is replacing.

For the rest of this article, check out the ManpowerGroup Global Insights blog.

The Future of Skills in the Age of Adaptability

In ManpowerGroup’s 2024 Age of Adaptability trend report, we shared how current demographic shifts are exacerbating labor shortages. Specifically, by 2030, members of Generation Z (born 1996-2012) will compose 58% of the workforce and a majority of the large baby boom generation will have retired.

The resulting knowledge deficit means it’s paramount to forecast the future of skills and use this understanding to fill gaps as efficiently as possible. However, for all of the talk about skills-based organizations – which deconstruct traditional roles, break them down into component parts, and then hire people to handle each part – the progress toward this shift in protocol isn’t as rapid as some would prefer. Between now and 2030, the evolution to a true skills focus will be gradual, and not as simple as merely declaring yourself a skills-based organization.

In this piece, we’ll explore how in the near future, the composition and acquisition of an in-demand, workforce-wide skills portfolio can move organizations toward the goal of a skills-based organization.

Skill Composition

The future of skills is complex and rapidly evolving. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs Report, 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted within five years.

But what skills will be most essential in a world of global, distributed, and automated work, where more surprises are likely around the corner? WEF’s 2023 research found that the hottest skills from an organizational perspective include cognitive and analytical thinking, creative thinking, self-efficacy (resilience, flexibility, and learning agility), curiosity, empathy, social influence, and quality control.

It’s notable that technical AI and big data skills ranked of lower importance than all of these. Why is this the case when AI-related skills are the third highest priority in company training strategies from now until 2027 (nine percent), and the top training priority for companies with more than 50,000 employees?

Leaders may be realizing that it’s not the hard AI and automation skills themselves that are most critical, but the ability to have an effective partner orientation toward working with smart machines. In other words, honing our human “soft” skills is the best way to differentiate our capabilities from AI’s capabilities and provide competent and ethical oversight to the technological “employees” in our workplaces.

In a 2024 LinkedIn Pulse article, systems engineer Arif Sheikh agreed with this take, suggesting that as AI-based technologies automate a greater number of tasks, the value of traditional human skills might at first seem to diminish. But this perspective overlooks the foundational role such skills play in personal development, social interaction, and professional experience.

Sheikh suggested that individuals who learn to navigate social interactions without social media before relying on these platforms will have better outcomes. “This highlights the importance of direct, human connection – a nuance that AI, for all its sophistication, cannot fully replicate,” he said.

In any case, it’s likely that by 2030, the most marketable employees will be those whose skillsets are a blend of job-specific competencies and those that make it possible to work successfully with machines and other humans in a variety of contexts. This means that in terms of training dollars, we might want to put the horse before the cart.

We should also note that within the next ten years, a majority of jobs will have a green component, which may require the development of new skills such as carbon footprinting, sustainability consulting, and climate data analysis across a large swath of industries and functions.

For the rest of this piece, please visit the Manpower Group Global Insights blog.

 

The Future of AI in the Age of Adaptability

For the next several months, I'm going to be featuring a "Future of..." series I'm working on with ManpowerGroup as part of its new Global Insights team.

Within the next five years, we anticipate that the democratization of AI-based technology will lead to greater accessibility across the organization and that employees at all levels will be empowered to integrate AI into relevant job tasks as they see fit. 

As we discussed in “The Age of Adaptability” report, businesses anticipate a 23% churn in jobs over the next five years between the creation of new roles and the reduction of others. But, because more cross-industry examples will emerge detailing how best to deploy AI, organizations won’t be as mystified by its presence and impact on the workforce. AI will increasingly be seen as a force for good!

One might imagine that a futurist has extreme ideas about the future of AI. And while it’s true that I believe AI-based technologies will be true partners in work moving forward and will play a role in the development of the metaverse and immersive work environments that Manpower recently researched, I don’t think the AI of science fiction is likely to come to fruition anytime soon. We are still far from achieving what’s called artificial general intelligence, which is a form of AI that thinks and creates on its own, essentially surpassing human abilities in all types of work.

Since AI-based technologies are not in a position to take over all human jobs as is still feared, this piece will focus on the technologies that are available now – namely generative AI applications and talent intelligence applications – and the role they can realistically play in the workforce in the coming years.

Generative AI Has Legs, But It’s Not the End

Generative AI is capable of generating text, images, or other media by learning the patterns and structure of input training data and then generating new data that has similar characteristics. A workforce-related example involves the development of sophisticated digital assistants that can use an existing arsenal of HR information to respond more accurately to online employee queries, even if they weren’t trained on those exact questions.

