Sustainability isn’t just a buzzword for the environment any longer. If organizations want to thrive, they must focus on human sustainability.
With AI becoming more advanced in basic tasks, it’s creating opportunities for people to do more creative work. People drive the real value in any business, yet many organizations fall short when fostering supportive, long-lasting connections with their employees. This is largely due to a legacy mindset around extracting value from people rather than nurturing them to create a better tomorrow.
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Join us to hear about Deloitte’s top talent trends and discover how they will impact HR.
The conversation centered around the importance of addressing the ‘knowing versus doing gap’ in human sustainability, particularly in the digital age. Speakers emphasized the need for a coordinated and integrated approach to improve human performance, focusing on areas such as well-being, skills development, and opportunities for advancement. They also discussed the role of technology, such as talent intelligence and AI, in supporting these efforts and creating a more sustainable workforce. Additionally, speakers highlighted the importance of prioritizing human outcomes, measuring and closing the gap between knowing and doing, and creating a comprehensive and inclusive talent management approach.
Jason Cerrato 0:09
Happy to be here again, for those of you that are joining us today, thank you so much. For those of you that joined us in March, I thank you for coming back. This is part two of a series that Eightfold has been doing with Deloitte and with HCI. So we’re excited to re reengage the conversation today. Really excited to be joined once again by Sue Cantrell. And I got to say, Sue, you did it once again, all throughout 2023. I was talking about the human capital Trends report. And it seems like ever since this one was published, I haven’t stopped talking about it. We had the session once it was released back in March. Here at Eightfold, we have our own conference called cultivate. And it was part of our cultivate conference in California a few weeks ago, and most recently in London. Just this week, I’m at an executive strategy summit for HR leaders. And although we haven’t been talking about the report, in name, we’ve been talking about all of the themes. So this is definitely top of mind for a lot of people. And once again, I’m super excited to have you join me for the hour to re engage in the conversation. So thanks again for joining us.
Sue Cantrell 1:24
Thank you so much, Jason. I love that because there’s so many synergies between what we’re writing about, and then how Eightfold is actually actualizing it right with organizations. So I really appreciate the time to be able to do this again with you. So as we talked about, we’re going to be delving into one of our trends from our Human Capital Trends Report. The overall report here is called thriving beyond boundaries, human performance, and a boundary list world. And when we talk about boundary lists, I just wanted to lay out the context a little bit. You know, work is no longer defined by jobs, for example, or the workplace is no longer a specific place, right? Or many workers are no longer traditional employees, their contractors or contingent workers or any kind of workers who create value for an organization. And of course, all of this has accelerated in the last year, especially as Gen AI has come onto the scene in a really big way. And we covered this report around this theme about how we thrive in and elevate human performance in a boundary list world. So we’re gonna dive into one of the trends in particular today. But before I do that, just a little bit of groundwork on kind of what it is we did. This was actually our I think we started this report in 2011. So it’s the longest human capital longitudinal research study ever done. And we do quite a bit of research. So you can see 14,000 respondents to our surveys across 95 countries that represent every region, every industry, it goes all the way from individual contributors all the way up to the board. This year, we separately surveyed workers and executives, because we wanted to understand if there were any variations between their perspectives. And we’re going to see that today. And what we found really is that this focus on the human factor is what’s most important. Interestingly, when we asked respondents, you know, most Agreed 74% Agreed that this year’s trends were very critically important. But here’s where the rubber meets the road, right? Only 10% of respondents believe that organizations are accomplishing great things to address these issues. So we call this the knowing versus doing gap, right. And where organizations are getting stuck is not in knowing it’s in making real actionable progress towards unlocking human performance. So we’re going to focus a little bit today on how we can actually and I think Eightfold is a great example of how you can actually address these things and actualize them to create value and elevate human performance. So what do we mean by human performance? This is a really important equation, and we had fun with it. The idea here is that it’s human outcomes, things like greater skills and employability greater well being things of that sort times business outcomes. business outcomes would be things like greater innovation, or greater customer satisfaction, equals human performance. Now in the past, it used to be kind of a plus sign rather than a multiplication sign. And we would focus on more of the business outcomes, right, more than the human outcomes. But what we found in our research is that the magic happens when there’s this multiplication sign and because they’re a multiplier effect across one another I mean, I’ll just give you one quick example of what I mean by this. Hitachi set out to improve organizational productivity and efficient efficiency. But they did it in an unusual way. They focused on the human outcomes side of the equation, which is interesting. And so what they did was they had to opt in AI basic suggestions for increasing feelings of happiness throughout the day for workers. And it was based on data of the workers themselves. And as a result, human outcomes increased psychological capital, happiness, obviously, but because they had that multiplier effect, business outcomes increased as well profit sales per hour retail sales. That’s what we mean by human performance. And what we’re going to do today is we’re going to dive into that human outcomes side of that equation of something we call human sustainability, which if I go to the next slide, is you’ll see him and sustainability is all the way on the left. That’s that human outcomes are part of the human performance equation. And we put this there, because it really threads throughout all of the rest of our trends. We’re going to delve into human sustainability front and center today with Jason, and I wanted to quickly give you an overview of all of the trends. I encourage you to check them out in our report. So we’re gonna dive into human sustainability, those are the human outcomes, really at a very high