April 2023
HR Leaders
Monthly
HR Leaders
Monthly
Executive Sponsor Peter Aykens
Contents
Editor's Note
3
Defining the Purpose and Scope
of Talent Management
4
5 Priorities for Heads of Talent
Management in 2023
9
How to Use Talent Resources
More Effectively in a
Constrained Environment
17
Strategies to Improve Succession
in a High-Disruption Environment
22
Career Pathing for a Fragmented
Work Landscape
30
Decoupling Work From Jobs:
An Interview With Ravin Jesuthasan
and John Boudreau
37
Metrics of the Month
42
Editor in Chief Jonah Shepp
Managing Editor Carolina Valencia
Associate Editor Tess Lawrence
Contributing Editor Charlie Beekman
Authors
Jane Alancheril
Kelly Armstrong
Sarah Jackson
Tess Lawrence
Caroline Ogawa
Jonah Shepp
Nora Stechschulte
Sasha Sevil Tuzel
Shannon Wiest
Design
Walter Baumann
Tim Brown
Amanda Rothamer
Editor
Melanie Meaders
Project Managers
Lauren Abel
Lindsay Kumpf
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HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 2
Editor’s Note
by Jonah Shepp
Talent management is central to HR’s
evolving role as a strategic function within
the organization. However, there is still no
consensus among HR leaders as to what “talent
management” means. Many essential HR
activities — recruiting, learning and development
(L&D), employee experience, performance
management — fall within the definition of talent
management. Yet talent management leaders
often don’t manage these activities directly.
As talent management becomes more
essential in a world of dynamic labor markets
and fast-changing skills needs, CHROs must
work effectively with their heads of talent
management. A key step is defining the scope of
that role as well as its relationship to other parts
of HR and the broader organization.
Most fundamentally, the role of talent
management leaders is to ensure the
organization has the talent it needs to grow and
succeed. In today’s business environment, that
includes not only attracting and retaining talent
but also ensuring employees can thrive within
the organization and perform their best work.
This issue of HR Leaders Monthly is dedicated to
unpacking this definition of talent management
and exploring its widening purview.
First, we look at how CHROs and talent
management leaders should understand
the current and future scope of this role,
including new and emerging aspects not
addressed in traditional models. We also
cover the key talent management challenges
organizations are most likely to face in
2023 and how to get ahead of them. Our
other articles delve deeper into some of
the key aspects of talent management
today, including career pathing, succession
planning and creative strategies for meeting
talent needs in a resource-constrained
environment. We also feature an interview
with Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau,
co-authors of “Work Without Jobs,” about their
argument for decoupling tasks and skills from
traditional roles.
This journal is intended primarily to help talent
management leaders and CHROs in designing
their talent management strategies and
activities. But we also encourage recruiting
leaders, L&D leaders, and other HR leaders
and professionals to apply these insights in
their roles. Talent management is a practice
with many stakeholders, and everyone has a
part to play in making it successful.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 3
Defining the Purpose
and Scope of Talent
Management
by Jane Alancheril,
Sasha Sevil Tuzel
and Jonah Shepp
Talent management leaders are
responsible for a wide range of
talent activities and outcomes,
including many they don’t directly
own. To succeed in their role, they
must understand the purpose of
talent management and its essential
elements: processes, stakeholder
engagement and integration.
“What is talent management?”
This seemingly simple question doesn’t have
a simple answer. As talent management
leaders can attest, their work encompasses a
variety of activities and objectives, which vary
significantly by organization. Furthermore, with
today’s frequent disruption and rapid change,
talent management leaders and practitioners
must evolve with the business environment
and respond to different challenges and
expectations from year to year — or
month to month.
So, in defining talent management, the question
organizations really need to answer is more
complicated: “What does talent management
mean today, and what will it mean tomorrow?”
When we asked talent management leaders what
centers of excellence they were responsible
for, we received a wide range of responses (see
Figure 1). Leadership development, learning
and development, succession management
and performance management were the most
common responsibilities. But some talent
management leaders’ remit encompasses areas
Figure 1: Responsibilities of Talent Management Leaders
Percentage of Respondents
Leadership Development
87%
Learning and Development
87%
81%
Succession Management
77%
Performance Management
Organizational Design /
Organizational Effectiveness
52%
39%
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
32%
Recruiting
29%
Talent Analytics
19%
Employee Relations
Total Rewards Planning
6%
0%
50%
100%
n = 31 talent management leaders
Source: 2022 Gartner State of Employee Experience Survey
Q. Please indicate which COEs you oversee. Select all that apply.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 5
such as organization design; diversity, equity and
inclusion; and recruiting.1
With so many different tasks to focus on, talent
management’s role and purpose can feel unclear.
Worse, these activities all take place in different
parts of the HR function, creating a tangled
web of responsibilities (see Figure 2). Yet this
complexity also reveals an essential function
of talent management, which illustrates why
it’s so important: Talent management revolves
around the idea of creating connections between
interdependent activities that impact the
employee life cycle.
The Purpose of
Talent Management
The various activities involved in talent
management all support its fundamental
purpose: to ensure the organization has the
talent it needs to grow and succeed. To fulfill that
purpose, talent management leaders must:
• Attract, engage, develop and retain employees.
• Enable high performance.
• Enhance employee experience and well-being.
Figure 2: Talent Management Activities Throughout an Organization
Managing
High-Potential
Employees
Acquiring
Specific Talent
Segments
Managing
Change
Managing
Diversity
and Inclusion
Managing
Organization
Design
Managing
Employee Value
Proposition
Developing
Leaders
Identifying
Critical Talent
Assessing and
Hiring Talent
Identifying
Talent
Acquisition
Needs
Managing
Succession
Analyzing L&D
Needs and
Investments
Managing
Employee
Performance
Building a Total
Rewards
Strategy
Identifying
and Managing
Competencies
Recruiting
Executives
Developing
Critical Talent
Segments
Designing
and Building
L&D Solutions
Developing
Organizational
Capability
Conducting
Talent Reviews
Managing
Employee
Engagement
Implementing
L&D Solutions
Managing
Mobility and
Career Paths
Sourcing
Talent
Source: Gartner
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 6
The first two are familiar terrain, but the third
is a newer remit for many talent management
leaders. Organizations increasingly recognize
the importance of employee experience and
well-being for retaining talent and driving
performance in today’s work environment. Since
these activities have such a significant impact on
talent management’s core purpose, they should
also be part of its portfolio.
The Purpose of
Talent Management
The core role of talent
management leaders is to ensure
the organization has the talent it
needs to grow and succeed.
The Three Elements of
Effective Talent Management
Each talent management model incorporates
a different set of activities or workstreams,
all of which can be considered part of talent
management. Those models often look different
depending on the size or maturity of the
organization. But at the end of the day, effective
talent management at any organization must
incorporate three elements:
1. Talent processes and activities that support
the employee life cycle, from hire to retire
— Talent management is everything from
onboarding to hiring, to how you assess and
review talent, develop employees and leaders,
select and advance successors, or support
internal mobility.
2. Ongoing stakeholder engagement to
influence and co-create talent solutions
— Effective talent management doesn’t just
mean running annual processes (such as
the performance management process). It
requires upskilling and empowering others
to effectively manage talent, and co-creating
talent solutions that meet the needs of the
business and employees. As a client recently
told us: “Engaging our stakeholders is often
the most important work we’re doing.”
3. Integration to connect talent processes
using technology and talent data — Talent
management must be integrated, even in
organizations that don’t explicitly say they
have an integrated talent management model.
For example, if you are trying to build a
technical talent pipeline, you have to connect
your workforce planning efforts to your
talent acquisition strategies as well as your
development planning and strategies.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 7
Most talent management models only cover the
first of these elements, but the other two are
indispensable. Putting the right processes in
place is only a start.
The Future of
Talent Management
Talent management is always evolving, and talent
management leaders should anticipate that their
role will continue to change in the coming years.
The current evolution in talent management is
toward greater focus on improving the speed,
scale and relevance of talent processes and
activities through agile stakeholder engagement
and integration. Thinking back to the three
elements of talent management — processes,
stakeholder engagement and integration — we
see an increasing level of interaction among
these activities.
Examples of these trends include:
• Developing minimum viable products
to optimize moments that matter
(e.g., onboarding)
• Building skills strategies to more quickly
close talent gaps
Upcoming
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topics. These webinars
present an opportunity for
you to gain insights from our
research experts on making
better decisions for your
function and organization.
