Disruption is the name of the game and Human Resource Leaders have a prime seat to influence strategic talent agendas that align to this transformation. While the proverbial war for talent is not new, the degree to which candidates are owning the market and are challenging our formal cultures, processes, benefits, and pay practices is rapidly increasing. I’ve experienced four main components driving this disruption, which are causing us to evaluate every aspect of our strategic talent agenda:
- Employee appetite for real-time development and access to learning content instantaneously; the faster the better,
- People managers who desire autonomy to keep the business moving at an accelerated clip, while building intuitive processes that drive success,
- Companies searching for the same skill sets, and
- Numerous new, innovative, and sometimes “sexy” startup companies emerging around the world.
Money reported that although 2016 job openings hit an all-time high, 2017 is predicted to be our best job market in years. When was the last time you asked yourself, “How will I attract new talent, but more importantly balance my approach to ensure I do not lose the talent I currently have”?
It is all about choice. You can sit behind your desk and let it happen around you, or you can be a strong influencer in making it happen. Taking a lead in creating an emerging culture, however, is not for the weak. In fact, it requires each of us to step outside of our comfort zones, avoid our tendencies to over-process solutions, and embrace simplicity.
CSG relies on emerging talent to be successful. To that end, we have adopted more of an agile mindset, focused on uncovering ways to modernize programs that offer flexibility, drive high performance, and are progressive in the marketplace. When our employees make a commitment and invest in us, we believe we need to make the same commitment to invest in each of them. To that end, I want to showcase a few ways that CSG is responding to market disruption and building a strong workforce for today and tomorrow.
The Balancing Act
A flexible vacation plan with an open allotment of time is a benefit that fewer than 2% of companies offer. This year, CSG is proud to announce our rollout of this exciting program. We understand that refreshed employees are more creative, resourceful and engaged. We also recognize that each of our employees are unique in balancing their “work-life”. Our flexible vacation plan enables each individual to take the time that is right for their professional and personal needs, as long as the needs of the business continue to be met. Our philosophy is simple: hire the right individuals who are capable and professional and empower them to own their balancing act and overall success at CSG.
CSG also saw a need to provide better support and balance during the birth and/or adoption of children. Under our innovative program, birth mothers now have the opportunity to spend up to 4 months (16 weeks) fully paid, with the newest member of the family. In addition, the program allows for the spouse/partner and/or adoptive parents the opportunity to spend six weeks, fully paid, with their new child. Again, we believe that employees are more productive and have higher engagement levels when they are empowered to meet life’s demands.
Provide Real Learning on the Employee’s Terms
How many of you have lived this scenario? You are working in your home office and you experience an error code when you are attempting to print a document. What do you do? If like most, you Google, “how do you fix error code ABC123?” content instantly emerges, including the steps of how to fix. Within minutes, you are back in business. We have become accustomed to the ability to access content anytime – anyplace. Unfortunately, many of our current corporate tools and systems are not built with this degree of instant access.
Companies are uncovering that today’s corporate learning and development programs are no longer providing content in the ways the employee base learns best. As a result, many companies are moving away from legacy LMS solutions and turning to micro-learning solutions like Lynda, Grovo, and Pluralsight for on-demand content and learning. As The Business Journals stated, “these solutions are becoming the Netflix of business training” and offer budget-friendly ways for employees to keep skills relevant in today’s evolving workplace at the click of a button.
At CSG, we believe now is the time to rethink and reengineer our enterprise learning programs to provide an agile framework for professional growth. We are intensely focused on building next-generation learning approaches to ensure our employees have instant access to learning that will enhance the experience our customers and developing their own professional growth goals. This type of transformation will not come easy but we are committed to transforming how we approach learning and employee development globally at CSG.
We are only scratching the surface with ways to be disruptive and we have many more steps along our journey. The spotlight is on HR practitioners and the stage is ours. How will you lead and influence your business practices and programs to form your strategic talent agenda to meet the challenges you face and win in 2017?
I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments section below and learning what your teams are doing for your employees in this very competitive market.
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