As a principal at IA-HR, an advisory firm that helps guide organizations through business transformation, our guest Mary Faulkner has a lot of experience helping companies through various workplace challenges. In this episode she shares how the past year has gone for organizations and what they’ve been focusing on.
Mary goes on to discuss the big trend towards optimization and maximizing existing assets, both technology and talent. Along with host John Hollon, they discuss why understanding the skill sets of your people is no longer a nice to have. In fact, it’s now an imperative to have an infrastructure providing visibility into these skills and capabilities.
Here’s how the conversation went… This interview has been edited and condensed.
John Hollon: You’re a principal with IA-HR a consulting firm that helps guide organizations through business transformation but helping companies to do that must be terribly difficult given the lock downs and other business and workplace challenges we’ve experienced over the past year. Can you talk a bit about how that has gone and what business transformation means today, compared to what it meant what you were doing before the pandemic?
Mary Faulkner: We were probably in a better position to transition to the pandemic working conditions as we’ve always worked virtually. The biggest change for us was we would always go on site with our clients when we do some of the current state assessments or work through some of the future state mapping. So probably the biggest change in our work is going virtual. We have figured out the best way to do it but we have to really reassure our clients to say we’ve got experience in doing it this way, we have online tools that help us do this collaboratively, we know how long a session can go before everybody starts to get glassy eyed so we plan accordingly.
In terms of the work that we’re doing, my last business trip was the first week of March of 2020 and I was on the road 50-75% of the time. When everything shut down there was this pause while everyone waited until things stabilized and everybody understood how work was going to get done. Once people saw what it’s going to be like we’ve seen an uptick in people really looking at needing to do the work that they’ve always been wanting to do. The pandemic accelerated some of the projects that were on the backburner, such as how do we make the employee experience better from a technology standpoint? How do we increase virtual workforce capabilities? We really saw a shift in focus for organizations to ‘If not now, when? So let’s just go ahead and do it.’
John Hollon: Did that surprise you that they shifted focus?
Mary Faulkner: It was work that we were already seeing change. Historically, a lot of what we did was helping do facilitated selection, so for RFPs we’d help people find best fit providers. While we still do that work we’d already been seeing a shift towards more process improvement strategy work, help us think through our operating model, all the optimization work. I think we saw an increase in demand of working that way because businesses have really had to rethink the way that they approach the work that they’re doing.
John Hollon: What kind of workplace and talent management trends are you seeing now in the wake of the lockdown and so many people as you know working remotely?
Mary Faulkner: There’s a really big trend towards optimization. Organizations are trying to maximize the assets they already have. Whether it’s the technology, the people, or some of the programs that they already have in place. Some organizations recognize that their infrastructure is just really out of date and they need to completely redo all of their talent and HCM strategy. But a lot of it is just really saying, I have this system it’s never worked the way we wanted it to work, we don’t have the capacity to go out and implement in a whole new system so how can we make it work better for us? That’s where we’ve been able to step in and say, in the past maybe you think you need to go to selection but you don’t, you just didn’t configure it very well at the beginning so let’s help you think through the way that you can reconfigure this or make it work better for you, especially with the changes in business today.
John Hollon: What are organizations looking for when they reach out to you today?
Mary Faulkner: For any advisory firm, such as what we do, they’re really looking for people to challenge them. Maybe that seems kind of obvious, but I definitely think that people want their advisors to question why is it that you’re doing it that way? Have you thought about a different way to do it? From a talent perspective, you say that you need performance management with ratings. Why? Do you really need performance management? Do you really just need better development discussions, whatever it might be. So they’re really looking for someone to come in and kick them out of the rut that they’ve been in and think differently.
John Hollon: You hear a lot today about how a number of organizations are really focused on both reskilling and upskilling their employees and working to make their employee base more flexible and agile. How much of that are you seeing?
Mary Faulkner: The desire is absolutely there, especially in a number of industries. We know a number of industries have been decimated through this pandemic, travel, hospitality, some of those service industries, they’re really hurting just to do business; but other parts of the economy, healthcare, or supply chain, or some of the frontline workers, those have really skyrocketed and they’re really struggling to find talent today. What we’re hearing from businesses is how do we have a better look at or a better view and visibility of who do we have today and what capabilities do they have? Can we easily transfer someone who’s been doing work in one department to another department because they had a skill set that we weren’t aware of? They want to be able to do that, but they don’t necessarily have the infrastructure to do that.
Having grown up in the learning and OD world where it was always about, have you really thought through how to create employee profiles, understanding what skill sets they bring and how do you keep that up to date, and all that sort of thing. People wanted to do it, but it was always a nice to have, it’s no longer going to be a nice to have. The nature of work has changed significantly, the way that even before COVID we were seeing a shift more to a liquid workforce of dynamic teams and businesses evolving so quickly that it’s not really about a job anymore it’s really about a skill.
What the pandemic is forcing companies to do is to really build that visibility and infrastructure of how do we know who we have, how do we hire the skill sets that we need and then how do we maintain those skill sets within our company? It’s a lot harder to hire people right now, as there’s delays in background checks and certifications, it’s also harder to relocate today, so if you can repurpose the talent that you already have or reallocate the talent you already have, you’re going to be ahead of the game.
John Hollon: It’s pretty amazing that we got to the point where so many organizations didn’t have a good fix on the skill sets of a lot of the people working for them, and how they could adjust when they needed to.