Defining Talent Management
in an Evolving Future of Work
• Scaling development and growth opportunities
to all employees
The Gartner 2023 HR Benchmarks
and Investment Trends
• Expanding talent processes
(e.g., succession management)
• Modifying talent processes for hybrid models
Connect Your HR Technology
Strategy to Transformational
Business Outcomes
• Co-creating and executing DEI and employee
well-being strategies
Strategies for HR Transformation
Success in an Uncertain Environment
As talent management grows in scope and
becomes responsible for a greater range of talent
outcomes, talent management leaders must
move quickly, adapt, and leverage new tools and
methodologies to address a fast-changing set of
business priorities.
1
How to Identify, Fix and
Prevent Change Fatigue
2022 Gartner State of Employee Experience Survey. This survey was
conducted to understand and benchmark employee experience and
talent management teams from a functional perspective. The research
was conducted online from 31 October 2022 through 7 February 2023.
The survey contains responses from 49 heads of employee experience
and heads of talent management from various geographies and
industries.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 8
5
Priorities
for Heads of
Talent Management
in 2023
by Nora Stechschulte
2023 will bring continued disruption and innovation in talent
management, including new technology; continued employee
burnout; and evolutions in skills, employee expectations and
the definition of “talent.” This article explains these trends and
proposes next steps for talent management leaders.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 9
The past few years have seen continuous
disruption, innovations and ever-increasing
complexity in the talent management space.
2023 will be no exception. Talent management
leaders must work with business leaders to find
and retain the best talent amid a background
of economic uncertainty, a turbulent talent
market, and the continued shift to hybrid
work. Following are five key trends they
should be tracking in 2023, along with our
recommendations for how to respond.
1. Evolving Employee
Expectations and a
Competitive Labor Market
How to Respond: Treat Employees as Humans,
Not Just Workers
Amid the integration of work and life in the wake
of COVID-19, employees increasingly expect
their employers to treat them as humans, not
just employees (see Figure 1). Despite attempts
Figure 1: A Fundamental Shift in Employee Expectations
Key Value Drivers for Employees
Flexibility Is a Must-Have
“Whether or not I can work
flexibly would impact whether I
stay at my organization.”
49%
Disagree
or Neutral
Well-Being Gains Importance
“How important is it to work for
an organization that sees you as a
person, not just an employee?”
15%
Low or Medium
Importance
51%
Agree
Growth Goes Beyond the Role
“How important is it to you
to work for an organization
that provides opportunities to
learn skills that will make you
more employable outside the
organization?”
23%
Low or Medium
Importance
85%
High
Importance
77%
High
Importance
n = 4,264 employees worldwide
n = 3,000 candidates
n = 3,000 candidates
Source: 2021 Gartner Hybrid Work Employee Survey
Source: 2021 Gartner Candidate Survey
Source: 2021 Gartner Candidate Survey
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
10
to modernize the employee value proposition
(EVP), employee engagement has remained
stagnant since 2016.1 Meeting employees’ new
expectations is critical, as employees have little
hesitation and plenty of opportunity to leave:
• Seventy percent of surveyed employees
are actively looking for or open to new job
opportunities.2
• Fifty-one percent of surveyed candidates have
had a company reach out to them about a job
opening without applying first.3
As part of their call for more human treatment,
employees want flexibility. Eighty-six percent
of employees said it was important that their
organizations offer location-based flexibility, and
91% said it was important that their organizations
offer hour-based flexibility.2 Employees also
want more transparency, especially when it
comes to pay, yet only 40% of employees say
their organizations are transparent about their
pay practices.4
Furthermore, as a new generation enters the
workforce, employee expectations around growth
and development have evolved. Young workers not
only want opportunities to advance their careers
but also want to develop fast-changing skills and
achieve certifications to document those skills.
Additionally, they want opportunities to explore
multiple areas of interest to find the career paths
best-suited to them. In fact, Gen Z employees are
more likely than any other generation to report
they would stay with an employer for upskilling
and reskilling opportunities.5
To meet increasing employee expectations and
improve retention rates, talent management
leaders should consider:
• Creating and deploying a listening strategy to
understand the unique concerns of employees
at their organizations
2. An Expanding
Definition of Talent
How to Respond: Acknowledge All Workers
as Important, Not Just HIPOs and FullTime Employees
The definition of talent has expanded over the
past few years and will continue to evolve in
the coming years. The workforce has become
extremely diverse, not only in demographics but
also in preferred working styles, skills and types
of employment. Heads of talent management
must navigate this changing workforce and
adapt their organizations’ employment models to
support diversity in career trajectories.
One shift heads of talent management must
adapt to is the increasing number of contingent
or gig workers. The gig economy is expected to
reach a gross volume of $455.2 billion this year.6
As contingent workers become a larger part of
the workforce, they play a bigger role than ever
before in driving business results. In response,
talent management leaders must integrate them
into the organization, instill cultural norms, and
consider their development and retention.
Many talent management leaders are also
reevaluating their definition of high-potential
(HIPO) talent and determining whether their
talent assessment approaches align with their
strategies and EVPs. Leaders increasingly
recognize that all employees have potential.
The question is, potential for what? To ensure
all employees receive the right growth
opportunities, progressive organizations provide
actionable next steps for all talent segments,
including future leaders as well as valued
performers and core talent.
• Finding opportunities to practice transparency
with employees and encouraging other HR
leaders to do the same, especially when
it comes to pay
• Offering employees flexibility on at least one of
the following: when they work, how they work
and where they work
• Making career pathing and employee
development a priority
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 11
To adapt their organizations to the new
definition of talent, talent management leaders
should consider:
• Building processes to integrate contingent
workers into the organization and help them
adapt to the organization’s culture
• Updating talent assessment and development
strategies to ensure all employees are treated
as having potential for growth
3. Innovations
in HR Technology
How to Respond: Use Tech to Improve
Efficiency and the Employee Experience,
Not Just to Integrate Processes
As technology continues to evolve, the head
of talent management’s role in implementing
innovative uses of technology and digitizing HR
continues to grow. As in years past, heads of
talent management will continue to integrate
and automate HR processes using human capital
management (HCM) platforms. However, they
must be mindful that the shift to self-service or
automation often redirects accountability for
HR processes away from HR professionals and
toward managers and employees themselves.
Shifting responsibility to managers and
employees through self-service can reduce
unnecessary bottlenecks, and automation
can improve efficiency; however, talent
management leaders must ensure HR experts
still support certain complicated or sensitive
processes when needed.
To drive engagement and retention, heads of
talent management should consider the use
of gamification for rewards and recognition
as well as learning management platforms.
Skills management and learning experience
ranked as the top two priorities for HR tech
leaders in 2023.7 Certificates, badges and
game-like learning interfaces can help boost
engagement and skills development, improving
overall retention.
Finally, heads of talent management should
begin to explore the use of large language
models, such as ChatGPT, within their function.
They should determine potential use cases (such
as creating job postings or drafting performance
reviews), identify risks and set guardrails before
introducing this technology.
To improve technological maturity in talent
management, talent management leaders
should consider:
• Continuing to streamline and automate key
talent processes with support from IT and other
HR leaders while considering what should and
should not be made self-service
• Testing the use of gamification for rewards and
recognition to improve engagement
• Utilizing AI to support talent acquisition
and talent management through smart
advertising, candidate sourcing and internal
talent marketplaces
• Exploring use cases and risks associated with
the implementation of large language models
Heads of talent management must also work
within HCM platforms or with IT leaders to
implement the use of AI for talent acquisition
and talent management. Thirty-nine percent of
HR technology leaders listed implementing AI for
talent acquisition as a top three priority for 2023.7
AI can power smart advertising and candidate
sourcing, reducing the time it takes to fill key
positions. It can also help power an internal
talent marketplace, matching employees to
opportunities within the organization to improve
internal talent mobility and support the shift to
skills-based project placement.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 12
4. Continued
Employee Burnout
These include:
How to Respond: Address the Causes of
Burnout, Not Just the Symptoms
• Overwhelmed teams — Teams have too
much work and struggle to ensure they’re
working with the right people and with the
right information.
Despite organizations’ increasing efforts to
reduce burnout through well-being initiatives
and improved benefits, employees continue to
report fatigue and low levels of workforce health.