level, it’s the degree to which an organization creates value for people as human beings, not just as workers, there’s a big distinction there. So we’ll dive into that. Just a quick tour of some of the other trends. Beyond Productivity is all about how you measure that human performance equation, right measuring based on outcomes, business outcomes, and human outcomes, rather than traditional productivity metrics, which typically are activities or inputs and outputs, and that were kind of created in the industrial era. And they don’t necessarily focus on outcomes. So that’s all about metrics and how new technologies can enable us to have better data to understand human and business outcomes. And then we go into this trend called the transparency paradox. And the idea here is that because of new technologies, almost everything can be made transparent, including what workers are doing. It’s not just leadership right now, and transparency and leadership goals and priorities. Technology can illuminate almost every corner of an organization. Now typically, we think transparency equals trust. But in this new era, where almost everything can be made transparent, sometimes privacy, which is the flip side of transparency, can be better to elevate to create trust. So this explores the relationship between transparency and trust. And that it’s not as simple as it used to be in light of how everything can be made transparent today, we then go into a trend called the imagination deficit. And the idea here is that generative AI and technologies are exposing what we call an imagination deficit, meaning that human capabilities, imagination, curiosity, collaboration, critical thinking are becoming so much more important when AI can kind of do the things other types of work do. What’s left is those human capabilities like imagination, we need it to prompt for example, Gen AI. And then we go into something called the digital playground, which is something basically safe digital places to be able to experiment and CO create. So think about a Gen AI sandbox, for example, or digital twins. Not only do we have some of the physical places today, but interestingly, organizations are creating digital twins of the workforce, where they can kind of experiment with different levers and simulate how that would impact the workforce. So we call that digital playgrounds, we then go into what’s called Workforce micro cultures. And the idea here is that instead of one monolithic culture, in reality, organizations are composed of cultures of cultures, a culture of cultures, so they might have organization wide values that are very consistent, but the daily norms and behaviors of the way people work needs to vary to increase agility and to embrace diversity. And then lastly, we go into a trend called boundary lists HR Jason and I went into a couple of these trends, including boundary lists, HR in our last webinar in March. And this is all about how HR needs to shift in light of all of these other trends evolving from a specialized function to what we call a boundary list discipline that’s really integrated with the rest of the organization. It’s co created integrated with the people , business and community it serves. And then of course, we close with leaders’ implications. So I encourage you to check out the trends when you have a chance. And we’re going to delve into human sustainability in this session. So what do we mean by human sustainability?
Sue Cantrell 10:14
I talked about how it’s about creating value for all the people connected to an organization. So it would be things like leaving workers, or people that don’t have an organization touches with greater health and well being, or stronger skills and employability, which is something that eightfold does so well and helping actualize for organizations, greater good jobs, opportunities for advancement, progress toward equity, increased belonging and heightened connection to purpose. So, you know, one of the challenges is that interactions with people are typically grouped under the s component of ESG. But you know, some of the research shows that ESG, in some areas, is becoming a little unclear or a little polarizing. In some places, it’s becoming less popular than it used to be. And, you know, one of the reasons why is because it tries to group, you know, E, S, and G all under one umbrella. And sometimes s lives in the shadow of E, right? Environmental metrics are sometimes easier to measure than social metrics. So one of the stats from our surveys, 19% of leaders say they have very reliable metrics for measuring the social component of ESG. So we don’t have the metrics, we don’t have the clarity. And only 29% of leaders strongly agree they have a clear understanding of how to achieve it. So human sustainability is our answer to some of these problems that organizations are having with ESG. And I’m going to switch to the next slide. Okay, so this is a little bit of a zoom in here around what we mean by human sustainability. It’s really important to understand that it doesn’t just include employees, but it also includes extended workers. So that would include things like future workers, people in college in high school, right? Workforce development for all of those future workers of an organization would include elevating human outcomes for contingent, or informal workers or workers in your external supply chain, for example. And then, also, it includes being able to elevate outcomes for any people in the organization. Obviously, employees are the central place where elevating purpose and meaning and physical and psychological safety and skills and employability, but think about the organization’s relationship with broader society, it can help improve population health, including environmental and climate impacts to health, it can help create good jobs for the aquatic economy with equitable and living wages, for example, it can have any kind of positive impact on communities, or contributions to equity for populations that are historically marginalized because of race, gender, other identities. So this is a bit of a deep dive on what we mean. And I am going to go to a poll. And then we’re going to have Jason talk about how Eightfold serves all of those kinds of populations that I just spoke about. So here’s the poll. How well does your organization currently integrate human sustainability practices? Again, it’s well being skills development opportunities for advancement, good job sense of purpose into its overall strategy? Are you doing this very well? Moderately? Well, somewhat? Well, not well, or not at all? Okay. 0% very well. And that is very consistent with our research. You know, only 45% in our research said that they’re doing something which is fairly consistent here, moderately well, somewhat well, and in our Oh, there we go. 8% Very well, that’s great. Um, in our research, we found that only 10% of organizations were really doing great things with respect to human sustainability. So that’s fairly consistent with that eight, nine to 12%. Very well. Not well at all. 12%. So most of you are doing something right. Kudos to you. I think we can all do something more. Okay.
