How can you build talent and plan succession in a hybrid working world?

Picture this: you're navigating the intricate paths of hybrid working - what bearing does this have on talent and succession planning in your organization? That's the meaty conversation we're sinking our teeth into in this episode. We explore the key facets of finding, fostering, and future-proofing strong leadership within organisations. Take a moment to think about your role, your ambition, and how your organisation is supporting you and your colleagues.

We consider how succession planning needs to change post pandemic, highlighting the ongoing challenges of seeking out talent in a remote work environment. There's a critical need to combat proximity bias, to develop skills more intentionally, to widen the candidate pool and work towards outlining role levels rather than specific positions.

Our final focus is on molding a productive organizational culture in tune with the needs of employees and the pivotal role managers play in aligning succession planning with the organization’s strategy. Ultimately we need to craft uplifting work experiences and future planning that works for people and organisation together.

AWA Host: Karen Plum

Guests: 

• Brad Taylor, Director of Consulting, AWA
• Paul Burton, Senior Associate, AWA
• Jo Reynolds, Director of Talent & Culture, AICPA/CIMA (Association of International Certified Professional Accountants)

 AWA Guest details: https://www.advanced-workplace.com/our-team/ 

CONTACTS & WEBSITE details:

AWA contact: Andrew Mawson 

AWA Institute contact: Natalia Savitcaia 

Music: Licensed by Soundstripe – Lone Canyon

Want to know more about AWA?

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• Visit our website

Thanks for listening to the DNA of work podcast

Transcript

Karen Plum: 0:04

Hello there. On this podcast, we talk a lot about hybrid working and how it's really shaken up so many aspects of the way we work. How and where we interact with colleagues, how we communicate, how we meet, how we manage and so on. One of the topics we haven't looked at in depth is how organisations identify, attract and nurture the so-called talent that they need for success, and how to make sure there are sufficient, robust plans in place to protect the succession of not just top roles, but critical roles throughout the business. So this episode is going to put that right, as we dive into talent and succession planning. Welcome to AWA's podcast, which is all about the changing world of work and trying to figure out what's right for each organisation, because we know that every one is unique. We talk to people who have walked the walk, who've got the t-shirt and who've learned lessons that they're happy to share with us. I'm your host, Karen Plum, and this is the DNA of work. I think this is a really interesting, complex subject, one that should be a concern to everyone that works in an organisation, because it's all about how people are treated.

Karen Plum: 1:25

As you listen to the discussion, think about how your organisation nurtures talent and whether you would describe yourself as talent? And what about succession? Are you on track to take over a role or a type of role in the future? If you aren't on the succession track, do you feel sufficiently visible now that you or your manager might not see each other so often? These are all aspects of hybrid that I think we need to be more intentional about and to discuss these issues, I'm joined by two colleagues - podcast regular and AWA's Director of Consulting, Brad Taylor, and AWA Senior Associate, Paul Burton, who joins the show for the first time. I'm also delighted to have Jo Reynolds with us to share her perspectives. Jo is Director of Talent and Culture at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants and has a wealth of experience in this area. So I started by asking Brad what do we mean by 'nurturing talent'?

Brad Taylor: 2:29

So nurturing talent in an organisation is typically about, first of all, identifying people who have the right attitude and the right ability to be able to grow within the organisation, undertake more senior roles and to perhaps take on more leadership or more professional roles within that organisation.

Brad Taylor: 2:46

So it's thinking about and having an understanding for their career path and what that's going to look like and what are their own personal growth aspirations.

Brad Taylor: 2:55

And then it's about aligning all of those with the needs of the organisation.

Brad Taylor: 2:58

So the organisation will have some strategic goals and ambitions and things that it wants to be able to do in the future, and therefore nurturing talent is about ensuring that those skills and capabilities will be within those people who will be there at that time to be able to meet those needs in the future. And then it's about providing them with the means to develop those skills and capabilities. So it could be in person, it could be virtual, it could be on the job training, it could be coaching, it could be using technology such as video learning. It's how, helping people to access that development in the way that they need. And then it's about spending time to review with those people as well. So talking about their career growth, perhaps through one to one discussions, but investing time to help them reflect on their own personal growth. And then sort of stepping back is also thinking about as an organisation, how do we segment these cohorts of talent that we need around the organisation as well so that we're able to do this in a way that is manageable and nurture that growth.

Karen Plum: 3:58

And does it start when the person's already inside the organisation, or does it go as far back as recruitment?