Forty-four percent of employees report feeling
emotionally drained from work.2 Well-being
resources are a good start, but they only treat
the symptoms of burnout.
• Trapped resources — Legacy approaches
to budgeting and staffing don’t represent
the fluid way resources need to move today
(see Figure 2).
• Rigid processes — Centralized and
standardized processes don’t flex enough for
the experimentation and nonstandard ways of
working needed in a more responsive culture.
Heads of talent management must dig deeper
and address the root causes of burnout.
Figure 2: Causes of Burnout
Overwhelmed Teams
I struggle to find the
right information to
do my job.
It is difficult to identify the
people in my organization who
can help me do my job well.
Trapped Resources
In my team, we don’t
have sufficient budget
to get our work done.
The people on my
team are not the
people we need.
We don’t tweak the
operating budget
throughout the
year once it is set.
The volume of
tasks keeps rising.
Rigid Processes
My work is regularly
delayed by specific
colleagues or teams
in the organization.
Decisions take
longer to make
than they should.
It takes too long to
secure signoff for
new approaches
or ideas.
Source: Gartner
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
13
To address these root causes, talent
management leaders must first offer better
support to their managers and line leaders.
Often, managers are responsible for ensuring
the well-being of their employees without
anyone looking out for the managers themselves.
Only 37% of managers report high levels of
health.8 Initiatives that are offered to employees,
such as meeting-free days, flexibility and
workload management support, must also be
offered to managers.
Second, heads of talent management must
consider ways they design work itself to prevent
employees from feeling overwhelmed. They
should identify points of friction — such as
multiple layers of signoff or outdated work
processes — that can be eliminated to make
employees’ jobs easier. They should then equip
managers with the tools to help their teams
reprioritize and stop doing unnecessary work.
To treat the causes of burnout, talent
management leaders should consider:
• Providing extra support and
resources to managers
• Redesigning and reprioritizing work to
eliminate friction and unnecessary workflows
5. Rapidly Changing Talent
Needs and High Turnover
How to Respond: Move From Role-Based to
Skills-Based Talent Management
With rapid improvements in technology and
constantly changing business priorities, the
skills required to meet organizational needs are
continuously evolving. The total number of skills
required for a single job is increasing by 5.4%
annually, and 33% of the skills required in a 2019
job posting will not be required by 2024.9 Shifting
skills needs, combined with high turnover rates,
have made it difficult for organizations to deliver
on business priorities. As a result, many heads
of talent management are considering a shift to
skills-based talent management, which allows
flexibility in how talent is deployed and prevents
critical skills from getting trapped in one area of
the business.
A skills-based model focuses not on the task,
region or business unit but on skills proficiency.
If employees are proficient in a certain skill,
they can work on projects anywhere in the
organization where that skill is needed rather
than sticking to a particular area of the business.
The shift to skills-based talent management
requires heads of talent management to
rethink their internal mobility strategies. When
backfilling positions, creating succession plans
or even staffing projects, they should consider
employees who have the right skills for the
position regardless of their current role. They
must also encourage recruiters to look beyond
experience when evaluating candidates and
emphasize skills proficiency instead.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
14
To transition to a skills-based talent
management model, talent management leaders
should consider:
• Designing skills-based roles during
strategic workforce planning rather than
task-based roles
• Adapting performance management processes
and total rewards to skills-based planning — for
example, by creating skills-based competency
frameworks and rewarding employees
based on skills proficiency rather than
completion of tasks
1
2016-2020 Gartner Global Labor Market Surveys. This was a panel
survey carried out once every quarter. Every quarter, about 25,000
employees globally participated in this survey. Responses were
collected in more than 15 different languages from employees in 40
different countries.
2
2022 Gartner New Talent Landscape and Career Pathing Survey. This
survey was conducted to better understand employees’ attitudes
toward the hyper competitive labor market and their feelings on
career pathing in hybrid roles. The survey was conducted online from
28 February to 23 March 2022 and contains responses from 3,370
employees with representation from various regions, industries and
functions.
3
2022 Gartner Candidate Survey. This survey was conducted online
from 6 May through 7 June 2022. A total of 3,621 candidates from
14 countries, 23 industries and 20 functions were polled on their
experiences and behaviors during the hiring process. Respondents
were required to meet the following criteria: (1) applied for one or more
jobs in the past 12 months, (2) contacted by at least one organization
to complete an assignment or participate in an interview in the
past 12 months, and (3) working at an organization of 1,000 or more
employees.
4
2022 Gartner Total Rewards Pay Equity and Transparency Survey. This
survey was conducted to understand various aspects of organizations’
approaches to pay equity and communication design. The research
was conducted online from 14 April through 19 May 2022 among 3,523
employees with representation from various geographies, industries
and functions.
5
2022 Great Resignation: The State of Internal Mobility and Employee
Retention Report, Lever
6
Gig Economy in the U.S. — Statistics and Facts, Statista
7
2022 Gartner HR Technology Priorities Survey. This survey set out
to learn about the most critical HR technology issues impacting HR
leaders. Two surveys were conducted. The first was a client survey from
5 October to 21 October; 138 responses were received. The second
was a funded non-client survey from 21 November to 13 December;
201 responses were received. Respondents were full-time, director or
above in the HR, IT, or executive management function with authority
in budget and purchasing decisions.
8
2022 Gartner Workforce Change Fatigue Survey. This survey was
conducted to understand the levels of change fatigue among
employees and the manager’s role in mitigating change fatigue. The
research was conducted online from 28 February through 16 March
2022 among 3,548 respondents (including 1,705 managers) from
various geographies, industries and functions. Responses to this
question came from 1,705 respondents who identified themselves as
managers.
9
Powered by TalentNeuron
• Working with learning and development and
business leaders to develop learning agility
throughout the organization
• Ensuring recruiters consider applicants’ skills
proficiency, not just their experience
Conclusion
As the head of talent management role
becomes more prevalent, it becomes
increasingly complex and bears responsibility
for ensuring the organization is equipped to
build the workforce of the future. Heads of
talent management must strive to proactively
address challenges and disruptions in 2023,
starting with these five trends.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 15
HR Transformation
Toolkit
HR transformation is more urgent now than
ever before, as talent becomes an even
greater driver of competitive advantage.
It’s critical for success in a world with new
cost pressures, hybrid work models and
ever-evolving employee expectations.
This toolkit provides actionable resources
to support a successful HR transformation,
including:
World-class
leadership
Modern HR
operating model
Future-proof HR
team competencies
HR technology
enablement
Download Your
HR Transformation
Toolkit
Source: Gartner
© 2023 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2154099
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 16
How to Use
Talent Resources
More Effectively
in a Constrained
Environment
By Sarah Jackson
In an environment where organizations face
talent and budget constraints, HR leaders
must be resourceful and adaptive in meeting
talent needs. By using innovative resourcing
approaches for critical work, HR leaders
can deliver effective solutions in times of
uncertainty and constraint.
Many organizations are struggling to acquire the
talent they need due to labor market shortages
or budget constraints. While the underlying
cause of the challenge differs by organization
or industry, the result is the same: HR leaders
are being asked to do more with less. In an
environment of talent and budget constraints,
the need to assess and allocate talent
resources in line with the speed of business
becomes paramount.
HR leaders need to reinvent the way they
address critical work and deliver talent solutions
in a more adaptive way. They should start by
prioritizing critical roles and deconstructing
them into tasks. This process will help them
understand current and near-term talent
priorities and ensure they are using their limited
resources in a targeted way. HR leaders should
then focus their efforts on redistributing tasks
across the talent ecosystem using dynamic and
innovative resourcing strategies.
Meet Critical Talent Needs
With Dynamic Resourcing
Solutions
Traditionally, organizations have built or bought
talent to meet their resourcing needs. In fact,
HR leaders have been twice as likely to fill talent
gaps through building or buying initiatives
compared to any other talent strategy.1 However,
when facing budget constraints, long-term
demographic shifts, high turnover and fierce
competition for top talent, building or buying
initiatives become less viable. Instead, HR
leaders need to explore more creative options,
moving beyond role-based solutions to resource
work tasks in a more fluid and iterative way.
Figure 1: Reallocation of Tasks Beyond Building and Buying Solutions
Low
High
Disruption
New Role
Creation
Role
Configuration
Group a set of
tasks into a new
role.
