Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Building the Next Generation of Skills Inside Your Company

It’s common for employees to want to build skills at work, but an effective learning infrastructure isn’t as common. As organizations grow, they tend to lose track of their people’s skills. Leaders don’t know the competencies employees have acquired at work, what they can do next, and the skills they can develop to grow their contributions to the organization. 

Employers often don’t dig too deeply either, preferring instead to seek fresh talent externally when a need presents itself. But even if the current job market could support it, it’s difficult to maintain the hiring pace needed to source emerging skills from the outside. This reality leads to persistent understaffing and longer role vacancies.  

It’s imperative to build a skills-based organization that can flex to evolving business and employee needs. But where to start? 

The following five strategies may prove helpful as you seek to solve today’s labor shortage conundrum with your own reliable and already proven workforce. 

Understand the size and composition of your workforce 

Using analytics programs, employers should determine the current internal and external trends in workforce supply and demand. Examine the gap between the skills possessed by your workforce today and the skills your business requires to be successful now and in the future.  

It might be beneficial to use a skills segmentation matrix that includes the variables of scarcity (how common or uncommon the skill is in the market), criticality (how essential or non-essential the skill is for work to be successfully completed), and volume (how much volume of this skill the business requires).  

Seek feedback on your matrix from a diverse group of stakeholders across the organization, and during your investigation, determine the in-house superstars in in-demand areas. You can then enlist the help of these employees in crafting appropriate strategies and training to boost the organization’s overall level of skill competency. 

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

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 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.

Trends Shaping Talent in 2023

Now that we’re into the second quarter of 2023, we can see that the talent acquisition (TA) world has a different tint. Despite the specter of recent layoffs and a looming recession, widespread skills shortages and a low overall labor force participation rate (LFPR, or the number of people in the workforce or actively looking for work) mean that organizations have had to deploy more innovative recruitment strategies.

These trends are reaching critical mass:

Internal Mobility

When it comes to lateral moves and internal opportunities, most organizations have always talked a good game. However, in practice, managers were more likely to hoard top talent. A poor infrastructure often restricted employee movement from one team to another, even if a manager was supportive. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders recognized the utility of redeploying workers from a slow area of the business into a more viable one. Since then, internal mobility has gained momentum.

This year is different due to the more widespread usage of technologies that drive internal mobility – namely, talent intelligence and predictive analytics. Rather than waiting for an individual employee to express interest in a given position, artificial intelligence allows leaders to proactively determine who within the existing workforce might have the right skill set to meet a current or near-future need or who could be easily trained to do so.

Executive Freelancers

The professional contract workforce has been growing for the last decade, but traditionally, freelancing was mostly limited to individual contributors in professions like writing, marketing and information technology. Because these workers usually completed work that could be more narrowly defined within the scope of a “project,” this made sense.

In 2023, however, pervasive contract work has expanded to other professions, including law and finance. We are increasingly seeing organizations using “interim” c-suite executives to take over for a leader who is on leave, to trial a new hire for fit, or to temporarily fill the position while they search for a permanent hire.

Unfortunately, it is still the case that organizations often treat contract workers as second-class citizens. But as they become a more significant percentage of the employee mix, TA leaders must leverage technology to nurture their relationships with this population and deliver the appropriate opportunities, training and communications.

For more trends, or to check out my recent webinar on talent intelligence, head on over to the SilkRoad blog.

5 Boxes to Check for Your First-Time Manager Experience

The first time I was promoted into a managerial position, I closed the door of my fancy new office and held back tears born of fear and Impostor Syndrome. But here’s the thing. I could leave said office, walk down the hall, and get a pep talk from my boss.

In a distributed workforce where you rarely or never see your own manager or direct reports and are often doing the jobs of three people, you may be experiencing the toughest time in recent history for managers.

According to a Gallup survey, depression increased for managers in 2021 despite being unchanged for leaders and ICs, and one in three managers often or always feel burned out.

In my recent column for the Wall Street Journal’s Workplace Report, I spoke with Alyssa Lahar, chief human resources officer for ZoomInfo, a subscription-based database service. Lahar shared that managers often find themselves not at the bottom rung and but also not in positions of influence, which leads to a feeling of powerlessness. “Middle managers tend to be stretched the thinnest, and their work tends to be unseen,” she said.

Especially vulnerable are first-time middle managers, who too often are thrust into new roles without proper guidance, mentorship, or training. Without the in-person management experience to draw from, it’s even  more important that organizations use technology to fill the gaps.