Mary Faulkner: When you when you look at the way that employees are brought into a company, you’re brought in for a job, you’re not brought in for your skill set. Even when you talk to people who are looking for a job today, what is the advice that they’re given? Tailor your resume to the job description and tailor your resume to the keywords that they’re using.
I’m a great example I have the most bizarre career background if you really look into it. I have a history degree and a physics minor and then I went and got an Instructional Learning Technologies master. Then all the jobs, I’ve worked for tech startups, global organizations, very tiny little organizations – there’s a bit of everything. What I bring is a bunch of different skill sets to an organization, but then that has to somehow fit in a box of some job description that somebody who didn’t really want to write the job description in the first place and it’s probably first written 20 years ago, and just kind of updated to replace the name of the software that you had to know. We have sustained this system and this approach of its a job first, people second, skills third or fourth, and it’s always been de-prioritized but I think what we’re seeing is that it’s not about deprioritization anymore. It’s really more about how do we find those people with that skill set, but then also maximize those skill sets and keep people up to date. IT is probably a really good example, where you see the certifications and you see people continuing to get that education because technology changes so quickly, the rest of the business units need to get on board with that as well.
John Hollon: How can an organization build and grow an effective culture with so many people working remotely and in an environment where the nature of work seems to be changing so dramatically? Is culture even an important thing for companies to be worried about now?
Mary Faulkner: Culture will always be a piece of it, whether or not it’s front and center, like it’s been in the past or an employee differentiator, ‘we’re going to hire people based on our culture’, which I have a whole other set of opinions about that. But culture will always be a part of it. It impacts the way that an organization treats its people, how it does work, how it works with its partners. There are organizations that have a horrible reputation as a vendor partner, that’s part of your culture too, you have to be aware of those things.
In terms of the current situation and remote workforce, anyone who’s ever worked for a virtual team knows that culture is still existent, it’s still there. We are primarily virtual none of us lives in the same state as the others so it’s a matter of being more intentional. We still have what we believe as an organization: we still believe in transparency and in building relationships, both with our co workers and with our clients. Those are parts of our culture, it’s a little bit of values, it’s a little bit of what we measure, it’s a little bit of how we reward employees and we’ve built it into the way that we work.
I think it’s more difficult for companies that always based its culture on proximity anchors, whether it’s you smile at your coworkers, or we’d always go to the break room and there would be pizza on Fridays, whatever that might have been. It’s different now. So it’s really more about finding those values, beliefs and standards that you think are important in your organization and then build everything around that. If you think for example, that trust is important maybe don’t use monitoring software for your employees who are working virtually. If you think that mental health is important, make sure your wellness offerings has some sort of resources for people for their mental health. Whatever it might be, be really intentional about identifying those things, and then build a system around it to support it.
John Hollon: Do you see companies struggling with the lack of casual conversations that often spark creative solutions to problems with remote work and are they trying to work on that?
Mary Faulkner: It ties down to the Zoom fatigue. The biggest challenge is the fact that you have to schedule those casual conversations, you do have to be really intentional about it. I have worked remotely, off and on for a ridiculous number of years and one of the organizations where I worked we did what we call virtual coffee chats, where you were required to schedule 1-1 just like 15 minutes where you didn’t talk about anything about work and it was about building those relationships with your co-workers and understanding what some of the challenges they might be facing just personally and that fostered that relationship, so that you would be more likely to just organically reach out if you had a question or a thought.
John Hollon: Given your work, I’m sure you get a good close up look at what business leaders are doing. Have you seen any decisions that have been made during the lockdown that either particularly impressed you or struck you as a really innovative solution to some of the current workforce and talent management challenges that we are dealing with?
Mary Faulkner: It’s the little things that add up to big things. One of the things that happened that you see is they’re just cutting through red tape. They’re getting past all the bureaucracy and all the approvals and just saying, do you need it? Here you go. Whether it’s laptops, or WiFi, or whatever it might be? From the talent perspective, and it’s proof that we were all able to suddenly pivot to a remote workforce when organizations have always said you never could. So now what else can we blow up and do better?
We also talked to a healthcare leader who was having trouble filling some of those critical roles because of the backup with background checks and certifications. So she just went out and interviewed all of the employees that she had in house, built a homegrown Excel spreadsheet mapping of all those skills and filled all the critical roles with internal employees. Is it sustainable long term? No. But it really shows that there was a desire to get it done and now she has a great start to be able to make that an infrastructure in that talent piece. I think leaders are being creative. Also, just from a human side of thing, I think leaders are listening more, there are more and more leaders who are truly listening to the challenges that their employees are having, granting more flexibility and really thinking about what does this mean long term for my employees.
John Hollon: We wholeheartedly believe that everyone should have a job that they love, and one they’re passionate about. So Mary, what is it that you love about what you do?
Mary Faulkner: So many things. I love the variety of the work that we get to do, the opportunity to problem solve. I’m a curious person so I always get to learn new things in this role. But mostly, I love it that we get to help our clients uncover solutions that might have already been there, or just the pieces were there and they just weren’t able to see it. And I love the fact that we’re able to give a voice to people who felt like they were not being heard.
Our role is we are here to amplify your voices to help you build a solution that makes sense for you. And I love that we’re able to do that. We include all levels of employees in our process so when we have that frontline employee who hasn’t been able to get anybody understand how frustrating it is to try to print a resume, to be able to say no, this is really a pain point we need to solve and the CEO goes, Yeah, why are we not allowing that? It really gives them that sense of accomplishment and that realization and validation that I knew that that was a problem, and I can be part of the solution. So I just love that we’re able to do that.
