Exploring Trends Versus Fads in Workplace Strategy with SHRM's George Rivera
About This Episode
This week’s episode is brought to you by SHRM. Read on to learn more.
How do we build workplaces that work for all of us? That's the central question of this week's conversation, one that serves to anchor a narrative around workplace trends and fads and all shades of work between. Carrie Fox continues her conversation with George Rivera, Senior Vice President of SHRM Enterprise Solutions.
Rivera believes the workplace provides an invaluable opportunity to foster human connection and purpose. With over 15 years of experience in people-focused business leadership, he recognizes work environments as a chance to create positive change in society. As he says, "If we can create workplaces that work for all, we can create a society and world that works for all."
Throughout their discussion, Fox and Rivera examine key forces shaping today's workforce strategy that begins with the heart of the organization itself, its culture: "Do we have a culture plan? As an organization, do we have the ability to map where we are culturally today and where we want to be two or three years from now?"
Rivera peels back the four forces shaping workforce strategy: workforce planning, skills building, culture creation and technology integration. Along the way, he emphasizes thoughtful flexibility, sustainability, and aligning business practices with a company's culture and values.
"The perfect answer is what's perfectly aligned to your culture. Having a defined culture is the prerequisite to build the north star that you actually can then go after."
So, how can organizations develop an intentional culture strategy? What is the right balance of upskilling versus reskilling? And how can AI and technology be deployed thoughtfully? For leaders aiming to elevate their organization's impact, this week's conversation provides perspective on constructing genuinely human-centered workplaces.
Our great thanks to George Rivera and the SHRM team for making this conversation possible.
Sponsor: SHRM
SHRM provides solutions for 95% of Fortune 500 companies to transform talent management, accelerate executive development, elevate workplace culture, and build inclusive workplaces. SHRM promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging while advancing women leaders to construct better workplaces. Mission Partners routinely consults SHRM first when facing HR and best practice challenges and we're thrilled to be able to work with SHRM as the sponsor of this week's episode. Learn more at SHRM.org.
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Announcer:
Did you get that? Did you get that? Welcome to Mission Forward.
Carrie Fox:
Today's episode is brought to you by SHRM. You heard me, S-H-R-M, SHRM. There's a reason that 95% of Fortune 500 companies turn to SHRM. From elevating workplace culture and talent management to accelerating the performance and development of their executives, SHRM has a full suite of solutions to transform the way you work. I really admire their driving principles, promoting women and leadership, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and ultimately, building better workplaces for a better world. I'll tell you honestly, every time that we have a question over at Mission Partners tied to HR and best practices, the first place we go? You got it, SHRM.org. For listeners tuning in, SHRM is the perfect partner to help solve business challenges keeping you up at night. Learn more at shrm.org, and now back to the show.
Hi there, and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast, where each week we bring you a thought-provoking and perspective-shifting conversation on the power of communication. I'm Carrie Fox, your host, and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and Certified B Corporation. Today I am so excited to have George Rivera from SHRM back with us today for the second part of our conversation on workplace best practices. If you recall, not too long ago we were talking AI, and this week we're looking a little closer at the difference between some critical workplace trends and forces that are shaping workforce strategy, and maybe we'll spot out some fads too.
There are four forces shaping workforce strategy that are going to guide this conversation today. I'm going to set these up, and then we're going to invite George in and we're going to talk about each of these, but I want you to be listening today as George talks about workforce planning, skills, building culture, and AI and tech. We may pick up on a few things that we talked about in our last conversation together, but before we go any further, let me reintroduce George Rivera from SHRM. Hey, George, thanks for coming back on.
George Rivera:
Hi, Carrie. Thanks for having me back.
Carrie Fox:
Sure thing. I'm going to do a little bit of grounding on this one, then I'm going to toss it back to you. Workplace leaders, we hear day in day out, from folks that we are working with at Mission Partners but also folks who are listening to this show, that they are constantly looking for ways to improve and evolve and grow, right, but many workplaces get caught up in these fads that take them off course from long-term impact.
What I'd love you to do is guide, as you do so expertly, on what you see as some trends versus maybe what you see as some fads. Hopefully in this next 20, 25 minutes, we're going to come out of here with some really practical insights that can help these listeners move their work forward. Ground us first from your point of view, how you got into your work at SHRM, and why being able to identify a fad versus a trend feels so important to you.
George Rivera:
There's a lot there. How I got into my work here at SHRM, as we talked about briefly a couple of weeks ago, is ultimately I've always had a deep passion around the workplace. I think there's this opportunity to have an outsized impact on our young people, on humans in general, in the workplace. We spend 40 hours a week right here, maybe more for a lot of us, a lot more, but we spend it right here, whether it's virtually or in person, doing work and working with strangers in this environment and building these careers together.
I think it's just so hugely impactful if we can create workplaces like SHRM talks about, workplaces that work for all. If we do that, I think we have the opportunity to create then the society or the world that works for all as well. It's a little ambitious, but it's what I believe, and I think this is as great of a place as I can find to have that impact.