Jason Cerrato 14:42
I think this speaks to the stat you shared earlier that from the feedback from leaders around how hard a time they have tracking it and measuring it. Yeah, it’s hard to address what you can’t see. And it’s hard to improve what you can’t measure. I have a transformation leader who works on my team who often likes to say, “You have to first collect the dots to be able to connect the dots, right?” And if you don’t know how to capture that data, or it’s in a variety of places, or it’s something you’re not set up to capture, people can’t necessarily understand a plan to address it, or how to tell the story to, you know, challenge and change wherever the areas are for improvement. So those results weren’t necessarily surprising. I was encouraged by the fact that that 0% did turn into an 8% over the course of the minute, but I think it speaks to the feedback that you received in your survey. Absolutely.
Sue Cantrell 15:42
And it’s very consistent with the big survey that we did, with respondents. Absolutely. Metrics is key.
Jason Cerrato 15:50
So with this slide, you know, this is a slide that I wanted to share, because in my former life, I was an industry analyst and was involved in some research. And, you know, this was a few years back where a lot of our focus was going through digital transformation. And there was one of my favorite reports that I worked on, around, you know, the digital talent ecosystem, and how in the digital talent ecosystem, increasingly the person was at the center. But as we think about this, from an organizational perspective, I loved how you started the hour by saying, what does the workplace mean, when it’s not a place? Right when it’s no longer replayed. So if you think about building an agile talent ecosystem, organizations are now expanding their view. You know, in the last few years, there’s been a lot of discussion around, you know, total talent, and thinking about employees and candidates and applicants, and contractors and alumni. Right, and we were thinking about these Alumni Programs, and Boomerang, Boomerang employees, and all of this kind of total talent approach, I think that’s even been expanded. So from an agile talent ecosystem perspective, what organizations are now doing is expanding their reach, and trying to expand their visibility to the entire ecosystem. And doing things like extending and extending that out into partners, suppliers, the value chain society, right, early career, you know, pipeline development of a variety of different audiences. But this is for, you know, the full opportunity to make an impact, and to potentially identify how they’re driving sustainability for their organization, because they don’t necessarily have a full vision of what’s going to be anticipated and expected for the future. So now they’re building the capability to have that broader reach, to plan for a variety of scenarios, you know, so to put this through an Eightfold lens, you know, we have organizations that have been using talent, intelligence to understand their talent at a deeper level. But they’re also now building out this more comprehensive approach, not only through platforms for their internal employees, and applicants and candidates. But expanding that out, you know, we have an offering called Workforce Exchange, which actually is more external facing for, you know, society, and for all these various different audiences that may not have interacted with your organization yet, right, or maybe people that interact with your product in some way, but are not yet talent for your organization. So they know of you. They’re aware of you, they’re in your ecosystem. And now people are trying to figure out how we can bring them into our view, and start to nurture, engage, you know, get a better understanding, to just create better awareness of us to prepare for a variety of potential futures, as the world is changing so fast. So it really has expanded that circle, as this graphic is trying to show from, you know, what’s at the core has always been with employees to these various audiences now out to society. And it’s not just from a, you know, an outreach and a goodwill and volunteering and charitable giving. Now, it’s also talent.