Brad Taylor: 4:06

I think it does go as far back as recruitment. I can remember years ago when I first started out. I went into the banking sector and the bank that I joined, it was widely known, you know, amongst a group of six formers that that was the best bank to work for in terms of development.

Brad Taylor: 4:22

So you know, developing a reputation that helps you stand out amongst your peers, that you are the best at developing aa nurturing talent, is worthwhile. It's worth doing if you want to attract that talent in the first place. So I think it starts there with reputation, and then it happens the moment that person starts going through the experience of applying to work with the organisation, how they're onboarded into the organisation and then maintaining that sense of energy and excitement that they have, their aspirations, that they have when they join that organisation, showing them how they're going to realise that. Because aswe used to send the bank when we used to go around schools and talk to students about acareer in banking, for example, an no one wants to join as a cashier, everyone wants to be a bank manager. They want the big job with the company car, whatever might come with it. So we have to talk about it in that sort of context so we help people understand what that job could be like and what the path to get there would be like.

Paul Burton: 5:15

There's one thing is selling the dream, and then there's two is kind of helping people realise that, because you can sell that opportunity that says, look, you know, in this organisation we're going to take you this way, and then when they land, if that isn't then realised, actually what you get is disenfranchised people. They've got a promise in their mind that is different. So this whole thing is about how do you do that from the, from that entry point, but how do you create a seamless journey that isn't an overpromise, is actually a reality all the way through?

Karen Plum: 5:44

So the other aspect of the discussion today is succession planning. So what is succession planning, Paul, and how does that map into what Brad's just been talking about in terms of nurturing the talent?

Paul Burton: 5:57

So succession planning typically is focused on senior roles, senior jobs, you know, the critical roles in an organisation and how you fill those, and very often it talks about leadership positions. You know, what we've got is we've got this nurturing of talent that goes on, and then this step then of variability in the kind of organisation that you're actually only really focusing on succession at a more senior level, and there's a big, there's a chasm that sits in between there, potentially depending on how an organisation is doing things. I'm talking about, quite typically, how do we bridge those two things?

Paul Burton: 6:33

And I suppose the other thing - I'm a little bit hung up with the word talent, and the reason why I am is because, if you look at the definition of talent, it is the natural aptitude and skill, and I don't know how many you know children have been born naturally ready for the business world to be able to operate. And then I suppose underneath that is, you know, how do you identify talent? And what I mean by that is that I know that I've worked with some amazing people that are truly, you know, that are fantastic. I know that there's also a whole group of people that can get attention and be seen as talent, but what about the people that don't get attention but are talent or are one click away from being talent, and how do we kind of make sure that we capture those people? And I think that's even more prevalent in you know in today's business world as well.

Jo Reynolds: 7:26

There is a big danger of labelling people as talent, because then in, not in every organisation, but in many organisations you then have this other cohort, who is not talent, and that becomes incredibly dangerous because you're overlooking people.

Jo Reynolds: 7:46

I've seen people sort of fall into the trap of also assuming that they've identified somebody as talent and they put a lot of time and effort into that person and when that person's capability tops out, as it sometimes does, because they've got other stuff going on, they have not the desire to go more senior. They get to a point and they go no, I'm good here, for whatever reason, but there's been so much energy invested in describing that person as talent. They're our top talent. There's almost a tendency to push those people into roles that they don't want, they're not ready for. I know many people who said I just don't want to do that kind of senior role. It takes too much out of me. That's not how I roll. I would much prefer that we talked about people or accepting that everybody has a talent of some kind. B ut we just talk about 'our people'.

Brad Taylor: 8:47

That's a really good point. It doesn't mean that they no longer have any value because they could be doing that job really, really well and they're exactly in the space where you want them to be. The last thing I want to do is put them into a job beyond that and beyond their capability, and then you ruin them. So I think there is again, it's an intentionality, isn't it, that needs to go into really thinking about every individual and a care about wanting to understand who they are, where they want to be.

Brad Taylor: 9:13

What sort of skills do they feel they can really bring to this?

Karen Plum: 9:20

What do they want? Rather than people sitting around determining who the rising stars are and where we want to take them? Is that just a one-sided decision? And then there's a disappointment, because the person that we've identified actually doesn't want to become a manager of people, for example. As we know, so many managers didn't.

Jo Reynolds: 9:40

Also understanding that they don't want to be a manager just yet, because people's trajectory in their work life and their desire for that, just changes over time. Because I know from a personal point of view I've had at least three occasions when I've said to various different managers going no, no, please don't develop me this year, I can't cope this year, just leave me be. Happy where I am. There have also been occasions where I've sort of gone no, I'm ready for more and had that conversation with my manager and I've been lucky enough that my managers have been open to that, whereas I have seen people where their managers have sort of boxed them off and they're not interested in that and they're not interested in a more senior role ever. So it's that intentionality and it's about constantly revisiting the conversation.