Carrie Fox:
George, you were really good at connecting dots for me, and as you were speaking, I wrote something down. When I graduated college, I remember the day of my college graduation, my uncle pulled me aside and he said, "If you want to have a successful life, make your life 90% about who you are and 10% about what you do." I'm just thinking about the work you do and the way you do it, that it is human-first, that we can't just build workplaces with robots and expect to be successful ... we talked about that last time ... but that the human component of work is so important, right?
George Rivera:
Yeah, hugely important. I think as a society, there's the statistics around the mental health crisis that's occurring in this country and really throughout the world. It's staggering. One of the key findings in that research is the need for human connection and the need for purposeful work, whatever that looks like. It doesn't necessarily mean the workplace, but to be connected to something that has a greater purpose than oneself. I think it's just the workplace, for so many of us, has the opportunity to be that, to give us that great human connection and allow us to be part of something that's just much more impactful than what we could do just on our own, all by ourselves.
I think, whether it's working for a not-for-profit like what I do, whether it's working for a Certified B Corp like you all, there's so many workplaces, or it could just be a normal for-profit company. If you're connected to some part of the mission that moves society forward, I think that's a wonderful thing and something that we really should spend some more time focusing on. That, my friend, is not a fad. That is a trend that I think is going to be here for quite some time, because we are longing for purpose.
Carrie Fox:
I could not agree more. Do you know the name Dan Beuttner?
George Rivera:
No, I don't think so.
Carrie Fox:
Dan Beuttner is a National Geographic explorer. He wrote several books around the seven Blue Zones in the world, the places where people live, in the greatest numbers, to over a hundred years old. One of his greatest findings between all of those places is that purpose is really a thing that helps drive our lives. It helps us live longer, more fulfilling lives. I'm glad to hear that that is not a fad and that is certainly a trend. It's an important one.
George Rivera:
Absolutely. I actually feel embarrassed I don't remember Dan's name, but I listened to your podcast with Dan about the Blue Zones. I found it to be phenomenal. I'm passionate about this idea of human longevity and this idea that just our environment alone has such an outsized impact on how long we'll live and that sort of thing.
I think when we think environment, the work that he's doing, working with cities to help them create an atmosphere that's closer to a Blue Zone, I think smart organizations should be doing and are doing the very same thing, right, creating workplaces that are also in alignment with that idea. Think about the way we feed our people in a lot of workplaces. Maybe not every day, but we do lunches, we do holiday or birthday celebrations. We can start making choices in the workplace that help supplement and support who that person wants to become outside of the workplace as well.
Carrie Fox:
I love that. Well, let's use that to bring us into the first one. We're going to go a little bit out of order here. We'll get to workforce planning, but let's talk about culture. What are some of the workplace trends you see happening inside culture right now?
George Rivera:
Absolutely. I want to hit on your original question about the fad versus trends, and we can do it with the lens of culture, which is simply I think the best example, just to level-set the audience, is the remote work push of 2020. Put yourself back in that moment if you can, if you're brave enough to close your eyes and think back to 2020. There was this awful pandemic just ravishing the world, and we were all scared. We said, "Well, the only way we can work is remotely." There were organizations that said, "We're going to go remote. That's the end of it. That's the way it is." We had individuals who moved across the country, who moved to places that were more in alignment with who they wanted to be, and they moved far away from their corporate headquarters.
Then now, fast-forward to 2023. That was, I think we can safely say, a fad, because there's tons of organizations ... not all, but there's tons of organizations ... asking politely, requesting or maybe even insisting that their workforce comes back to the office, that productivity has declined after an initial increase and that it's important that people come back. To me, when we think about these fads, I think it's possible to just shift our thinking a tiny bit and think about them as what is sustainable. Because I think if we really paused and said, "Well, was remote work long-term sustainable for most organizations," I think we would've found that the better answer might've been something like flexibility, that flexibility in the workforce and a culture of flexibility around, hey, what do people need, what do I need in the organization from a workforce standpoint, and what do people need in order for that to make sense for them and do those things match up?
We find that smart organizations are employing flexibility in certain roles, in certain job descriptions, and in the way that they impact their people. There's a lot of organizations that have moved to hybrid. We as SHRM, we work from home on Mondays and Fridays, and today I'm in office, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. That's something that's really fit our culture.
Going back to your question around culture, I think it's all of those things, right? This won't be the last one, but when we think about our culture, do we have a culture plan? As an organization, do we have the ability to map where we are culturally today and where we want to be two or three years from now? By doing that, by creating a north star for your culture as an organization, I think it helps you to avoid the fads and stay focused on where you want to go, and maybe only be affected by the trends that are going to stand the test of time.
Carrie Fox:
We may not have time to dig into this one fully, but I may want to have another conversation with you at some point on who sets the culture. I think there's a misunderstanding here that culture needs must fully be set at the top, versus how culture can be informed and infused throughout an organization. What's your quick take on that? Where is culture formed?
