So that was the year that was 2021. As we move into 2022, the seismic changes of the last 12 months have certainly given us a lot to reflect on. The Great Resignation, the AI revolution in talent acquisition, the redefinition of the workplace, the continued depth of focus on DE&I, the list is as long as is it significant. It is impossible to make predictions, but I think it’s fair to say that 2022 is potentially even more significant as employers find new ways of dealing with the considerable talent challenges they face.
So what should we expect, and how do we process what has happened? I’m delighted to welcome Lars Schmidt back to the podcast as my last guest of 2021. Lars runs Amplify Talent, a boutique agency, HR leader development platform, and community that sits at the centre of the redefinition of HR. Lars is a passionate curator and facilitator of insights from some of the world’s most innovative CHROs and is the perfect person to help us reflect and prepare for 2022.
In the interview, we discuss:
• What positives should we take from 2021
• When emergency measures drive long term changes
• The opportunity to redefine the nature of work
• Moving from Synchronous to asynchronous in communication and collaboration
• What are the most innovative employers doing, and which CHROs are leading from the front?
• What is changing in talent acquisition
• Compelling value propositions
• Preboarding and onboarding
• Increasing talent mobility and fluidity
•
• The Metaverse and Web3
• The future for hybrid working
• Hopes for 2022
Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.
Interview transcript:
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Matt Alder (Intro) (1m 15s):
Hi there, this is my old Matt Alder. Welcome to Episode 402 Of the Recruiting Future Podcast. So that was the year that was 2021. As we move into 2022, the seismic changes of the last 12 months have certainly given us a lot to reflect on. The Great Resignation, the AI revolution in talent acquisition, the redefinition of the workplace, the continued depth of focus on DE&I, the list is as long as is it significant. It is impossible to make predictions, but I think it’s fair to say that 2022 is potentially even more significant as employers find new ways of dealing with the considerable talent challenges they face.
Matt Alder (Intro) (1m 60s):
So, what should we expect? And how do we process everything that’s happened in the last 12 months. I’m delighted to welcome Lars Schmidt back to the podcast as my last guest of 2021. Lars runs Amplify Talent, a boutique agency, HR leader development platform, and community that sits at the centre of the redefinition of HR. Lars is a passionate curator and facilitator of insights from some of the world’s most innovative CHROs and is the perfect person to help us reflect and prepare for 2022.
Matt Alder (2m 36s):
Hi Lars, and welcome back to the podcast.
Lars Schmidt (2m 39s):
Matt, it’s good to be back with you.
Matt Alder (2m 42s):
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show as ever. For those people listening who may not have heard of you, and I’m sure it’s only a very few people. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Lars Schmidt (2m 53s):
Yeah, so I’m Lars Schmidt. I’m the founder of company called Amplify and author and podcast hosts, I should say, Redefining HR. I’m a dad. I live outside of Washington DC on the east coast of the US. And, yeah, I’m working in this space for over 20 years mix of corporate leadership and entrepreneurial roles. You know, my business now is primarily focused in HR executive search and accelerator platform to kind of connect and develop and support the next generation of chief people officers and then the media arm, which includes The Redefining HR book, The Redefining HR podcast, and a column that I write for in Fast Company that explores kind of the evolution of the world of work.
Matt Alder (3m 37s):
Absolutely. And this is exactly why I wanted to have you on this episode. So, this is the last episode of Recruiting Future for 2021. And I thought you’d be the perfect person to give us a bit of a review of everything that’s happened in the last 12 months. And a bit of a look forward to what we might expect in 2022. Not that anyone’s able to make any kind of accurate predictions at the moment. Now, interestingly, I checked back to see when you were last on the podcast, and it was March 2020. So, it was just when COVID-19 was really started to kick off. I think it was about four days before the UK lockdown.
Matt Alder (4m 20s):
And we were sort of talking about resources and what to expect, and all that sort of thing. So, fast forward to now, December 2021, lots of things have obviously happened. Give us your perspective on the last 12 months. I mean, how do you sort of reflect on everything that we’ve seen in the HR and talent space?