Specifically, they should identify a solution that immerses new managers in the organization’s approach to leadership, performance, engagement and productivity.

Not only should the technology be customizable for the unique needs of the individual manager, but it should also have the capability to flex with evolving business requirements. If you are smartly rethinking your first-time manager offering, here are five elements to consider including.

• Retention: Providing detailed information on new role expectations and team contributions, reducing the uncertainty, frustration, and burnout that leads to attrition.
• Knowledge Transfer: Communicating with key stakeholders to ensure continuous project management and workflow.
• Recruitment: Making the hiring process as seamless as possible so that managers can quickly select and onboard new talent for vacant roles.
• Talent Management: Facilitating consistent and timely performance evaluations for and engagement with direct reports.
• Internal Mobility: Clarifying manager career paths and opportunities for internal movement and transition.

Build Gen Z's Engagement, Confidence, and Skills

When I was 22 years old, I was struggling mightily in my first job out of college. Even as a high achieving student, I had no idea how to behave in the business world, and despite valiant efforts, I was not successful.

It was hard enough learning the rules when I was physically surrounded by people willing and able to indoctrinate me, and I can’t help but feel for the Generation Z-ers (born 1996-2012) who are launching their careers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

These young professionals are trying to assess responsibilities and expectations in an environment where everyone is behind a screen, scattered around the world.

Gen Z may be digitally adept, but they’ve been prevented from observing a lot of behavior in person, and as such, can’t absorb the nuances of work as easily. It’s one thing to work remotely when you already know how the business world operates and can use established relationships to figure out any ambiguities.

My suspicion is that failing to understand and address this will affect companies’ ability to keep their Gen Z talent, and these young workers will seek out companies that better support them.

I tested this assumption against a recent global Gen Z workforce study from consumer software firm Adobe. The survey of 3,400 workers indicated that more than half of Gen Z employees intend to pursue a new job in the next year – a higher percentage than any other generation. It also found that Gen Z is the least satisfied generation at work, with only 56% satisfied with work/life balance and 59% with their jobs overall.

The pandemic certainly isn’t the only story here. According to a Western Governors University study released just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Gen Z was already suffering. At that time, only 45% of Gen Z-ers said their mental health was good or excellent. That’s significantly lower than the next closest generation, millennials. Thirty-seven percent of Gen Z-ers also reported that they received help from a psychologist or mental health expert – more than any other generation.

While it’s not an employer’s responsibility to solve all of Gen Z’s problems, work-related isolation doesn’t help their cause, and well-placed intervention can go a long way in attracting and keeping young talent.

By combining our knowledge about the temperament and preferences of this generation with the high tech/high touch capabilities of human capital management software, you can rally your junior level employees to higher productivity and engagement.

 

Gen Z strategy 1: Enhanced onboarding

Communicate actively with young professional hires between the offer letter and start date. Do not give them time to regret their decision or change their minds, and instead send targeted, friendly messages expressing your enthusiasm that they’re joining the team. The right employee onboarding software can help support organic interactions and introduce new Gen Z hires to your culture, right from their first day.

When they do come aboard, make sure your orientation schedule and materials are customized to the person and the role. For instance, many Gen Z-ers prefer a one-on-one manager chat and team intros to a generic “about the business” program and would rather consume short video clips via a tech-driven employee onboarding software over a massive employee handbook.

Digitize your paperwork and, keeping in mind diversity and inclusion best practices, put together a roster of topics and expectations to cover that are specific to young professionals. This roster may include areas you think are common sense (e.g. the importance of arriving on time to meetings, the appropriate language to use when texting or emailing a client), but these norms might not be universal across cultures, and Gen Z’s experience with them might be limited.

Work with new hires’ managers to set their goals and learning cadence and build in weekly (if not daily) check-ins to assess how Gen Z-ers are feeling.

Gen Z strategy 2: Flexible scheduling

Many Gen Z-ers have never had to commute to a building and work in an office for a set number of hours every day. Especially when their safety and convenience are at stake, your Gen Z-ers may balk if an employer mandates staff back to the office without good reason.

Engage in employee listening strategies, from official pulse surveys to informal text chats, and ascertain the type of work arrangement that works best for your staff in various cultures and locations. Then, allow individual employees as much control as possible in determining their hours and environment. A hybrid work model can go a long way toward Gen Z employee retention and engagement.

For the rest of the article, head over to the Ceridian blog.