Karen Plum: 10:40

It was interesting, as you were talking about people not being ready yet. I was thinking about the last few years during the COVID pandemic and how many things people had to deal with and you could entirely imagine that a lot of people would have said no, whoa, not this year or not now or whatever, when there's so much uncertainty coming. But just to look back pre-pandemic for a moment, we've talked about how to nurture people and to look at that sort of aspect of succession planning, that planning for resourcing those roles and activities in the future. How were these typically carried out before the pandemic, Paul?

Paul Burton: 11:21

I think that a lot of organisations have got performance appraisal processes that would start to formulate some of the understanding of where people are and what they can do, and where those performance processes are combined with solid competencies that equip an individual to be able to understand where they are and what they can do and what the expectations are. You can combine those two things into an output of kind of what's my current performance, what's my opportunity to be able to kind of fit in other roles. As we say from a succession planning perspective, if you think you're raising that up in terms of you know some more senior roles, then they become talent conversations in boardrooms, as an example. You know they're talking about who fits where, what are their skills, what's their readiness. So it kind of is a number of different processes that culminate together to be able to create a picture of somebody and then how they fit into what the organisation needs.

Karen Plum: 12:18

Yeah, interesting. So, just moving on, what's changed since the pandemic period and since we've emerged into much more sort of hybrid ways of working? Are we just doing these things differently now, or are people still sort of doing what they were doing before? Jo, what's been your experience?

Jo Reynolds: 12:38

What I've tended to see is people are still doing the same old thing. The difference has been that, with everybody being, certainly in organisations that I've been speaking to, the number of people that are remote, now. You're not seeing people in five days a week, Monday to Friday, nine to five you know everybody in the same space. That's no longer the reality for most organisations. So some of the downsides of the traditional succession planning, which did have a tendency to lend itself to proximity bias unless you were careful, becomes even more exaggerated. So you know you start.

Jo Reynolds: 13:23

If you imagine this sort of fairly typical boardroom discussion or C-suite discussion or whatever, you're talking about a group of people sitting around a room talking about the people that they know about - their impressions and so on. It's formed by exposure to these people. So people who perhaps have got good talent, who have got the potential to lead an organisation, purely because they've not got onto the right projects or they're not in the right geographic location, were overlooked, or at least there was a danger that they were overlooked. That's become even more the case now as we become much more widespread.

Karen Plum: 14:09

Yeah, so we're still just sensitized to the most obvious things, the things that are clearly in front of us, perhaps the people that do turn up in the office five days a week and are seen to be good contributors and good team players, and oh they're always here and they're always here when I leave in the evening or whatever it is.

Brad Taylor: 14:29

I don't think this is something that organisations were necessarily particularly good at even before the pandemic?

Jo Reynolds: 14:33

No, not at all.

Brad Taylor: 14:35

Proximity bias definitely played a part, I think, a lack of clarity around what is it we need to be developing. A tendency because line managers are busy just to grasp the first thing that comes up when somebody talks about where they want to develop and then budget gets spent unwisely on things that perhaps aren't going to benefit it in the long run. And it's become all the more difficult now because, as Jo was saying, people aren't around, you can't see the talent anymore, necessarily. There's a risk that we are not thinking about the skills that you know, just general management, or skills, employee skills that people are going to need in the future, that we are not necessarily giving them now.

Brad Taylor: 15:16

So you know how do you lead a project, how do you chair a meeting, how do you deal with conflict in the office environment?

Brad Taylor: 15:24

These are the things that we learn by watching, observing others or experiencing ourselves and having time to reflect through a coaching session with a manager, and I think there's a real need to have again to go back to intentionality, to make sure that we are thinking and slowing down a bit about how we're going to instill these things within our processes and our systems and the conversations and making it part of the culture. That development matters and we're going to be very mindful about it and we may ask you to do some things that involve coming into the office and you may not like because you want to crack on and get on with your job remotely, but we're going to do that because we care about the health of this organisation. We care about you as an individual and your future career growth. It may not be with us. We want you to apply for any job and have a good opportunity of getting that role, so we're going to invest time in it and make that a new normal.