Increase scope of
role or employeeowned specialization
of role.
Internal
Redeployment
Make internal
movement or
rotations based
on tasks.
Secure-Flex
Work Models
Connect gigified
employees
to projects of
interest.
Organizational
Design
Create a
generalist pool
that operates
in a flow-to model.
Task
Self-Selection
List all internal
work in task form
for employees to
choose work.
Automation and Artificial Intelligence
Replace monotonous, rote tasks with automation or AI.
Source: Gartner
The resourcing solutions organizations engage in
fall on a spectrum, ranging from less disruptive
(such as new role creation) to more disruptive
(such as task self-selection) (see Figure 1).2,3,4,5,6
Regardless of the level of disruption, each
solution provides more slack in the talent
ecosystem, allowing organizations to supply the
business with talent inputs and complete critical
tasks in resource-constrained environments.
closed, but it needed more employees
supporting its mortgage business, which
was experiencing high demand. Rather than
making layoffs in retail and hiring externally for
mortgages, TDECU used internal mobility to
transfer employees within the organization. It
made these transfers based on tasks to ensure
the transferred employees could utilize their
existing skill sets in their new positions.
Following are some of the innovative approaches
we have seen organizations take to meet talent
needs outside the build/buy paradigm. In a
changing, uncertain and resource-constrained
environment, these strategies benefit employees
and employers alike.
Internal redeployment can be mutually
beneficial for the employee and the employer
during times of talent and budget constraints.
It provides employees with the opportunity
to learn new skills, expand their networks and
find new meaning in their work. And it allows
organizations facing budget constraints to be
more cost-effective by mobilizing their current
talent to reduce the need to hire new full-time
employees. For organizations facing talent
constraints, redeployment increases their agility
in the face of constant change. They’re able to
creatively leverage existing knowledge and skills
when they are unable to acquire new external
talent in a timely manner.
Internal Redeployment
Credit union TDECU provides an interesting
case for internal redeployment: a resourcing
solution that 57% of HR leaders already use.7
TDECU experienced temporary areas of excess
talent supply and demand during the COVID-19
pandemic. Retail branches were temporarily
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 19
Secure-Flex Work Models
Secure-flex work models provide employees with
both the flexibility of gig work and the security
of permanent work. An example of a secureflex work model is Unilever’s U-Work concept.3
Through the U-Work model, employees work on
varying assignments rather than in a fixed role.
They receive a monthly retainer and benefits,
and they get paid for each assignment they
complete. U-Work employees can design their
own work patterns, selecting assignments that
range from a few days to a few months long and
align to their areas of interest and skill.
In return for the flexible working approach
employees get in a secure-flex model,
organizations experiencing budget constraints
get a more economical way to pay employees
for the work they do. Organizations experiencing
talent constraints can also use secure-flex
approaches to access skilled talent for upcoming
tasks and projects more fluidly, tapping into
critical talent resources as needed. This concept
also enables organizations to expand their
talent pools to include workers transitioning to
retirement or individuals who only want to work
part-time. Using employees who are already
familiar with the organization increases speed
to productivity and cultural alignment, for which
organizations would normally need to account
when externally hiring gig or contract workers.
Automation and AI
Finally, organizations are exploring increasingly
sophisticated ways to incorporate automation
and AI into their talent strategies. White Castle,
for example, has been experimenting with using
robots to flip burgers in its restaurants. The
intention is to alleviate some of the pressure on
employees and allow them more time to focus
on customers.4 By automating this routine,
monotonous task, White Castle can create a
less stressful, more engaging experience for its
frontline workforce.
While automation and AI solutions often require
a substantial initial investment, they help
organizations facing budget constraints by
reducing the longer-term costs of hiring new fulltime employees, onboarding, training and time
to productivity. For organizations facing talentconstraints, automation and AI lessen the burden
on the existing workforce by removing tasks from
its workload, thus reducing the risk of burnout.
Automation and AI solutions work well for tasks
that are repetitive, have low human centricity and
don’t provide high levels of employee fulfillment.
Choosing the Right Solution
There is no one-size-fits-all approach here, and
different resourcing solutions will suit different
organizations. To find the best-fit solution, HR
leaders should first assess the tasks within the
critical roles at their organizations against core
Table 1: Priorities for Organizations in Each EX-Ready Quadrant
If ...
Keep Create Expand
Create
Apply
Use Internal
Leverage
Task in New Task Into
Redeploy Specialized SecureDeploy
Project
Contigence
Slated Role for Other
Internally Center of File x Work
AI
Marketplace
Labor
Role
Tasks
Roles
Excellence
Model
... portability is high
... portability is low
... fulfillment is high
... fulfillment is low
... complexity is high
... complexity is low
... human centricity is high
... human centricity is low
... interdependence is high
... interdependence is low
... recurrence is high
... recurrance is low
... ease of learning is high
... ease of learning is low
... task time is high
... task time is low
... regulation is high
... regulation is low
criteria such as portability, complexity and
human centricity. This will allow them to consider
which resourcing solutions may be an option for
their specific needs (see Table 1).
After identifying possible resourcing options,
HR leaders should determine which solutions
would be most appropriate and realistic for their
organizations using criteria such as cost, time,
value, viability and impact on the workforce.
For example, HR leaders may have identified from
the task assessment that deploying AI could be
an option, but if they are facing time constraints,
this may not be the most appropriate solution
given the implementation time AI requires. HR
leaders should also be thoughtful about the
number of solutions they adopt in order to
preempt challenges in accountability, talent
management and work friction.
Conclusion
When organizations face talent and budget
constraints, they must find innovative ways
to meet talent needs in a resourceful and
adaptive way and deliver on business priorities
without burning out the existing workforce.
By deconstructing critical roles into tasks and
using innovative resourcing solutions to execute
these tasks, HR leaders can ensure critical work
gets done in the most effective way, at the
speed of business.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
2022 Gartner “Building Workforce Planning Maturity With Targeted
Investments” Webinar Poll (18 May). Responses were provided by 89
HR practitioners. Questions included “Do you have a trusted system for
evaluating employee skills?” and “Select the talent strategies you use
to fill skills gaps.”
Workforce Planning in the Age of COVID-19, SHRM.
Future Workplace, Unilever.
White Castle to Hire 100 Robots to Flip Burgers, Today.
Should Employees Be Allowed to Choose What They Want to Do?
INSEAD Knowledge.
Information on the practices of Goodway Group, TDECU and BBVA
was shared with Gartner through interviews with, and documentation
provided by, the companies.
2023 Gartner “Does Strategic Workforce Planning Still Have a Place in
2023 and Beyond?” Webinar Poll (7 February). This poll was conducted
as part of a webinar and includes responses from 101 HR leaders
across all regions and all major industries. HR leaders were asked:
“Which of the following alternative resourcing strategies does your
organization currently use? Select all that apply.”
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
21
Strategies
to Improve
Succession in a
High-Disruption
Environment
By Kelly Armstrong
In the wake of work
environment changes,
traditional leadership
succession processes are
ill-equipped to produce and
retain the best successors.
Talent management leaders
can use this research to
learn best practices for
building strong leadership
pipelines amid disruption.
Succession is an essential talent management
tool — not only for long-term planning but also
for employee engagement and retention. Ninetyfour percent of HR leaders say it’s important that
their formal succession processes help them
retain high-caliber talent.1
However, in the current business environment,
traditional succession planning strategies
can’t keep up with the pace of disruption and
change. Close to two-thirds of HR leaders say
talent shortages and attrition will have a major
impact on their 2023 talent strategies.2 High
turnover weakens succession pipelines and
leaves organizations with fewer options for filling
critical roles.
The shift to hybrid work has also created
succession challenges. Underrepresented talent
is often less visible in a hybrid environment,
and leaders may be unaware of many potential
successors. Fifty percent of HR leaders say
their organizations require employees to work
in the office at least once per week;3 however,
on-site work requirements are unlikely to solve
disparities in visibility between employees who
primarily work outside the office and those who
spend more time in the office.
To strengthen leadership benches in this
environment, talent management leaders must
move beyond traditional models and evolve
their succession processes to be more adaptive,
equitable and human. These three attributes
are the foundation of a succession strategy
that meets employees’ evolving expectations
while developing and retaining leaders who
are equipped to handle a fast-changing set of
business needs.
build opportunities throughout their succession
planning processes to make critical adjustments
as business needs change.