Lars Schmidt (4m 41s):
Yeah, I mean, it’s been, I feel like it’s beyond cliché to be talking about, it’s been an interesting year. This is, you know, when you look at how the last year has evolved, you know, obviously 2020 when we last connected was the very early days of the pandemic. Year 2020 was full of just uncertainty, fear, anxiety, you know, wondering how this will evolve? You know, I think going into 2021. And this year, it’s really been — a lot of times I call it the year of whiplash, because I think, you know, earlier in the year as the vaccines rolled out, and, you know, access began to increase.
Lars Schmidt (5m 24s):
I think there were a lot of feelings earlier in the year that this summer, you know, as a summer, we’d be opening up. And we’d be traveling, we’d be doing more things. I think a lot of companies design the return to workplace plans originally. For September, and again, we’re talking about the, you know, subset of employees who are able to work from home, and that’s not all employees. So, well, you know, let’s call that. But, you know, then Delta came and spread, and vaccine hesitancy spread and kind of anti-science sentiment spread. And, you know, those rosy plans we had got derailed. And, you know, we actually, as we close to here, we’re having a bit of history repeating itself, as, you know, a new variant has emerged with Omicron.
Lars Schmidt (6m 7s):
And there’s a lot of uncertainty in terms of the, you know, the deadliness, the virality, and the ability to spread. So, the data is still out on that. We don’t yet know. But I think companies, you’re already starting to see another wave of companies who had pushed back their return to workplace plans for September. They moved them back originally to January. And now they’re beginning to push those back to later into 2022. And so, I think this constant state of flux and volatility, and the ambiguity. The ambiguity is the backdrop under which we are trying to work in HR and people operations. And I think it makes our roles, which were already difficult, increasingly more so.
Matt Alder (6m 52s):
Yeah, absolutely. I know that lots of people who are listening will have had, well, everyone who’s listening will have had a very tough year in one way or another. And it’s really sort of important to acknowledge that. I think the other thing that it’s important to acknowledge is that there are a huge amount of positives I think that we can take from this, in terms of the acceleration of change, the modernization of the way that the companies work. And I know that that’s something that you are really kind of invested in sort of finding out about and spreading knowledge about.
Lars Schmidt (7m 23s):
Yeah.
Matt Alder (7m 24s):
I suppose the question to you would be, when the pandemic first started, we were seeing a lot of change, which was done on a kind of an emergency short term basis. Obviously, it’s very clear that this uncertainty is going to continue into the future. And I know that some companies are pushing back return. As you said, are pushing back to return to the office till the end of 22, or even 2023, which means that people would have been out of the office for two, maybe even three years. And that’s a habit. That’s not a short term. It’s not a short-term thing. So, what are the changes that we’ve seen that you think are going to be for the long term?
Lars Schmidt (8m 1s):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think, let me just touch on your first point to begin. I think that the for the field of HR and people operations, how we want to frame it, the duality of this moment, is profound. And what I mean by that is, on the one side, you know, HR is played a essential role in guiding our businesses and our employees through not just the pandemic, but everything else that’s come from the, you know, increased kind of conversations we’re having around social justice, and racial equity to hybrid and remote, work structures to the pandemic, to safety protocols associated with return to workplace. So, all of those things have centered, the field of HR.
Lars Schmidt (8m 44s):
And the market, the job market for the field of HR has never been hotter. And this extends to recruiting as well. So, the demand for competent and progressive practitioners in this space is never been what it is now. And so, you know, you have that on the positive side on the, you know, the duality is. On the other side of that, you know, the levels of burnout and fatigue and exhaustion are also through the roof. I think, you know, when you look at the role of HR specifically, in all of these things I just mentioned, we’re helping our leadership teams navigate this, we’re helping our employees navigate this, we’re helping our teams navigate this, and we’re also going through this as an individual.