Jo Reynolds: 16:13

This is why the approach of developing a bench, a broad bench of people really helps. So, rather than putting people in boxes and developing those specific roles, effectively, creating a broad bench of people who you develop, but what you're doing is you're creating a candidate pool, because, again, one of the challenges with succession planning historically, never mind now, was that it almost became cherry picking people to go into roles, whereas if what you do instead is create a good candidate pool, as Brad said, you're developing them either to rise up within your own organisation or to go elsewhere. But isn't it great to have a reputation to being an organisation that when people come in, when they leave, they say that was a great chapter of my career and I'd really recommend people go and work there.

Karen Plum: 17:17

And you're not just backing one horse right? Paul?

Paul Burton: 17:22

There's only one job, but none of us are a job, right? So we're a set of skills and experience and kind of aptitudes and attitude, aren't we? And I think the bit is where you can get to a point where you can define role levels, rather than a role, what you're doing is you're like you say, you're then bringing people on for a bench of roles that are at a level. So, rather than a job or a role, what you're then doing is you're creating a group of people that can operate, and what that then does as well is it means that you can cross-fertilise against silos. So, in other words, what you're saying is there's a role level, so you're now able to do that role. That might be in sales, that might be in marketing, that might be in HR, but it's a role level, you've got the competence for it. And actually then moving people around an organisation in that way creates much more breadth and depth of experience that allow people to be able to climb much higher than they would do by going through the verticals.

Paul Burton: 18:15

And then I suppose the other bit that I was going to say earlier is kind of around the identification process and again what Jo and Brad were saying around proximity.

Paul Burton: 18:26

I'm going to use a word and hopefully it lands okay, but we've got a lot of narcissists that are able to promote themselves and put themselves forward and that's what they do. They kind of they shine, there's a facade that goes with them, and those are the people potentially that we will spot first, that feel like talent, because they're the noisiest people that are putting themselves forward. There is definitely a place for narcissists, right, and there is value in some of that, but what you don't want is all your senior roles being filled by narcissists. So our processes have to be deeper and smarter to be able to kind of work in an environment where we've got different behaviours and people expect different things. So just because somebody shines in, whatever that means, what we're going to do is we've got to be able to look underneath that and have more data that will support to be able to make sure actually they can continue to do so and operate in the right way in our business, in that job, not just because they shine.

Brad Taylor: 19:27

It's similar, isn't it with sort of introvert extrovert argument as well. The extrovert typically the louder, more sociable person is the person who's identified as future leaders. But actually there's some really great introverted leaders out there who tend to be very, very reflective, thoughtful. So, yeah, I'll back up what Paul's saying there about having this balanced approach.

Jo Reynolds: 19:49

This is where, rather than having one conversation a year, which is, again, that's the traditional approach getting more flexible about having ongoing conversations, so regularly having that intentional check-in on what's happening with our leadership bench, our cohort, whatever you want to call them. I'm steering away from talent, but that's often what the conversation tends to be. But you know, what are they doing right now? How have people developed? How have we seen them progress? So, really getting into watching people's progress, are they being given the right opportunities to demonstrate? So it's not just about sticking people in a room. It's about experiential learning and giving people a chance to learn as they go and therefore demonstrate their capabilities, all of which creates a really rich source of information that you can use as you look at candidate pools when you are looking for selection.

Brad Taylor: 20:54

Growing capabilities is often about taking risks with people and accepting that they're going to be put in positions where they're going to make some mistakes, but that's part of the learning. You know, there's nothing teaches you more than a mistake. So it's creating an environment where that can happen, and there's a lot of lip service that's often paid to, oh, it's okay to make mistakes here and blah, blah, blah blah, but then, when the proverbial hits the fan, it's not okay, and so organisations need to think carefully about this. How will we deal with it when this person makes a mistake or they drop the ball on something? What conversations am I going to have with them and how do I want to be remembered as someone who nurtured them and helped them through this, rather than the person who just crushed their lives and made them leave the organisation?

Karen Plum: 21:37

Yes, and that decision to leave the organisation is very often a different reason than the reason that they would choose to go to another organisation. So very often they would leave to get away from something, and it might be a poor manager or a lack of development. So there's a lot at stake here.

Paul Burton: 21:56

I think the majority of people leave an organisation because of emotion. But they go for the tangible, you know. S o they go for the rational. So you know they're leaving because they're trying to escape somebody or they don't like a situation, they don't like behavior, whatever it would be. It's an emotion they're leaving for. But when they go somewhere, they don't know what emotion they're going to encounter in the organisation. So they go for the rational, they go for more money. So why wouldn't you? I'm going to leave something I don't like. I'm going to go something, I don't know if I will, but I'll get more money, so I might as well give it a whirl.