Sue Cantrell 19:18
Love that. Jason, thank you so much. It’s such a great example of how we have the power as organizations to impact people beyond our employees. So going back to our research, interestingly enough, when we surveyed just workers, I told you, we did separate surveys between workers and executives. Only 43% of workers say their organizations have left them better off than when they started. So that’s a testament to the fact that most organizations need to do a better job of creating value for workers as human beings and in fact, one of the issues is that some of the The threats or risks to workers are growing. So we surveyed workers around some of their top challenges to their organizations creating value for them. You can see, the very top one is, and it’s something been in the news for a couple of years now increasing work stress, right mental health, it’s an issue, the threat of technology taking over jobs, the rising number of skills and jobs needed as a result of technological change right on how we have to constantly keep abreast of those risks related to physical safety or wellness in the workplace. This is always on the economy, we’re always on, we can never sign off. And that’s an issue for well being. Employers being able to work digitally monitor my work without my consent. That’s something that has taken off since the pandemic. And we addressed this in that transparency and trust trend, and then a lack of connection and belonging, you know, as we have more remote or hybrid work, especially for younger workers. So those were just some of the threats of human sustainability that were uncovered in our workers survey. So I talked about this, this fact that we surveyed workers and executives separately, here’s one of the biggest disconnects, we found. 89% of executives say they feel like their organization is advancing human sustainability in some capacity. But yet only 41% of workers agree. So, you know, that’s less than half. It’s twice as much. The executive executives agree. So why is this disconnect? I think part of it is what Jason and I were talking about earlier as metrics, we don’t have the right metrics to even get a sense as to are we creating value for workers? Another reason I think is that sometimes we believe executives believe that building on programs or employee benefits, things like gym memberships, or meditation, training, or volunteering with time in the community are enough to advance human sustainability. But our research suggests that it’s really about embedding it into work itself into the flow of work, and addressing some of the underlying structural and systemic issues that get in the way of advancing human sustainability. I think one of the biggest things is that oftentimes, we organizations take kind of an extractive approach to people. So they’re looking at people to minimize their costs, right? Rather than thinking about how to create value for people. We did quite a bit of research on this connection of that human performance equation that human outcomes times business outcomes equals human performance, and how there’s a multiplier effect. This is really important. We know that we’re in a human powered economy now, right? 90% of US corporate assets are intangible assets, and a lot most of those are driven by people. And we know that there’s all kinds of stats, for example, organizations that rank the highest on the treatment of the workforce had a higher five year return on equity. There’s a lot of academic research that suggests a strong positive relationship between employee well being and firm performance, such as profits, stock returns, right. So, you know, one of the things we need to think about is why is this connection? Well, a couple things here, organizations that invest in skills development have better business results, and the research is clear on that a focus on human sustainability can help organizations achieve better dei results. We know from a great body of research that pinching pennies on the workforce oftentimes backfires. Improving worker health and well being can reduce workforce risk. And of course, there’s the consumer angle that they’re much more likely to support socially responsible organizations today. So just a little bit on that human performance equation. And I’m going to turn it over to Jason to talk about an Eightfold example.
Jason Cerrato 24:15
So this is an organization that we work with here at Eightfold. And I’ve had a lot of discussions with the leaders in this organization. And as I’ve heard some of the initiatives and projects that they’ve rolled out and they’ve shared their stories with me, a little light bulb went off in my head and I said, you know, who would love this story? Sue Cantrell. I said, this speaks to that equation, right human outcomes and business outcomes equal human performance. What this organization Amdocs was faced with is a digital transformation media company, that as a result of the pandemic had rapid growth, with marketing advertising communications going increasingly online and virtual as well as the rise of 5g they needed to hire and expand And, and grow rapidly. But also, we’re dealing with doing this as a result of the pandemic. So part of this was they were looking for new technologies to address this, and, you know, stumbled upon talent, intelligence and some AI applications. But as a result, they’ve now set out on this journey and are looking at other use cases and other ways that they’re incorporating that technology into their strategy. And one of the things that they’ve done is they’ve added talent acquisition capability and talent management capability and some analytics and some insights. And by putting this all together, they’ve created this internal program that, let’s see if this warms your heart, too. They call it harmony. And the whole point of that is, as they understand more about the needs, and wants, and wishes and desires of their talent, and they put that in a dynamic platform that helps them also anticipate the needs and challenges and direction of their business. Wouldn’t it be great if those two pieces of analysis could work together in some way where they can meet together in the future at a mutually beneficial point? Right. So I, so I love the quote here, you know, while they’re still trying to support what the business needs are, it’s about giving the employees that ability to dream of their own futures, and providing them the tools and the capability to reach it. And when we’re talking about sustainability, this requires a dynamic system that is reading and reacting and evolving in real time, we’re not very good at predicting. Matter of fact, research shows, people are better at reacting than they are at predicting. And what really works best is a dynamic approach that allows you to kind of mix those two as well as predict and evolve and react with a variety of data from a variety of sources. And that’s something that artificial intelligence and things like talent intelligence can do. So while they’re addressing talent acquisition and Talent Management, using tools like talent, intelligence, and eightfold, you know, they’ve created this program with I love the name harmony, I’m going to say it again. But when I was talking with them, and hearing about how they’re rolling this out, your equation kept popping up in the back of my mind, and I said, I have to share this story with Sue. Harmony.