George Rivera:
I would say in a way it's similar to how our country was formed. There's people at the top who are making really big decisions, and there's people who aren't at the top but who have a very important voice and vote in all of that. I'm not advocating that organizations all become democracies, but I am advocating that organizations are a unique thing unto themselves. If we look at it as such, and as an organization, as the people in power in organizations, create the space where that culture can be fortified and informed by the people in the organization, then I think you're going to have a culture that people really buy into and a culture that your employees perhaps feel a great deal of ownership over.
Carrie Fox:
Nice. All right, great. Thank you. Let's go back up to the top, workforce planning. What kind of trends are you seeing here that are important?
George Rivera:
Workforce planning goes hand in hand actually with I guess point number two, which is skill building, because when organizations are thinking through their workforce planning strategy, they're contesting with a whole bunch of things. AI, geography, people moving from one state to another, the global workforce trends, the lack of people immigrating into the United States right now, which used to make up a huge part of our employment base and no longer does, hence the low unemployment. They're thinking and dealing with all of these different things, but most of them end up falling into the category of skill building, at least as a solve for those workforce planning trends. It's almost like analyzing their organization and understanding the workforce planning challenges, and then how can skill building play a role in all of that.
A lot of organizations are finding ... we had the 2021 turnover tsunami or all the other fun words for it, where people were leaving the workplace or leaving one workforce and going into another place of work. We're not seeing that trend any longer. We're seeing that people are staying put, and so we're seeing that organizations feel like maybe that is settled a little bit and it's really time to dive deep into the development of their people, and making sure that those needs that they're going to have two or three years from now, or five or ten years from now, that they're able to home-grow a lot of that talent and develop it to the place that they're going to need as part of their workforce trend.
Carrie Fox:
George, when you think about skill building, are you seeing equal amounts of upskilling and reskilling happening? Is it different, based on organization and sector?
George Rivera:
Yeah, I think it's definitely different by organization and sector, and back to the culture map, right? Some organizations, they say, "I only want the best of the best. I only want people with the 10 years of experience that they've gotten from somewhere else, and I will pull them over when they're ready," and that's fine if that's their culture. For a majority of organizations, especially larger ones, they don't have that ability to just wait and cherry-pick the best talent that's out there. They need to grow and build some of that talent, and it's getting pretty competitive out there.
I think when we think about those skill buildings, there's a balance I think that has to be struck between the cost of acquiring the new talent and the cost of developing your own. For right now, and especially with the enhancements in AI and how learning is going to become more democratized and more accessible, it seems to make more sense for more organizations to make that investment in their people internally and not have to go find it externally.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah. All right. Well, as you are so skilled at doing, you teed us up for our last one. We've touched on culture, workforce planning, skill building. Take us home with AI and tech.
George Rivera:
Absolutely. Technology is changing the way we do business, for the umpteenth time in history. It's important that organizations ... or we find, at least, in the organizations we're working with ... that they're trying to be thoughtful in how they're deploying both AI and technology. Now, through surveys we've found that a lot of people feel like they're over-tech stacked, that there's too many tools at the moment, yet at the same time, we know how important having the right tools really is. Thoughtful organizations that we consult with are once again trying to align that technology strategy with their culture strategy. The more that we can think through what opportunities are forthcoming, what new technologies are going to impact the workplace, and having a plan to train and skill up people to use and embrace those technologies seems to be at the forefront of the best organizations' plan to deploy these new technologies.
Carrie Fox:
Well, it seems the only thing we can be certain of is change, and how we plan for that change is the most important piece. We are once again coming to the end of a conversation, another great conversation with George Rivera at SHRM, and George, before we do, I'll remind folks this is part of a series we're doing on the issues that are keeping you up at night. George, thanks so much for these great insights, but let me toss to you for the last point. What do you want to leave folks with or direct them to as they're going to continue to do their learning and navigating the change in their own organizations?
George Rivera:
Absolutely. Well, I'll always plug the work that we do here at SHRM. I think we have the opportunity to help people think through a lot of these really complicated challenges. The thing I find with this work that has to do with people, right, this people work, is everything we do, it's never black-and-white. It's always gray, and it's always this middle ground that we're trying to find in the strategies in which we're building.
I would just leave the audience with this idea of there is no perfect answer to any of these questions. The perfect answer is what's perfectly aligned to your culture. Having a defined culture is the prerequisite to build the north star that you actually can then go after, when you think through all of these challenges that are going to face your organization. Culture first, figure out what it is for you, and from there, we can build the rest of the strategy.
Carrie Fox:
Fantastic. Thank you for great insights once again. We will drop all of the links and resources that George has mentioned into the show notes, and thanks again for joining us today for Mission Forward.
Today's episode is brought to you by SHRM. You heard me, S-H-R-M, SHRM. There's a reason that 95% of Fortune 500 companies turn to SHRM. From elevating workplace culture and talent management to accelerating the performance and development of their executives, SHRM has a full suite of solutions to transform the way you work. I really admire their driving principles, promoting women and leadership, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and ultimately, building better workplaces for a better world. I'll tell you honestly, every time that we have a question over at Mission Partners tied to HR and best practices, the first place we go? You got it, SHRM.org. For listeners tuning in, SHRM is the perfect partner to help solve business challenges keeping you up at night. Learn more at SHRM.org.