Roles often change with business needs, so
assessing role design should be a regular part of
the succession process as well. Bridgestone, for
example, has adapted its approach to succession
planning to reflect this reality.
Engage in Adaptive
Succession Planning
to Meet Changing Needs
Talent management leaders should regularly
reevaluate their organizations’ succession plans
by integrating conversations about succession
planning into natural business rhythms. For
example, they might encourage business leaders
to invite HR business partners (HRBPs) to key
recurring business unit meetings. This approach
facilitates discussions about how strategy
changes affect the business unit’s succession
plans. Or, if a successor is involved in a critical
project, talent management leaders could
ask HRBPs to gather information on how the
project affects the successor’s readiness for the
future role.
In an environment of constant change and
disruption, succession processes must be
resilient. Talent management leaders should
Succession should be a continuous conversation
to fully integrate the organization’s talent and
business strategies.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 23
Case in Point:
Agile Succession
Planning
Facilitate Equitable
Succession Planning With
Relationships and Advocacy
Before discussing who should fill a critical
role, Bridgestone’s HR and business leaders
analyze the role itself and consider making
changes based on current and future
business needs. They ask questions like,
“If the person in this critical role leaves,
would we keep this role?” and, “Knowing
our strategy and future goals, do we need
this role as it looks today?” If a change is
needed, Bridgestone’s leaders eliminate
the role, split it up based on potential
successors’ current capabilities or redesign
it based on strategic goals.
Organizations want more diverse leadership
benches, but succession pipelines are not
currently diverse. The second most common
challenge for HR leaders in succession planning
is that they lack a diverse set of succession
candidates.1 To advance diversity within the
organization, senior leaders must be aware
of, and advocate for, underrepresented
talent, as leaders are often the driving factor
in progressing diverse talent. But it’s even
more difficult for leaders to be aware of
underrepresented talent in a hybrid world, as
employees spend less time face-to-face with
colleagues outside their immediate teams. This
lack of direct interaction may cause leaders to
prioritize candidates with whom they work more
frequently in succession decisions, overlooking
other qualified, diverse candidates.
Bridgestone
To prepare its talent to step into roles as
business needs change, Bridgestone creates
pools of potential successors for roles that
are duplicated across multiple business
units. (For example, multiple business units
may have a vice president of finance.)
These cross-business talent pools increase
the number of available successors for
a given role, which makes it easier to fill
critical roles if someone leaves suddenly
(see Figure 1). Having more successors to
choose from also makes it easier to pick
the right person for a critical role to fit the
organization’s needs.
Figure 1: Bridgestone's Talent Pools
VP of Finance Talent Pool
To be placed in a talent pool,
employees must:
• Have high-potential status.
• Have relevant experience and skills for the
associated role.
• Be willing to move across business units.
• Have learning agility (adapt well to
new situations).
These criteria ensure Bridgestone’s
succession process is adaptive and
identifies leaders who are adaptable.
VP of Finance BU 1
VP of Finance BU 3
VP of Finance BU 2
Source: Adapted From Bridgestone
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
24
Case in Point:
Talent Profiles
Corning
HR leaders at Corning created talent profiles
that leaders throughout the organization can
view, improving the visibility of the global
talent market (see Figure 2). These talent
profiles and scorecards facilitate talent
planning meetings as well as conversations
among HR, managers and employees
about succession, career pathing and
development. Corning also developed an
advanced talent search tool, enabling HR
and managers to discover talent and
potential successors from throughout the
global organization.
Employees and managers update these profiles
throughout the year, making edits on Corning’s
HR information system platform. The frequent
use of the talent profiles and scorecards
for talent conversations helps create social
pressure to have up-to-date data.
Figure 2: Corning's Talent Profiles
Illustrative
Sam D, Boston, MA, Director of Engineering
Employee Talent Profile
Employee Talent Scorecard
Employee-Entered Information
Visible Across the Organization
Manager-Entered Information
Visible to Select Managers and HR
Work History (Corning)
Glass engineer
Talent Designation
Emerging talent
Work History
(Pre-Corning)
Materials engineering,
tech industry
Performance History
2020 — Fully met
expectations
2021 — Exceeded
expectations
Significant Career
Accomplishments
Led design of cuttingedge glass tech
Strengths
Relationship Building,
motivating others
Career Aspirations (Limited VP, engineering, display
View*)
Areas of Development
R&D management, visibility
across the organization
Development Objectives
(Limited View*)
Drive innovation
across team
Possible Future Positions
Senior director, VP
Mobility
(Limited View*)
Willing to relocate globally
Succession Plans
VP, engineering (readyfuture)
Skills Profile
Critical reasoning,
leadership
Source: Adapted From Corning
* Limited View = Visible only to the employee's manager and HRBP
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
25
Talent management leaders can counteract
this reduced visibility by sharing data on equity
gaps and making it easier for leaders to address
them. Talent management leaders should ensure
leaders are aware of all the great talent within the
organization by making it easier for leaders to
compare succession candidates with whom they
work less frequently.
Talent management leaders should also
encourage leaders to form relationships with
a diverse set of high-potential talent. Such
relationships enable leaders to advocate for those
individuals during succession conversations.
Advocacy can improve the visibility of talent
working in remote environments.
Leaders can form such relationships, for example,
by organizing a formal networking framework
that empowers employees (both remote and not
remote) to build and manage networks effectively.
Craft a More Human
Experience to Retain
Successors
Retaining high-caliber talent is HR leaders’ most
important succession planning objective. To
maximize the retention impact of succession
planning, talent management leaders should
consider it not just a process but an opportunity
to enhance the successor’s employee
experience. This successor experience should
build upon the organization’s employee value
proposition and deliver a more human deal that
focuses on making successors feel trusted and
cared for by the organization.
To show successors they are trusted, talent
management leaders must be transparent about
the succession planning process. Currently, only
29% of HR leaders share with successors how the
succession planning process works.1
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 26
For example, after recognizing that its employees
were unsure of the value of talent profiles,
Corning launched a new video campaign to
be more transparent about the talent planning
process and why talent profiles matter. These
videos answered questions such as “How is
my talent profile used in talent planning?” and
“Why is talent planning important?” Corning
clearly outlined the steps and intentions of
its talent planning process and used various
visualizations (such as animation and business
leader testimonials). It also incorporated
incentives, such as a gift card lottery, in its
communication campaign.
To ensure successors feel cared for by the
organization, talent management leaders
should incorporate successors’ aspirations
into succession plans. Traditionally, HR and
business leaders own the succession process
and do not take employee aspiration into
account. This can lead to potential mismatches,
where an employee is included in a succession
plan but has no interest in working that role.
Such mismatches create engagement and
attrition risks.
To avoid succession mismatches, Bridgestone
has managers and employees discuss the
employees’ career goals. Then, managers share
relevant information with HRBPs and leaders,
who can update the organization’s succession
plans based on the outcomes of those
conversations (see Figure 3). Bringing employees
into the succession process and listening to
their career aspirations reassures them that the
organization cares about them.
High-quality career conversations will make
employees feel not only cared for but also
invested in the organization when those
conversations are then used to alter the
succession plan. On the other hand, if managers
shy away from such conversations, potential
successors may perceive it as a lack of trust.
Organizations should not lose top talent because
managers are not prepared to have high-quality
career conversations or fear making talent feel
entitled to certain roles. For more impactful
career conversations, talent management leaders
should recognize each successor’s potential,
discuss that successor’s career path and
focus on key experiences that will make them
competitive for more senior, critical roles.
Figure 3: Bridgestone’s Process for Incorporating Employee Aspiration Into Succession
Manager and Employee
Discuss Employee’s Career Goals
The leadership
team and I see a
bright future for
you in sales!
Manager
I’d actually like
to try applying
my skills in
marketing instead.
Jack
HR Updates Succession Plans
to Reflect Employee Aspirations
Jack shared with me
that he wants to move
into a marketing role.
Manager
We should take him off
the succession plan for
the sales VP role then.
HRBP
Source: Adapted From Bridgestone
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 27
Conclusion
Traditional succession processes struggle to
keep up with the new demands of the work
environment. These plans are too static, and
they’re not helping organizations retain the
diverse and capable group of leaders they need
now and in the future.
