Strategic HR Review

Issue Number

Latest documents

• Discovering and expanding diversity with authenticity
• Editorial
• Never too old to work: managing an age diverse workforce

  Purpose: Setting the scene of a workforce that is living and working longer. Changing demographics are going to have a huge impact on the workplace and businesses need to get ahead of the curve. Design/methodology/approach: Age stereotyping is one of the biggest issues faced by companies today. Companies need to focus on recruiting and retaining people based on their ability and capabilities, not their age. Findings: In an intergenerational team, the team members are not artificially defined or divided by age; it is their talent that is important. Employers must recognize the unique skills and experiences each team member brings. Originality/value: The expectation of flexibility among younger employees is now ingrained. If businesses want to recruit and retain younger workers, they must embrace this way of working. Flexibility is just as important for older workers, especially those with caring responsibilities (children or elderly parents.) Employers need to adapt their benefits package to appeal to all.

• Solving the delayed retirement puzzle … and creating win-win opportunities

  Purpose: The population across the industrialized world is aging to the extent never experienced before in history, living 10 years longer on average than the previous generation and nearly two decades longer than two generations ago. Design/methodology/approach: To date, this rapidly growing segment of the population is not always addressed in inclusion and diversity plans and has often been overlooked as a source of competitive advantage, rather seen as a cost and a burden in some organizations. Findings: Leaders in industrial nations agree that to continue strong economic growth, it is vital to support people to live healthier lives and stay in the workforce for longer. By doing so, we can not only improve well-being and enable people to remain active and economically productive but also reduce dependency, bringing down the burdens on health, pensions and social systems. Originality/value: When this challenge is addressed, important motivational and productivity benefits will result from the seasoned talent segment staying a little longer with the organization. They will stay longer because they want to, not because they cannot afford to retire.

• Determining the next step: how organizations and aging employees determine whether to stay or to go

  Purpose: This paper aims to discuss the guiding principles for how to find solutions to a complex problem facing HR professionals: What to do with those who could or should retire and move on to the next stage of their lives? Design/methodology/approach: The author offers five guiding principles that may help you find a solution suited to your organization. These principles should help you assess where to focus your efforts and how to build a plan for moving forward. He then provides several potential solutions for HR professionals and their aging workforce to consider. Findings: The challenge to the human resource professional and the organization’s executives is to understand these guiding principles and develop solutions that work for the organization, business conditions and people. Originality/value: With these guiding questions and considerations in mind, HR professionals can better help their aging workforce stay, go or find a solution in between.

• Prioritizing the forgotten generation: why organizations should make boomers a key part of their talent acquisition strategy in 2020

  Purpose: Every day, nearly 10,000 employees in the Baby Boomer generation retire from the US job market. However, many in this generation are not ready for a quiet, traditional retirement and are choosing to remain in the workforce – simply on their own terms. With more employment opportunities open to candidates in the US job market than almost ever before, employers should prioritize engaging these seasoned hires in their recruitment strategies. Design/methodology/approach: Beamery’s Vice President of Customer Success Debra Squyres reviewed the most important reasons employers should not disregard the “forgotten generation” of candidates in their hiring strategies, especially when considering the diverse skills and roles Baby Boomers can bring to an enterprising workforce. Findings: Among other job-specific skills and experience, the greatest benefits of recruiting new hires from the Baby Boomer generation are the candidates’ years of experience and likely leadership roles, propensity for in-person relationship-building and unique perspective in an ever-diverse workforce. Originality/value: Highlighting the greatest benefits of Baby Boomer hires to employers is especially beneficial for those organizational leaders managing talent acquisition and retention.

• Editorial
• The 3 C’s of courageous leadership: how to connect to your body, connect to your creativity, connect to your inner revolutionary
• Facilitating a culture of intrapreneurship: an employee involvement approach
• Why people analytics is the HR professional’s secret weapon

Featured documents

• How the employee benefits market is going digital

  Purpose: Nicky Dunderdale, Director of Digital at Psyon, says there is a growing industry demand for intuitive, digital solutions to drive change and transformation in employee benefits to improve the management and communication of employee benefits – a demand that is set to accelerate. Design/met...

• Six ways to link training with business performance: Strengthening the impact of acquiring new skills

  Maintaining momentum after learning new skills and techniques is of paramount importance if companies are to maximize the benefit of upskilling employees. Management consulting firm, Kepner‐Tregoe, has identified six steps to ensuring the training doesn’t go to waste, but is instead harnessed early,...

• Develop your people, grow your business

  In recent years, the role of learning and development professionals has shifted. As organizations come round to the fact that people are a critical source of competitive advantage, they have an increasingly strategic role to play. The investments made in people are significant and, rightly, senior...

• Quick! How do I deal with a multigenerational workforce?
• Create individualized motivation strategies

  As we see in the workplace, most motivation strategies are “push” or “pull” based: keeping people moving either with a kick from behind (threats, fear, tough targets) or by offering choc‐drops (bonuses, grand presentations of the company vision, team‐building games). The article suggests five...

• Tying up loose ends in HR: using a value‐adding formula

  Using the “Powerful Connections” method, HR can significantly increase its impact on the organization and veer away from non value‐adding processes, says Robert Bolton, associate partner at Atos Consulting....

• Rolling out voluntary benefits for public sector employees

  David Lebond, executive director of employee‐benefits provider p&mm, worked with Nottingham City Council in the UK to introduce its first ever employee‐benefits package....

• Tax avoidance: the 21st century employment conundrum

  Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of being aware of current tax regulations for both the public and private sector. Design/methodology/approach: – This paper uses some of the recent news around large corporations and their tax systems to support the argument for...

• From analytics to action: how Shell digitized recruitment

  Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to share how Shell HR enabled technological change in their graduate hiring assessments. Design/methodology/approach: Shell receives over 100,000 applications for their global graduate program each year for fewer than 1,000 technical and commercial positions....

• Embracing and managing diversity at Dell: Introducing flexible working and a women’s network to help retain key employees

  Dell has introduced a number of key initiatives which helped to increase employee morale and retention rates. Its UK HR director, Richard Lowther, explains how management buy‐in for diversity programs was vital for implementing a successful rollout of initiatives, and has empowered employees to...