Brad Taylor: 22:22

We equate more money with feeling valued, I think as well, isn't it? My manager doesn't see the potential in me any more, they don't value me. This person here is going to pay me five grand a year more to work for them. They see it, they get me.

Karen Plum: 22:34

Well, they see it and they'll also probably hear that they're going to be developed and they'll have a fast track and they'll be a rising star, and all of those promises which, as we said at the beginning, the truth obviously takes a while to play out and you get to see whether those promises will actually be delivered. Well, clearly, it's really important for organisations to have a good grip on this stuff, even if they weren't doing a great job of it before the pandemic. There seems that there's even more at stake now. So, just to finish off, I'm interested in what you would suggest is a good place for an organisation to start if it feels that it doesn't have a good grip on how to nurture people and sort of look after that succession planning. Brad, do you want to start?

Brad Taylor: 23:22

I think I'd say start with the organisational strategy and having conversations with the leadership team to understand where does the organisation need to be in the next five, ten years and therefore then anchoring conversations around the skills and the capabilities that that will call for, so that then you can adopt a structured approach.

Brad Taylor: 23:40

And looking at the gap analysis, what do we have now? Is the nature of what the organisation will be doing in five or ten years time going to change and therefore will call for new skills, or will it call for an upgrade in those skills and capabilities? What's the impact of artificial intelligence going to be on how we think about the skills and capabilities that we need? So build some structure around it so that the conversations you're having with the leadership team feel strategic and anchor them in the business objectives rather than becoming a conversation around what can we do that will make people happy and a sort of a knee jerk response to, in the moment, development that just makes people feel good but actually isn't adding any value to the organisation. And then, if you have people on the succession plan, let them know, inform them, tell them that you've identified them, you want to develop them, to have the capability to apply for these roles when they come up in the future, and that's throughout the entire organisation. Everyone can be a successor to another role in the organisation, so get the leaders and the managers involved as well and make it part of the culture.

Jo Reynolds: 24:47

In some ways building on that is talking about making those conversations matter, showing the leadership and the people managers and pretty much everybody through the organisation the value of having those quality conversations with each other and with their existing employees to find out what people's capabilities are, what their desires are in terms of progression and really looking for a broader cohort than is typical.

Karen Plum: 25:24

Yeah, so hedging your bets, really. Not backing the one horse! Okay, what about you, Paul?

Paul Burton: 25:31

I kind of think it starts with thinking about the experience that you'd want people to have in your organisation. So if my son or daughter was being brought into this organisation, what experience would I want them to have that would help them grow in this organisation in the best way? Then thinking about, if that seamless experience I wanted to give, what would get in our way of doing that? Why would my son or daughter be overlooked? Why would my son or daughter not have a honest conversation? I think it's a real leveller and if you're investing in people like that, then it will show through in your results, it will show through in your value, it will show through in your customer experience, because what you do inside the organisation will be mirrored by the experience your customers get. So I kind of think it starts off with a bit of a conversation, but you know that's that and then into okay.

Paul Burton: 26:23

So individuals have to take responsibility for themself. It can't be a manager that's driving that, solely. Individuals need to be put into a space that goes well actually, if you want to grow, then you've got to step up too, because this is a joint agreement and not just the one way. So we have to create an expectation in an organisation that says you do that, it's part of your contract, almost, and we will support it.

Paul Burton: 26:49

And if you don't do it, then there is no succession for you. Why? Because we need somebody that's going to grow, because succession is about taking on another role and you're not going to do it as you are. And then, finally, I think is data - is using more data than the kind of the perception of somebody and having real clarity and tangibility to that data so you can compare one person to another. Because where D E and I goes wrong, as far as I'm concerned, is that we don't have the data to be able to support the decision we've made. It's about creating that trajectory, that expectation, and then the kind of the, you know that we're going to do this as an organisation. And then it's not just succession planning. It does, it supports it, but it's about the way we do things, it's about performance, it's about culture. So it's connected for me.

Karen Plum: 27:33

As the guests demonstrated, hybrid working requires us to do more, to be more intentional and to pay attention to things that we probably didn't feel the need to be too careful about when everyone was together in the office. Arguably, there's more at stake now, as so many people feel more connected to the things that they value at work, and if they don't get them, they're more likely to look elsewhere. At the heart of the discussion is the question - what sort of an organisation do we want to be? Fundamentally, how do we want to treat people and what experience do we want them to have? My thanks to all of my guests, Jo, Paul and Brad, for talking me through this complex topic. I hope it's given you food for thought. If you'd like to hear future episodes of the DNA of work, just follow or like the show. You can contact us on our website, advanced-workplace. com.