To address these new demands, succession
planning needs to become more adaptive,
equitable and human. Adaptive succession
planning allows organizations to ensure their
talent strategies keep up with a fast-paced
business environment. Equitable succession
planning helps organizations continue to meet
diversity goals in leadership in more distributed
environments. Human succession planning
enables organizations to take every opportunity
to engage and retain the best talent.
1
2
3
2022 Gartner Leadership Development HR Leader Survey. This survey
was conducted online from 29 July through 29 August 2022. Thirtythree heads of talent management and 29 other HR leaders responded
with representation from various industries across 14 countries.
2022 Gartner “Benchmark With Gartner: Preparing for 2023,
Workforce Planning, Talent Trends and Predictions” Webinar Survey
(14 December). This poll was conducted in a benchmarking webinar
attended by over 330 HR leaders from around the world (the majority
based in North America) and representing a variety of industries. Of
these, 159 participants responded to the question, “Which trends have
you been thinking about as part of planning for your organization’s
2023 talent strategy?” Disclaimer: Results of this survey do not
represent global findings or the market as a whole but reflect the
sentiments of the respondents and companies surveyed.
2022 Gartner “Benchmark with Gartner: Strategies to Attract and Retain
Talent in Times of Economic Volatility” Webinar Poll (16 November).
This poll was conducted to benchmark strategies that organizations
are using to attract, retain and engage talent. The poll was conducted
online on 16 November 2022 among 150 HR leaders representing a
spectrum of industries. The majority were based in North America,
though the perspectives and practices they shared were developed to
support their global organizations. Disclaimer: Results of this survey do
not represent global findings or the market as a whole but reflect the
sentiments of the respondents and companies surveyed.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 28
Evolve Culture & Leadership
for the Hybrid Workplace
Today’s workplace is hybrid by default.
Accepting hybrid as a permanent feature of the modern
workplace actually creates an opportunity for organizations
to evolve their approach in two key areas: reshaping culture
and equipping leaders.
Leverage this 12-month
roadmap to evolve culture and
leadership for a sustainable
hybrid workplace.
Download your 12-month
action plan
© 2022 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_1803851
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 29
Career
Pathing for a
Fragmented
Work
Landscape
by Shannon Wiest
and Tess Lawrence
Mounting turnover rates in
an already hypercompetitive
labor market are increasing HR
leaders’ uncertainty about how
to support employee career
growth. CHROs can use the
following tactics to maximize
their investments in this area and
ultimately improve employee
engagement and retention.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 30
Career opportunities are a key attraction and
retention driver. In hybrid work settings, however,
employees are more likely to seek external
opportunities when internal opportunities are
less visible, or when they do not trust that
internal opportunities will be comparable to their
external options. To secure higher engagement
and retention, CHROs must think differently
about the careers they can offer and establish a
partnership with employees to create compelling
career paths.
Typically, organizations rely on successful
internal communication to provide information
about in-role opportunities for employees
to grow their careers. In addition, many
organizations offer special projects outside the
scope of employees’ current roles, including
stretch opportunities. But, despite these
investments, only 39% of job seekers said they
are interested in internal roles.1
While compensation is the main driver for
employees interested in external roles, jobs that
provide a new start or a change in their career
or environment, or that make it easier to be
promoted are attracting employees at similar
rates (see Figure 1). Employees are seeking
new experiences and assurances that growth is
achievable — and many believe they must search
externally to find them.
Figure 1: Why Employees Are Interested in External Roles
Percentage of Employees Indicating Each
Significantly Higher
Compensation
45%
30%
Greater Flexibility
28%
A New Start
27%
Change in Environment
25%
Career Change
Easier to be Promoted
0%
n = 484 employees actively looking for a new job
23%
25%
50%
Source: 2022 Gartner New Talent Landscape and Career Pathing Survey
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 31
Figure 2: Maximum Impact of Tools on Employee Confidence in Careers
Percentage of Respondents
Career Management Support
31%
Internal Networking Opportunities
31%
Career Success Stories
19%
Job Rotation Programs
19%
17%
Visual Examples of Career Paths
15%
Newsletters About Opportunities
Limited Impact
14%
Internal Job Fairs
3%
Internal Job Boards
Self Service Tools to Identify
How to Build Skills
Tools to Experience
Career Options
Tools to Provide
Information About
Career Options
0%
0%
20%
40%
n = 3,370 employees
Q. “I am Confident I Will Have a Successful Career at my Organization.”
Source: 2022 Gartner New Talent Landscape and Career Pathing Survey
To stay ahead of the curve, CHROs must
ensure their career strategies are visible to
employees and tailored to employees’ needs.
They can improve the experience of career
growth for their employees by targeting three
phases: setting employees’ career trajectories,
progressing employees’ careers and achieving
employees’ goals.
Setting Employees’
Career Trajectories
As work becomes increasingly distributed,
employees have fewer organic touchpoints with
colleagues on different career tracks. Employees
today spend 65% less time in offices than they did
prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it more
difficult to collaborate across roles and observe
other career options.2 Meanwhile, only one in four
employees strongly agrees they feel confident
about their career at their organization.1 Limited
confidence, compounded with the lack of visible
opportunities, makes employees feel stuck in their
careers and think they have no option but to look
outside the organization.
To mitigate this issue, organizations are
investing in various tools to support
employees’ careers. However, prioritizing
investments in tools that only provide
information about careers is insufficient.
Employees need to experience career options
in more individualized ways, such as career
management support and internal networking
opportunities. Investing in these areas, in
particular, can boost employees’ confidence in
their careers by 31% (see Figure 2).
To help employees set their career trajectories,
organizations should start by being transparent
about job openings, internal role benefits and
requirements. But more than that, they should
give employees real experience in potential
career trajectories by being flexible about role
design and mobility. One option is providing
“career experiments,” in which employees try
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
32
different career options without the formality of
applying for a new role.
time, the transferred employee would expand and
develop in the role (see Figure 3).
TDECU does this by breaking roles down into
tasks that can be performed by employees from
different areas of the business — for example, by
employees in either high-demand or high-supply
roles. TDECU prioritizes high-level tasks that
overlap between roles, meaning employees in
high-supply roles will already be proficient, or can
quickly upskill. Once these tasks are identified,
TDECU uses temporary mobility to shift the
overlapping tasks from an established employee,
who is already working in a high-demand role, to
a “transferred” employee, who will temporarily
own some of that role’s responsibilities. This
shift allows the established employee to take on
other high-value tasks and stretch opportunities.
In addition, making this a temporary trial period
allows the transferred employee to try out a new
role and determine whether they want to work
for that part of the business. The experience also
provides a clear development plan for how, over
Progressing
Employees’ Careers
As the skills and experiences needed for future
roles continue to rapidly evolve, employees
are feeling less prepared for the transitions
they’ll make in the future. Ninety-four percent of
employees believe it is more or as important now,
compared to before the pandemic, to develop
skills outside their current roles. However,
not even one in three employees has a clear
sense of how to progress their career over the
next five years.1
To help employees progress their careers,
organizations should offer in-role development
opportunities that can prepare them for
potential roles. HR leaders can help employees
dynamically track their career progress at the
organization by crowdsourcing diverse career
Figure 3: TDECU: Task-Based Redeployment
Example of Identifying Task Overlap Across Roles
Tasks Each Role Can Do
A
Employee in
High-Demand Role
(e.g., Mortgage FSR)
B
C
D
E
D
E
F
G
Rather than moving employees in high-supply
roles into existing high-demand roles, first split
positions by tasks, so transferring employees
can specialize where they’re already proficient
or likely to be quickly proficient.
H
Employee in
High-Supply Role
(e.g., Retail FSR)
Source: Adapted From TDECU
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
33
development examples and matching employees
with multiple potential routes. For example,
EY has employees lead in the design and
communication of their experiences. This allows
them to surface more options that align with
their personal interests and can boost employee
engagement (see Figure 4).
on commitments to a shared purpose, offer
flexible work options and holistically support
employees’ well-being. But, despite these
expectations, less than half of employees (41%)
feel comfortable sharing their concerns with
their leaders — and even fewer female employees
(39%) feel comfortable doing so.3
Achieving Employees’ Goals
To help employees achieve their personal and
professional career goals, organizations should
support managers in working with employees
to identify potential internal roles that will align
with those goals. HR leaders can offer objective
channels that provide unbiased support for
employees to reflect on what career would
best suit their needs. In doing so, they can help
employees look beyond their current roles and
see how the organization can support them in
achieving their goals.