Sue Cantrell 27:23
It’s the Human Performance Equation. Jason, I just love that. Thank you for sharing. I mentioned this earlier about this knowing versus doing gap. 76% of respondents know that this trend is important. 46% are doing something about it and 10% are actually doing great things. So it’s very close to our previous poll that we had echoed. I might just say one thing here. One of the reasons why I think that there’s this 10% is such a small number is that in addition to the metrics issue that Jason and I spoke about, a lot of times these efforts are fragmented and uncoordinated and they’re pursued in isolation by disparate groups. So we have, you know, a group pursuing non degree hiring and skills and then another group, you know, exploring four day work weeks and living wages and rewards and we need to pull them together so that they’re integrated and done in a coordinated way. Okay, so we’re gonna go to another poll. Okay, which area do you believe your organization needs, needs the most improvement in? So these are kind of the elements of human sustainability that we had talked about? Is it wellbeing skills development and greater employment to improve the employability for our workers? And to keep them agile, in light of changing business needs? By developing their skills? Are there opportunities for workers to advance? Is it diversity, equity and inclusion, belonging, sense of purpose? Where do you feel your organization needs the most improvement? Okay, oh, wow. We have opportunities for advancement. Well being skills development and greater employability. Those are the three top top three. Interesting that the dei is so low. And belonging, sense of purpose is zero right now. Skills Development employability? Well, this is why we’re doing this with Eightfold right, because this is what Eightfold does so well. Is helping our workers with this and opportunities for advancement. Jason, any comments on this?
Jason Cerrato 29:38
Yeah, and I’m excited to see the numbers change and grow over the time here. But I’m also not surprised as I’ve been traveling around the country and around the world talking with talent leaders, even though we have some measures here that are lower than others. From the conversations I’ve been having. All of these topics are on the table and currently top of mind for HR are leaders and being addressed. But what I think is happening is there are some that need to be addressed first, or also as a result of addressing the top two or three, they have impacts on the other two or three, right? So this sense of purpose increased belonging, D, and I can also be impacted or become an outcome of some of those first two or three on this chart. It’s
Sue Cantrell 30:22
so true, which is really why reinforcing this kind of integrated approach is so important, because they impact one another. Absolutely. Okay, so we’re gonna move on here, and we’re going to talk about how to close this knowing versus doing gaps. So here are some of the suggestions based on the research. Jason and I have continued to talk about the need for metrics and data, right, that measure human outcomes. That is so important. Let me just give you a couple of examples here. So today, we can use AI driven analysis of, you know, and this is something that Eightfold does, of understanding, you know, the skills that are needed and how workers are growing them to drive strategy around skills development. An example here on the right, is Chobani. And workers and its plants have an average tenure of six years, longer than industry average. So they measured that and then they did some analysis as to why that is. And one of the reasons why is that they hire refugees, for example, and offer ESL classes and language programs for managers and a childcare stipend and relatively high starting wages. So they did this analysis of the outcome, and then what was driving the outcome, which is really important. So I am going to give you a couple of examples of other metrics here. So skills development and employability, for example. We talked about this and, you know, AI is huge in this respect. Well, can we measure work-related emails sent during off hours as an example of something that’s different from a survey? Right? Can we look at things like physical, emotional and mental well being or safety data from wearables or even neuro tech, you know, use with people’s permission, of course. So the ability that I’m just giving you some examples of the ability for us to measure these things is significantly improving as technology advances. But, can we do an AI analysis, especially with Gen ai, ai, where it can analyze text data, qualitative data of worker motivations and sentiment to understand, you know, our workers feeling meaning in their work and a sense of purpose, diversity, equity and inclusion metrics? Would you know, can we do instead of representation metrics, which are kind of fairly simple? Check the box type metrics, can we use data to look at root cause analysis of identified workforce inequities? As an example, can we do pay equity analyses? Can we do organization network analysis to measure the effectiveness of equity interventions, for example, by measuring belonging and diversity and organization networks? When we go on to career stability and advancement opportunities, you know, a simple one to do here would be the average time it takes to move up to one level. But can we also measure things like percentages of people hired based on skills rather than degrees or percent of senior management promoted from within the organization or career stability based on retention and wage measures? And then finally, societal impact? Can we look at the economic empowerment produced, as measured, for example, by income generation or wage increases or job creation? Or entrepreneurship opportunities? Can we look at the impact on community health and well being based on health care access or happiness? The Hitachi example, not only do they measure the happiness of their own workers, but they’re trying to create an initiative called the happiness planet, which is greater happiness for society. So we have all kinds of new metrics available to us because of advances in AI and technology. And Jason is going to share an example from a vote. So
Jason Cerrato 34:31