The technology has been introduced to the market at a very rapid pace. ChatGPT was released in November of 2022, and then shortly thereafter, OpenAI released a large language model called GPT-4 that was a measurable improvement over the original ChatGPT. Microsoft, Google, and other big technology players are quickly getting in on the action. 

But generative AI is not necessarily the massive breakthrough people think it is. Its release is more the result of a logical linear progression, as we’ve had smart chatbots for quite some time now. Although there has been significant media interest in ChatGPT, it’s not substantially different from what came before. In its current state, generative AI still requires a great deal of human oversight and regulation, and the majority of organizations are just figuring out how to use it effectively for various business purposes. So, if you haven’t cracked the code yet, you shouldn’t lose sleep over it. You’re not behind.

For the rest of this piece, head over to the ManpowerGroup's Global Insights blog.

Talent Intelligence Platforms Use Deep Learning to Close Skills Gaps

The HR community is enthralled by the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) can provide tangible benefits in the quest to effectively source and hire in a tight labor market. But how does this work in practice? 
 
It starts by understanding a branch of AI called deep learning. Deep-learning algorithms, which are inspired by the actions of the human brain, continuously analyze data with a given logical structure. This structure encompasses multiple layers of algorithms called neural networks. 
 
Deep-learning algorithms can’t predict the future or give answers that a human would agree with 100%. Yet they are still valuable. If you’ve ever used a modern search engine and been amazed by the results or if you’ve ever watched the perfect show recommended by your streaming network of choice, you have experienced the power of deep learning. 
 
The main challenge of deep learning is data — specifically, the massive amount required. The talent space alone needs billions of data points about people, career trajectories, skills, and experiences. 
 
But while AI’s reach was once limited by computing power and the availability of data, that’s no longer the case. Today, global neural nets can identify more than a million skills across the world’s 8 billion people. 
 
Then, using this data, AI engineers can develop deep-learning algorithms to determine the best answers to a defined class of questions. In the case of deep talent, such questions might include: Who is the best fit for this specific job requirement? What job is this individual most likely to hold next in their career? 
 
Understanding deep learning’s ability to harness a massive amount of data is only the first step, however. Next, we must explore how deep learning can help us identify skills and transform how we hire people. 
 
The Power of Skills Adjacency 
 
Skills adjacency refers to the inference that a person good at skill A often excels at skill B, and it helps us complete our picture of a human’s true potential and the transferable skills they possess. 
 
In my recent book, “Deep Talent,” my co-authors and I tell the story of Nico Iannotti, a top sales engineer in Europe. Nico wasn’t always involved with either sales or technology. He was, however, previously involved with customer service as a sommelier and waiter. As he put it, skills are interchangeable assets that individuals can leverage in a variety of industry roles and life situations. 
 
“Many of the skills I acquired prior to my corporate career have been very helpful in my role as a client-relationship manager and solution engineer,” he told us. “What is the link between pairing wines and selling software? Both are customer-facing roles, and both provide solutions to a customer’s problem. In both cases, you are building relationships, demonstrating empathy, and selling an emotional experience based on a specific budget. It’s just a change of context, not a completely different skillset.” 

For the rest of the piece, head over to the UKG Workforce Institute.

Don't Be Intimidated by Job Redesign

The need for job redesign is on most HR leaders’ radars in 2024. But in most organizations, it still seems to be more of a talking point than a reality. However, given that Dayforce’s 14^th Annual Pulse of Talent survey found that 37% of respondents said there is a different role with their current employer that better matches their skillset, the process seems ripe with opportunity.

Job redesign is the process of rearranging or replacing tasks to better align work with evolving conditions both inside and outside the organization. And it’s really nothing new. For example, the telegraphist or telegraph operator was one of the first tech-related jobs of the 19^th century. The telegraphist used the most modern equipment available at the time to send and receive Morse code via radio and telephone.

In the 1970s, the telegraph was mostly replaced by telex, a communications network to send text-based messages. So, if you were a telegraphist and you wanted to remain gainfully employed, you had to adapt and learn telex. In other words, the telegraphist job was redesigned with a lot of the same skills and responsibilities – minus the telegraph.

Job redesign may feel more complex and overwhelming today because the pace of technology is faster and has a broader impact in terms of affected occupations. In particular, the arrival of generative AI has leaders wondering exactly how to execute job redesign to incorporate the benefits of this technology.

Before we get into how to make the process more turnkey, let’s address what job redesign is NOT. For example, job redesign is not bringing in a new piece of automation and letting go of all the human employees previously involved in the job targeted by the automation. When integration of automation is done well, the technology takes over more straightforward, repetitive tasks while human employees provide the necessary strategic input, creativity, judgment, and oversight. And that’s where job redesign comes in.