Since the onset of the pandemic, employees’
perceptions of the role that work has in their lives
has changed — likely indefinitely. In particular,
employees are looking for opportunities to
take more ownership over how and with
whom they spend their time. Gartner’s 2022
New Talent Landscape and Career Pathing
Survey found that:1
• Seventy-six percent of employees want to
spend more time with family.
• Seventy-five percent want to spend more time
on their personal lives.
• Sixty-eight percent want to find
purpose beyond work.
While these factors have always been important,
employees today expect their employers to act
S&P Global does this by providing employees
with career coaching opportunities that prioritize
their individual needs, not just the needs of the
business. During these coaching conversations,
employees share their personal interests,
aspirations, passions and motivations. Coaches
then provide a range of options for employees
to pursue both within and outside the company,
including temporary moves such as stretch
Figure 4: Employee-Led Growth Experiences
Employee Shares
If All the Following
Are True:
• It is a skill, opportunity
or insight relevant to
other employees.
• It extends beyond
professional to include
personal opportunities.
• Employee is willing to
connect others to the
opportunity.
Employee Experience Fund
1. Volunteering or
Board Opportunity
2. Grad School Consideration
3. Management Coaching
4. Python Skills
5. Résumé Review
6. …
Employee Uses
If All the Following
Are True:
• They can determine
how this will balance
with their role.
• This opportunity will
expand personal or
professional capabilities.
• They can commit to the
identified time frame or
requirements.
Source: Adapted From EY
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
34
Figure 5: Interest-Focused Discovery Guide
Illustrative
S&P Global’s People-First Approach
Part I: Background and Goals
• Tell me about your career trajectory so far.
• What made you seek coaching?
Part II: Desired Experience
• What are you passionate about? If obstacles did not exist, what would you be doing?
• What activities do you love that make you lose track of time?
• What kind of experiences are going to drive and energize you every day?
• What does success look like to you?
Focus on the
person, not
the employee.
Part III: Next Steps
• What sort of solution would be most fulfilling? Are you looking to add to your current
position? Find new opportunities? Shift your trajectory entirely?
Source: Adapted From S&P Global
assignments and rotations, and permanent moves
such as a new role (see Figure 5).
Effective career coaches should be specialists
who are outside the employee’s manager’s
purview to ensure their views are not limited to
the role, the immediate team or the manager’s
network. Coaches should also be required to look
beyond the business-first perspective and be
available to everyone in the company, not only
high-potential employees.
Recommended Actions
To attract and retain talent through professional
development and career opportunities,
CHROs should:
1
2022 Gartner New Talent Landscape and Career Pathing Survey. This
survey was conducted to better understand employees’ attitudes toward
the hypercompetitive labor market and their feelings on career pathing
in hybrid roles. The survey was conducted online from 28 February
through 23 March 2022 and contains responses from 3,370 employees
with representation from various regions, industries and functions.
2
2022 Gartner Culture in a Hybrid World Employee Survey. This
survey was conducted in December 2021. It included responses
from 6,758 employees. The survey focused on employees’
experiences and opinions related to their organizations’ cultures
and their connectedness to them, with representation from various
geographies, industries and functions.
3
2022 Gartner Leadership Success in the New Environment Employee
Survey. This survey was conducted online from 28 January through 22
February 2022 and contains responses from 1,000 midlevel leaders in
13 countries across multiple industries. Midlevel leaders were defined
and screened based on role title, definition of responsibilities, reporting
structure and level within the organization.
• Create greater role flexibility to make it easier
for employees to experience different career
options and thus boost their confidence in
careers within the organization.
• Crowdsource career moves and routes from
current employees to show diverse options
so employees have greater clarity in how to
progress their careers.
• Provide dedicated resources that prompt
employees to look beyond their current roles
and take a wider view of how the organization
can help them achieve their personal and
professional career goals.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
35
Gartner ReimagineHR
Conference 2023
Save the date
11 – 12 September 2023
London, U.K.
23 – 25 October 2023
Orlando, FL
4 – 5 December 2023
Sydney, Australia
Choose Your Region
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 36
© 2023 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. EVTM_967_2244047
Decoupling
Work From
Jobs
by Caroline Ogawa
Jobs are just one way in
which work is organized, and
co-authors Ravin Jesuthasan
and John Boudreau argue this
model is fading in relevance.
They believe HR leaders should
embrace an experimental
mindset and promote a more
flexible work design to better
meet the organization’s everchanging needs.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
37
Ravin Jesuthasan is the global leader
of Mercer’s transformation services
business. He is the author of four books
and has led numerous research projects
for the World Economic Forum on the
transformation of work and the global
workforce. He is a regular presenter at
the World Economic Forum’s annual
meeting in Davos and a member of the
forum’s Steering Committee on Work
and Employment.
Co-authors Ravin Jesuthasan
and Dr. John Boudreau argue
that we’re moving toward a future
of organizing work outside the
traditional constructs of jobs.
Jesuthasan and Boudreau recently
joined our Gartner Talent Angle
podcast to share why organizations
must melt role boundaries to
better align work. The following
insights are excerpted from
that conversation. Listen to the
full interview at Talent Angle
Podcast: Designing Work Without
Jobs, With Ravin Jesuthasan and
John Boudreau.
It might be hard for many of us to imagine
work without jobs. How do you separate
those two things?
Dr. John Boudreau is a leading
evidence-based visionary on the future
of work and organization. Boudreau
is professor emeritus of management
and organization and a senior research
scientist with the Center for Effective
Organizations at the Marshall School
of Business, University of Southern
California. He also helped establish the
Center for Advanced Human Resource
Studies at Cornell University.
t Back to Contents
Jesuthasan: We’re not saying that jobs are going
away. Jobs will continue to be important, but the
instances in which the job will continue to be
the singular way of organizing work are shrinking
quite rapidly. We’ve seen this for years with work
moving to gig workers — the “Uberization” of
work, as it’s often been called. We’ve seen this
more lately with this notion of internal talent
marketplaces as, increasingly, work is being
done in projects and assignments — still being
done by employees, but in constructs aside from
that of a job.
We’ve tried to illustrate this ongoing journey to
an ever more agile operating system, where there
is a plurality of means through which work can
be done, and a job may be one of them. I don’t
know about you, but I’d like my airline pilot to be
a full-time employee in that job, flying the plane
all the time as opposed to maybe doing Uber on
the weekends. There are going to be some areas
where there is a premium for competence and
skill, and there may be compliance and control
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 38
reasons for work to be done in a job. But we’ll
see more and more bodies of work escape those
traditional limits.
Can you share the differences between
the traditional job model and the new work
operating system that you envision?
Jesuthasan: Let me take you through the four
principles of that operating system:
• Firstly, instead of starting with the organizing
construct of the job, start with the work. What’s
the current work to be done?
• Secondly, once you’ve defined the work, ask
the question, what’s the optimal combination
between humans and automation? This is
called “reinventing jobs.” We’ve seen that when
you lead with technology, you almost always
end up in this binary narrative between humans
and the job that existed, and the new machine
that’s coming. When you lead with the work,
you see where the highly repetitive rule-based
work might get substituted. You see where
human ingenuity, creativity, empathy, critical
thinking could be augmented by tools like
machine learning and deep learning or natural
language processing. And you also see where
work could be transformed by the presence of
automation, either because there is now space
for new human work within a particular body of
activity or the presence of automation is giving
rise to demand for new human skills. You get a
much more nuanced set of outcomes.
• Once you’ve gotten to that optimal
combination, the third principal is to ask the
question, what’s the best way to connect talent
to the work? Should it be in a job? Should it
be someone on an internal talent marketplace
from a different part of the organization who
is taking on a gig? Should it be a gig worker
externally? Or maybe we should centralize the
work or offshore it, etc.
• And the fourth principle is, how do we
continuously allow talent to flow to work and
flow to the opportunities as they emerge versus
being limited in fixed, traditional jobs. This flow
would increase the agility with which talent is
connecting to work and solve problems and
challenges as they emerge, as opposed to
waiting for work or workers to be somehow
pulled together to connect to these new
challenges through that thing called a “job.”
What do these principles look like in practice, to
create this kind of operating system that works
fast enough and with a suitable threshold?