This is another example that recently was highlighted as I mentioned, we recently had our own customer conferences that we call cultivate. We had one in California, one in London. In London we had it soft. Join us on stage for a panel, you know, video game developer, very fast paced, creative company in a very competitive industry. And as they were on stage telling their story, I want to share some of the things they shared with me soon. You let me know if this sounds familiar. So they launched Eightfolds’ internal talent marketplace to 15,000 employees about a year and a half ago, aimed at driving internal mobility and supporting mentoring. And this was addressing employee feedback that came from surveys. And a part of this was around providing customized pathways for different career paths and understanding where people can go in the organization. And in their own words, they were talking about trying to increase transparency in the right way. And they were talking about working with increased data and better tools for managers for employee conversations for co creation, right? And creating shared understanding. Does that ring any bells for you? So I mean, bring it on. Gotta it’s gotta it’s got to warm your heart. So this is what I was saying, you know, your report, as has been top of mind and rings true to themes. In every conversation, I’ve been in a couple things they’ve shared, you know, it used to take weeks to have discussions and make decisions on internal moves, in part because you didn’t have the data, you didn’t know, everything that you were considering just took longer. And now they’re having these discussions and making these decisions in a matter of days. Also, you know, talent acquisition, as a function in HR, has historically been focused on external talent, applicants, candidates, increasingly with this functionality, they’re looking internally first. So around what talent do we already have, what people are two doors down, that we have some skills or have some interests that we weren’t thinking of. So when you talk about creating, you know, a sustainable environment for developing, growing, promoting talent, this kind of feeds that fire and grows that engine, and then around your previous slide around, maybe shifting or changing some of the metrics, you know, they have metrics around looking at retention rates, within different departments in different groups, and they can look at, you know, which leaders are very successful, or maybe not so successful at retaining their members. But now they’re starting to shift that lens to try to look at metrics around, how about, it’s not just about retaining them within my group, maybe it’s around growing them and moving them and exporting them around the organization. Right? So how are we shifting our metrics to tell the story around promoting this mobility, around promoting this movement around, it’s not just, you know, keeping you with the organization, it’s sharing you with the organization. So I think this is helping to evolve this conversation and grow and support these initiatives, but also maybe change what we measure, because you need to think differently and manage differently. But as a result, you often have to measure differently to love that
Sue Cantrell 37:59
example, and just brings to life, so many of our principles, including metrics. Thank you, Jason. Speaking about metrics, one of the suggestions we have based on our research is to take those metrics, and tie leader and manager rewards to them. So right now, about three quarters of s&p 500 organizations connect executive compensation to sustainability metrics. But the issue is less than half of the people that we surveyed, the leaders in our survey told us that their organization holds itself and its leaders accountable for the holistic well being of its workers. So one organization that’s advancing in this regard is MasterCard, and it determines what’s interesting about them is that they’re not just focused on tying metrics to leader rewards. But it actually determines bonuses for all of its workers, in part based on the organization’s performance on some of the sustainability metrics like carbon neutrality, financial inclusion and gender pay parity, which is a human sustainability metric. So I loved that example. Because it’s, it’s embedding it throughout the organization rather than just leader compensation. Another action to close that knowing versus doing gap is to do something that we call co creation. So that is involving workers, future worker groups and others and creating their role co creating their roles and human sustainability initiatives. Because when we think about it, if we’re trying to create value for people, then we need to involve those people and help us figure out how to create value for them and get their input right. And one of the most important roles in this is the role of the middle manager and an exam Apple here is Genpact, and it uses a suite of internal tech tools, including AI, to check in regularly with its workers and learn what isn’t working, what isn’t working well, what is working well for them to basically gauge their mood and sentiment at work, and this tool aggregates a workforce mood score that is linked to 10%, of bonuses for the organization’s top 150 leaders, including its CEO. And then what it does is it actually informs the middle manager, the manager of those people, what their team workforce mood and sentiment is, and provides actionable suggestions for the manager to help improve them. And one of the things they do that we suggest is that they involve workers in understanding what it is that we can do to help elevate your mood and your sentiment. So that’s the co-creation principle. And I am going to turn it over to Jason for another Eightfold example.
Jason Cerrato 41:04
So this is another great example, and this is Vodafone. They’ve been using our technology for a couple of different use cases. But you know, as a result, you know, trying to build a future ready workforce from a skills based perspective, trying to compete in their industry, but also have a sustainable talent strategy, wanted to know their skills better, wanted to build a talent community and wanted to enhance some of their operational procedures and capacity. From incorporating talent intelligence, we talked about how you need to collect the data to connect the data, you know, they had visibility to 15,000 skills within their existing talent that they didn’t have visibility to before because now they were looking at it through a new lens. And as a result, this automatically opens up a new view for how you consider talent, what people are interested in, it speaks to that harmony example earlier, if I know more about the complete person, and not just the job they’ve done for me historically, because I’m viewing the person versus the job. Right? Now I have more opportunities to engage them, help grow their career from within, sustain their career, and sustain my organization. And as a result, it’s had a variety of other outcomes, you know, 67% increase in learning hours per employee, because using this kind of skills based underpinning, as they understand, they have a better understanding of skills. Now they’re connecting that to what opportunities are next. And as you add skills, you’d recommend training, and as you complete training, and recommend additional training, and it grows, this skills engine going forward, and then the one in the middle, almost sounds too good to be true, this 56% Decrease in time to hire. And it’s not just that they’re filling jobs faster, it’s that potentially, they’re taking stress out of the system, because now they’re doing more with their existing talent, right. So not just time to fill but how you feel. And also historically, if you don’t know your talent, all that well, and you have a problem to address, our instinctual muscle has been to create a requisition, go outside, find someone. Whereas if you know your talent better, and you have people in your organization that are interested in doing something, or have untapped capability or capacity, they may already be right in front of you. So in part of driving a sustainable strategy for you know, a changing future. This is how this skills based foundation has created a variety of different outcomes.
