The research is clear: Business leaders are looking to HR for leadership and innovation.
That guidance is needed on a range of topics that drive talent AND business strategy, such as:
Acquiring or building AI and tech skills to support growth
Fostering career mobility to improve employer brand
Finding the balance of remote and onsite work to maximize productivity
And more
To guide people leaders on the big issues of the day, we brought together a few experts — including Dean Carter, Chief Purpose Officer and Evangelist at Guild, and Erin Roberts, Deputy General Counsel and Chief People Officer at Five Guys — to shed light on the transformative potential of HR practices in driving organizational growth and employee development.
Read on for three insights from the conversation — or watch the full webinar on demand.
1. On career mobility… internal candidates don’t just help fill in-demand roles — they're also a boon to culture.
If Carter’s recent conversations with CHROs are any indication, career mobility is a top priority. Despite some layoffs in tech and general volatility, it remains a tight labor market on the whole — particularly for highly skilled talent.
Both Carter and Roberts spoke on the benefits of fostering internal career mobility, particularly the positive cultural impact.
When people move up and around the company, they not only fill in-demand roles, they bring their institutional and cultural knowledge with them. They’re able to be productive faster and perform at a higher level more quickly — all while saving the organization money on recruiting costs.
“There’s less cultural risk. So when you look inside you already know they’re working with the culture, they understand the culture, and the speed to get the job done, the speed to excellence and productivity is accelerated,” Carter said.
Roberts touched on succession planning at Five Guys: as a fast casual restaurant, they’re always bringing in huge amounts of new talent. When a manager moves up or on, they have to have someone ready to take their place.
“We’d have a huge labor problem if we could not promote from within. And we like to promote from within because our corporate culture is so important to us,” Roberts noted.
"We’d have a huge labor problem if we could not promote from within. And we like to promote from within because our corporate culture is so important to us."
Erin Roberts
Deputy General Counsel and Chief People Officer at Five Guys
For more on the power of internal mobility and dedicated career pathways, read our guide.
2. On skills-based organizations… don’t just remove degree requirements. Take a broader view of skills and learning journeys.
Many companies are exploring becoming skills-based organizations, part of which entails removing degree requirements for certain jobs.
While that can be an important way to broaden talent pipelines, it’s not enough.
Instead, Carter argued for acknowledging different kinds of experience and considering the skills people build in frontline jobs, volunteering experiences, and beyond. Although many people leave those early jobs off their resume or LinkedIn profile, they give people valuable experience and skills they should formally recognize.
“I was a camp counselor, I worked at Long John Silver’s, those were critical skills — team-building skills, collaboration, problem-solving — that I built in those moments and we need to respect. Those were skills developed that I didn’t go to the University of Texas to get,” Carter pointed out.
Taking a broader view of skills also means accounting for experiences that many of us take for granted.
Taking a broad view of skills means accounting for experiences that many of us take for granted.
Roberts shared a story about a talented General Manager they recruited into the corporate office at Five Guys. Despite an admittedly somewhat rocky start, they discovered that the problem wasn’t with the GM — it was simply that he’d never had an office job before.
Roberts explains, “When we unpacked it – we realized he’d never been trained in Microsoft Office Suite…when you slow down and talk to people and understand where they’re coming from – you realize it’s easy to fix that. You have the work ethic, you know the company, you have the right attitude — we just need to give you the skills.”
What about building AI skills for your whole workforce? Read our guide to preparing for an AI-powered future.
3. On return to office… workers want flexibility. Get creative in how you deliver that.
No conversation on HR trends in 2024 would be complete without a discussion of the return to office.
Roberts acknowledged that frontline employees don’t have the luxury of working from home. That’s why they eventually asked corporate employees to return to the office as well, recommending two days a week but allowing for flexibility.
“It’s possible to create a sense of belonging, a sense of community, you just have to be clever. You can’t just go back to what we were doing before and expect the same results. It’s up to creative heads of HR to create belonging.”
Dean Carter, Chief Purpose Officer and Evangelist, Guild
And for frontline workers, flexibility might mean trying to account for shift preferences and family schedules.
Carter talked about the need to broaden the aperture of the return to office conversation, noting that Guild has a highly distributed workforce. To create belonging, we created community groups with paid community leaders in our major geographic hubs. They organize events and volunteer together.
These groups are multilevel and multi department, and have had a huge impact on belonging — our inclusion score went up 13 points a year after launching that initiative alongside an increased focus on ERGs.
“It’s possible to create a sense of belonging, a sense of community, you just have to be clever. You can’t just go back to what we were doing before and expect the same results. It’s up to creative heads of HR to create belonging,” Carter said.