Three practical steps for job redesign
In most knowledge-driven and in many frontline worker occupations, shifting business requirements and emerging technologies mean that employees need new skillsets. Therefore, the process of job redesign involves understanding the individual tasks that encompass the work being done, and then matching or training for skills necessary for those tasks.

Step one: Engage in task analysis

Target a small category of jobs to start, and then assemble a diverse group of stakeholders from across the organization. Make sure this group includes people across levels, and not just leadership, so you have representation from those who are close to the work.

Document the critical tasks currently associated with each job, and note where there are redundancies, areas where technology could be efficiently deployed, and places where you can build a job to become more flexible in structure and environment. You can also rank your tasks according to importance, how often they are performed, how long they take, and the skills required or how people learn how to do each task.

Step two: Create new job titles and descriptions

Next, based on your analysis, group related tasks into new job buckets. With smart technology now helping in new ways with some tasks, there may be room to remove or combine previous jobs. This may involve creating new “super jobs” that cross departmental lines. For example, the new job of people analytics manager might be technically housed in HR but include tasks traditionally housed in IT such as selecting appropriate technology applications, ensuring data quality, and communicating data-related insights to leaders and other constituents.

You can also use this exercise as an opportunity to standardize jobs titles and descriptions across the organization.

For the rest of the piece, head over to the Dayforce blog.

Giving Second Chance Hiring a Chance

Every year, more than 600,000 men and women are released from prison in the United States and nearly one-third will return to prison within three years, according to an article by Crystal Yang in the American Economic Review.

However, employers can take steps to turn that percentage around and mitigate ongoing labor shortages in the process.

Pete Keller, founder of United Legion One Nation (ULON), a nonprofit dedicated to helping the formerly incarcerated become productive members of the community, said that if these individuals can secure gainful employment within the first 30-90 days of their release from prison, we can reduce recidivism from 45% to 17%.

After serving four stints in the penitentiary, Keller recalled being released back into society stripped of everything he needed to rebuild his life. “Being labeled as a felon meant that no one wanted to give me a chance or even extend a helping hand,” he said.

Second Chance hiring refers to the act of employing individuals – including the formerly incarcerated – whose life choices and situations have disadvantaged them in obtaining stable employment.

American food company Dave’s Killer Bread embraced Second Chance hiring after founder Dave Dahl was welcomed back into his family’s bakery following a 15-year prison sentence.

“We have now dedicated ourselves to advancing Second Chance employment, or hiring the best person for the job, regardless of criminal history. We’ve seen first-hand the transformative power of a job and the positive ripple effects on the broader community,” said Dan Letchinger, business unit senior vice president.

Letchinger said that Second Chance hires demonstrate dedication and loyalty every day when they come to the bakery and are passionate about the opportunity to learn and grow.  He cited an “attitude of gratitude” as one of the drivers of this population’s strong work ethic.

“We have found that the performance of employees with criminal backgrounds is often at the same levels or higher than their teammates. And in many cases, these individuals are actually promoted at a faster rate,” Letchinger said.

Despite the benefits, Second Chance hiring is still relatively uncommon. This is mostly because many organizations have a policy of terminating qualified talent solely based on arrest or conviction records. Some states such as Illinois have “Ban the Box” laws, which prohibit private employers with 15 or more employees from asking about criminal history until after an interview or a conditional offer.

Unfortunately, Keller shared, once background checks are conducted, employers often terminate employment due to the disclosure of prior convictions.

“This creates a cycle of disappointment and uncertainty for these individuals who were hopeful for a fresh start in their professional lives,” he said.

Employers do not need to wait for new legislation to be passed to protect and support formerly incarcerated individuals.  And given that labor shortages in most occupations are likely to persist through the coming decades, Second Chance hiring can be an important tool to deepen available talent pools. These guidelines may be useful when considering it.

Understand your mission. Keller reminded employers that Second Chance hiring is not a charitable endeavor, but rather a deliberate plan to enhance staff retention and enjoy the benefits of hiring individuals who are motivated to work despite facing numerous obstacles.

Consult nonprofit organizations. Groups like Jobs for the Future, Refoundry, and ULON can provide essential resources to clarify and execute an effective initiative. “They’re dedicated to educating employers to help them develop a better understanding of the whys and hows of implementing Second Chance Employment hiring practices,” said Letchinger.

Provide unbiased training. A comprehensive, proactive approach that includes all layers of management and staff will ensure that your organization is truly an equal opportunity employer and that diversity, equity, and inclusion becomes embedded in your culture, said Keller.

Have a candid conversation. Letchinger said that when trying to look past candidate backgrounds, it’s worth speaking to the individual about their personal path and being alert to signs that suggest an individual is ready to change.

This piece was originally published in the WSJ Workplace Report.