Sue Cantrell 43:44
Thanks, Jason. Make the business case for human sustainability. This is probably one of the most important actions based on our research. When we interviewed leaders, they said to us, we just can’t do this to create human outcomes because it’s and it’s a good thing to do, right? The only way we’re going to be able to invest anything is if we know it’s going to move the dial on business outcomes going back to that human performance equation. So we need to make the business case for it. So here’s an example of PayPal. They launched an initiative to improve the financial well being of its entry level and frontline workers because they recognize that about two thirds of them were living paycheck to paycheck, despite the fact that they were paying at or above market rates. So to justify this financial well being program. They created a business case, and they estimated that for every 1% reduction in attrition in parts is better financial well being it would save 500,000 a year, half a million a year from reduced recruiting, onboarding, training costs and through improved productivity. So they’re five years into this program and their workers report far less financial stress. It has reduced absenteeism, the organization seeing higher capacity to meet customer needs and innovate. And it has, of course, all time highs and engagement scores, productivity retention, net promoter scores among customers. So it’s just a really nice example of how focusing on human outcomes can have lasting impacts on business outcomes as well. And then they created the business case to be able to do it. The other action that we suggest taking is integrating human sustainability governance into the board and the seat C suite. This is really important. We did a survey and found that human sustainability issues are ranked as the top internal workforce risks by the C suite and board, but they are just not very confident in the ability to manage them. So the board needs to provide oversight. And ultimately, it’s the city’s responsibility to operationalize human sustainability. An example here is Hitachi. And this is the same organization that measured happiness scores, by the way. So they have an executive sustainability committee that tackles 11 goals that pose the most important societal challenges for Hitachi. So things like quality education, gender equality work and economic growth, health, and well being and clean water and sanitation. And it’s a board level initiative. So one initiative seeks to prevent longer working hours and overwork with a system that senses hours worked by each individual, and then sends alerts to supervisors with suggestions on how to help coach overworked workers, as well as nudges to workers that encourage behavioral changes. So it’s an interesting example of the board having oversight, and then the C suite, taking operational action on it. And then the last suggestion we have is elevating managers’ roles. In human sustainability, I talked about how important this was in an earlier slide. Here’s something shocking. Research says that the biggest factor in impacting workers’ mental health is their manager more than their spouse, right. So when we think about it, we have got to prepare managers with the resources and the autonomy to support human sustainability, it’s really important. So here’s an example. at&t, fewer than 5% of their job openings require college degrees. And then the organization trains heavily and recruits top managers from its own ranks, including its own CEO, who does have a college degree and started his career at AT and T taking customer requests for phone service. So it’s a model for developing skills and employability and good jobs managers model it for everyone else. And so it just shows the power of the manager to be able to model it and show that there are paths for people. And managers can model that. An example that I shared earlier is the Genpact example, where we talked about how AI can provide managers with the smoothness and sentiments of their workers, and then suggest actions for them to take. So that’s another great example. I’m going to close.
Jason Cerrato 48:21
I have one, I have one real quick. Yeah, so we recently did a session with an organization called Trimble. And using town intelligence, they talked about an increase in internal mobility of 65%. And one of the things that they said was, without that capability of understanding your talent in a more complete way, and being able to do that proactively and also empower managers with that data. If employees were interested in moving or in doing something new in the organization, the initiation of that discussion in the past was often an application
Sue Cantrell 49:02
love that they had to apply that data love that
Jason Cerrato 49:06
they had to apply to something that was already identified and existed, that was a requisition. And that sometimes creates nervousness and people would be afraid to do it. So we’d limit even someone’s willingness to put up their hand or, or open their mouth and express what they wanted to do. And now with this visualization of data, their managers are having more productive proactive conversations and their employees have an understanding of what they could potentially do before opportunities arise. So everyone is having more fruitful discussions, but it speaks to that connection with the manager and the employee having more open, transparent and kind of CO creating discussions. Absolutely.