Boudreau: I can share an example we used
throughout the book. You have a nurse job
description, and traditionally you count the
number of nurses you have by the number of
jobs you have. You count the number of nurses
you have by the people who can hold that job —
those with a nursing degree. Think of it as three
ice cubes: the job, the job holder and the degree.
Many healthcare organizations just didn’t have
enough people to be nurses and enough people
earning degrees, particularly with COVID-19,
so they started experimenting with letting that
ice cube melt.
There are lots of things within that ice cube, like
intubating patients, diagnosing unresponsive
patients and administering medication — those
things, we’d say, probably need to stay as the
work of someone who has a qualification as a
nurse. But there are usually lots of other things,
like checking in on patients who are reasonably
stable and well, taking their temperature, noting
that on the chart; those things could be done by
a person who held a job that used to be called
something like a “receptionist.” Those tasks don’t
require top-of-license work, so we melt those.
We move those over and allow those to be done
by this person with a job called “receptionist”
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
39
that now has these additional duties. Now, we
have more time with the people who are qualified
nurses to do those things they need to do.
It’s the same with scheduling. Turns out
scheduling was unautomated in many healthcare
organizations, and it takes hours and hours for a
nurse to do the nursing schedule. A pretty obvious
solution is to give that to automation. And again,
you free up those hours for nurses to focus on the
things they’re specially qualified to do.
Now, what’s interesting to me is, that wasn’t
enough to get nursing-level skill on the kinds of
things that COVID-19 demanded in the hospital.
Those in healthcare had to find those with
the capability to do nursing work whose job
is something else, and they turned to hospital
administrators, the CFO, the chief operating
officer. Those officers are frequently physicians.
So they relicensed those people, and now
those officers can melt their capability to spend
a day a week on the floor and to essentially
become augmentation to the things that
nurses were doing.
When you let the nurse job melt, and you look
at the capabilities on the task level, you begin
to see lots of places those parts can flow and
lots of ways to make the nurse job more focused
where it should be. You begin to realize that, if
we define people by their capabilities to do the
job, we put them in a job ice cube, and we miss a
large number of those capabilities that could be
melted and applied elsewhere.
You mentioned earlier, this is not going to
happen overnight, and some jobs are more
stable than others. Do you see certain classes
of jobs or certain industries that are on the
front edge of these transformations and are
likely to progress?
Jesuthasan: I think every job is going to change
in some way, shape or form. I do think this thing
called a “job” will continue because of some
of these regulatory and compliance and other
issues, but there certainly will be a lot of change
within this thing called a “job.”
When we talk about work flowing beyond jobs,
we often define these different ways of working
as fixed versus flexible. “Fixed” meaning things
like jobs, and “flexible” meaning when people
might be in positions but have the flexibility
to express their skills in different parts of the
organization or move to acquire new skills. And
then there are completely flow models, where
people are connecting to work not through
jobs but through assignments, gigs, initiatives,
etc. It’s where you see the internal marketplace
happening. Where we see movement has
changed from fixed to flex. We often see that in
private sector white-collar work, people with the
opportunity within particular functions to express
their skills elsewhere.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 40
In the flow model, we see organizations moving
bodies of work that are fungible across the
organization. So, quite different from nurses
who are in very specific roles for a specific
purpose, but think of digital talent — of data
scientists, program managers, project managers.
We need them in HR, marketing, customer
analytics, revenue management. Can we create
a structure where they aren’t in jobs but instead
are continuously flowing to opportunities as they
emerge because these skills are so in demand
and fungible across the enterprise?
How well-positioned is the HR function today to
support the move into the new work operating
system? Does it have to bring in new skills and
new capabilities to first equip itself to help?
Boudreau: I think the short answer to that is,
“Generally, no.” I think virtually everyone in the
world would say the word “job” when they mean
“work,” and HR is no less susceptible to that
tendency — maybe even more because the HR
systems are built to scale. HR has traditionally
been rewarded for producing programs that
scale well across an organization, and that means
things like common denominators, common
taxonomies, common approaches. All can be
well-justified. But in the new world of work, at the
edges, job systems are going to work great for
some portion of the work in the organization. But
when you see those edges, and when you hear
leaders and workers having real problems with
agility, that’s when HR needs to step up.
So the entire field of software development has
shifted from the old approach that was, “We build
it and then we put it out there, and we convince
you it’s good, and your complaints are something
we have to deal with,” to a world of agile design
and, “We put it out there knowing it’s imperfect,
and we invite you to tell us how it’s imperfect,
and we work on the parts of that imperfection
that make the most sense.”
My message to HR is that they have a golden
opportunity at the moment to become the hub for
experiments in agile work design, to be the place
that leaders, workers, organization designers
come, where they can find a place that is doing
the experiments — learning from the experiments
in the same way that your product development
or software development groups are using those
tools to learn about software and products.
In a nutshell, take your agile design process,
substitute the word “work” for the word “software,”
and substitute the word “workers” for the word
“users,” and let’s bring those agile tools to bear. Is
HR ready for that? I would say very, very few of the
HR organizations I work with are prepared today to
step up and say they will be the hub for agile work
experimentation. Someone’s going to do it. I think
there’s a real chance for HR to step back and ask
fundamental questions about what this profession
is really about.
It means HR needs to accept the idea that
scale isn’t the only measure; there may be
small experiments going on. Think of work in
the way you’d think of software or a product.
It’s perfectly fine to say, “I don’t know what our
product will look like in five years.” It’s perfectly
fine to say, “I don’t know what our software will
look like in five years.” That doesn’t mean chaos.
That means perpetual reinvention, often with
the insights of customers and others through AI,
through transactions.
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023 41
Metrics of
the Month
HR Leaders Look
to DEI, L&D and
Flexibility to Solve
Talent Shortages
In March’s Benchmark with Gartner webcast,
we polled over 280 HR leaders on how their
organizations are responding to persistent
talent shortages. Fifty-three percent of HR
leaders expect talent competition to increase
in the next three months. They attribute these
shortages primarily to competition for talent
both within and outside their industries, along
with skills gaps and inadequate compensation
and benefits packages.
To address talent shortages, HR leaders are
pursuing a mix of attraction, retention and
internal skill-building strategies, such as
expanding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)
efforts (63%), providing increased training
opportunities (59%) and offering flexible work
arrangements (57%). In this challenging business
environment, HR leaders see opportunities
to exploit untapped sources of nontraditional
talent both within their organizations and in the
labor market.
Q: How do you expect talent competition to change in the next
three months?
Percentage of HR Leaders
0%
Significantly Less
Competitive
17%
Less Competitive
30%
No Change
7%
Significantly More
Competitive
46%
More
Competitive
53% of HR leaders expect
talent competition to
become more competitive
in the next three months.
n = 104 (March 2023)
Source: Benchmark With Gartner: Persistent Talent Shortages, Sustaining DEI and Other Emerging Issues (22 March)
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
42
Metrics of
the Month
Q: Which of the following factors do you believe contribute most to
persistent talent shortages in your industry?
Percentage of HR Leaders
64%
Limited Access/High Competition for Qualified Talent
47%
Skills Gaps/Mismatched Job Requirements
Cross-Industry Competition
41%
Inadequate Compensation/Benefits Packages
41%
32%
Limited Geographic Availability
28%
Limited Investment in Employee Development
21%
Economic Conditions
14%
Demographic Shifts
There Are No Persistent Talent Shortages in My Industry
Other
1%
2%
n = 98 (March 2023)
Source: Benchmark With Gartner: Persistent Talent Shortages, Sustaining DEI and Other Emerging Issues (22 March)
Q: Which strategies are you using to address talent shortages?
Percentage of HR Leaders
63%
Expand DEI Efforts
59%
Provide Increased Training Opportunities
Incorporate Flexible Work Arrangements
57%
Expand Learning/Development Efforts to More Employees
56%
46%
Promote Internal Talent Marketplaces
35%
Promote Employee Retention Programs
27%
Equip Managers to Increase On-the-Job Learning for Employees
Considering Reinstating Defined Benefit Pensions
2%
There Are No Persistent Talent Shortages in My Industry
2%
Other
4%
n = 103 (March 2023)
Source: Benchmark With Gartner: Persistent Talent Shortages, Sustaining DEI and Other Emerging Issues (22 March)
HR Leaders Monthly | April 2023
43