Sue Cantrell 49:49
It is so important. Probably one of the most important things based on our research is to empower that manager. So thank you for sharing the Trimble example. I’m just going to Close with quoting Jason earlier, which is sustainability really requires this dynamic, dynamic data to understand, you know, workers and their skills, and the diet, the dynamic ability to get at root causes, which can change over time, as you talked about Jason, we can’t necessarily always predict, but we can respond if we have data. Because humans, sustainability depends on us continuing to evolve and respond as things change. And I’m going to turn it over to you, Jason, for an example. Yeah, so
Jason Cerrato 50:36
This is just a nice visualization of what this looks like in action. So to put this through an Eightfold lens, we offer Eightfold career planning, we call it a career navigator. But we also refer to this as demonstrating talent center design, because it’s no longer just replicating a career ladder that may have been built on a PowerPoint slide or in an Excel worksheet, this now becomes a living, breathing, dynamic, evolving thing, powered by talent, intelligence and an understanding of skills. So as employees update their profiles and have updates, new training, new skills, they attend events, they do projects, they maybe they get promoted, maybe they’re part of a gig, as the tool learns more about them. This becomes a dynamic map that opens up different paths for what is next in the organization. But it also opens up the instructions and some guidance of a form to how do you get there? So how close are you to that next step? Or how far are you away? What are some things you may need to do to address that distance? Are there some training courses? Are there some mentors, are there some projects that are available that could help you know, give you some supplemental skills outside of your current role. But the other part of this is this becomes a living, breathing thing, where every time someone comes into the system, there’s something new to see. And this is no longer, you know, a static document that resides in a library somewhere, this now creates a little bit of that, what’s in it for them. And this win-win that often talent intelligence is described with. So a lot of organizations report very high adoption rates, and repeat visitor rates because of this kind of regenerative capability. But it also has inputs from the talent where an employee can have a vast skills profile, but maybe they’re interested in a pivot, or they went back to school, and they’re developing new skills, they can highlight only specific skills that I now want to build new plans off of. So this ability to kind of CO create or disability to curate my own personalized path. But the company can also kind of put their thumb on the scale and say, well, here’s, you know, common paths and some adjacent paths. But here’s a company recommended path where our business is going to need people like you. And we’d like you to take a look at this, so to speak to like this concept to take the phrase from Amdocs this harmony example, how can you kind of mix the strategies and needs of the business with the demands and desires and wishes of the talent? This is kind of how this is occurring in a dynamic environment powered by AI.
Unknown Speaker 53:25
Thanks, Jason, I’m going to turn it over to Juanico.
Jason Cerrato 53:29
Jason and say, Thank you so much for your original presentation. As we shift over into questions from our viewers, please note that we will not have time to answer all of the questions that are being asked in the q&a. But Be rest assured that Jason and Sue will follow up to respond to any unanswered questions that were shared during this segment. There are a few questions here. And I want to start out by thanking Sue, for sharing in the q&a, the link to be able to access the Deloitte full Trends report, especially for those viewers who are asking questions around the spread of who’s actually surveyed. For that research. Our first question comes from Charlie, which asks, What has been your experience with employee resource groups and their role with the talent ecosystem? Yeah,
Sue Cantrell 54:19
I think employee resource groups are a wonderful mechanism to help advance human sustainability and bring together people who have similar experiences and similar identities. So I absolutely think it’s a key part of human sustainability. And, you know, some of the leading ones really, you know, expanded their impact beyond the organization as well. Jason, anything to add to that?
Jason Cerrato 54:50
Yeah. Having been involved in that work in the past. I think one of the challenges has always been for all of the efforts and great accomplishments and goodwill that they generate, how much of that is visible to leaders, and how much of that appears on the talent profiles of the people involved. So that if people are gaining skills, or if people are growing, you know, their expertise in a new area through ERGs, or if they’re delivering to the business in some way, or if they’re generating some value to the community, or volunteerism, how much of that is being tracked, in a way where leaders are aware of it and can show support for it and can drive direction and you know, maybe even a budget for additional growth of that. But as it relates to the individuals involved, for all the benefit they’re getting, personally, how much of that is actually attached to their talent profile? So when people think of what can you do next, what skills have you gained? How have you grown your toolkit, right, is that work people are doing developing themselves through ERG is visible? I think that’s been a challenge in the past. And I think some of the tools that we have now, are helping make that data more visible to create that more comprehensive talent profile.
Sue Cantrell 56:06
Absolutely. And measuring those human outcomes. What are you getting out of it?
HCI 56:11
Great insight there, actually asked, what percent of workers aren’t even thinking about sustainability? Do we know that information?
Sue Cantrell 56:23
So human sustainability is a term that we coined at Deloitte. But when you think about it, you know, I think every worker is thinking about are my skills relevant so that I can get good jobs, right? Am I treated fairly and equitably? Am I able to have well being at work in this era where it’s hard to achieve that in an era of always on right, so you saw our poll that I presented earlier around some of those challenges, and I think everyone is facing at least one if not, most of those, they might not just call it human sustainability, which is an overall term that we coined.
HCI 57:10
And of course, we’re out of time for our Q&A segment. But again, Jason and Sue will be following up to respond to all of these engaging questions that have been asked. Just a reminder to HCI members. Today’s webcast has been approved for HR CI and Sherm credit, as well as for HCI recertification. Your credits for attending this webcast will soon show up in your HCI profile under the transcript tab. While you’re there, don’t forget to check out hci.org for even more insights, as well as information on our certification, virtual conferences, premium membership and more. I like to say one more big thank you to our presenters, Jason and Sue, and for the good people at Eightfold. And I’d also like to thank our webcast viewer. Thanks for spending an hour with us. We’ll see you next time.