Lars Schmidt (9m 27s):
And the cumulative weight of all of that has really just bringing record levels of stress and burnout to the field as well. So, that’s kind of the backdrop. I think, to your point, I’m incredibly excited about this opportunity for HR. We have, as you mentioned, we’re gonna be going into year three of these new kind of constructs of work. And we actually have a genuine opportunity to redefine the nature of work itself. You know, that’s a generational opportunity for the field. And I think when you look at the pandemic specifically as impact it’s been a massive accelerant into all of these things, you know. That yes, they were fully distributed companies prior to the pandemic, but they were very much a small subset of companies.
Lars Schmidt (10m 11s):
There are many more now. Yes, there are people who used to spend some time in an office and spend some time at home, but the notion of hybrid work wasn’t even a category. And now it’s this massive aspect of how many organizations have committed their work plans moving forward, and how many employees are saying, “You know what, I’ll never go back into an office five days a week.” And if they feel that way, they’re going to have lots of opportunities for great companies and create jobs that will support that. And so, you know, that change in that shift that we’ve experienced in the last two years, which will be going on three now, is huge. And we’ll probably talk about this later in the episode. But I think one of the biggest kind of going forward shifts in that is, you know, what we’ve been experiencing is what I call kind of Hybrid 1.0.
Lars Schmidt (10m 60s):
And Hybrid 1.0 is basically all these companies that used to be co-located, they’re porting those systems and communication cadences, and everything to digital. But the underlying operating system for the business is still based on being in office, right? Everything is still done via meetings. You know, all of the coordination and collaboration is still defaulted to synchronous. And I think what we’re gonna start to see now in 2022, is companies are going to be playing the longer game for this. They’re, the volatility of, “Can we open? Can we not open? Is it safe? Is it not safe?” More companies are making longer term commitments to remote in distributed and hybrid work, and that’s going to require them to engineer underlying operating systems to support that.
Lars Schmidt (11m 44s):
And so, I think we’re going to get much more intentional about moving in meaningful ways from synchronous communication and collaboration to asynchronous communication and collaboration. And to me, that’s kind of the early stages of Hybrid 2.0, which we’ll start to see more of in 2022.
Matt Alder (12m 2s):
Absolutely. And yes, let’s come back to that a little bit later because I think that’s a really, really interesting point, something that is probably going to dominate a lot of the conversation over the next few months. Before we do that, though, I just wanted to recognize the fact that you work with lots of very innovative and forward thinking CHROs, and the sort of mission of your business is to help the next generation coming through. Talking about sort of HR in the longer term, and how it’s redefining itself, and how it’s evolving. One of the most innovative HR functions that you’re talking to doing at the moment was really catching your eye in terms of innovative thinking, or innovative strategy.
Lars Schmidt (12m 45s):
You know, what I really like about this moment, and in particular, how innovative leaders are approaching this is they are really, you know, kind of reorienting their approaches from top down to bottom up. And what I mean by that is that they really are heavily focused on kind of employee experience, and co-creating with employees. So, I think historically, you know, HR oftentimes would kind of design these policies and systems and just roll them out. “Here’s how we’re gonna work, here’s how we’re gonna do benefits, here’s how we’re gonna do this policy, here’s how we’re gonna approach XY or Z.” Now, I think, especially in these progressive companies, they’re doing a really good job of engaging their employees and determining kind of, “Well, what is it that you do need?
Lars Schmidt (13m 32s):
How do you want to work?” And also realizing that, that answer is not going to be uniform. Some employers are going to want X, some employees are going to want why, and so companies that I think are doing a really great job are creating, you know, again, moving away from those formulaic playbooks of the past to create more tailored flexible programs and constructs that employees can opt into, how best works for them? And Hybrid is an example of that. But it’s happening in other areas as well. And so, you know, I love companies and, you know, specifically to companies and leaders to leaders and teams, who I really admire would be Katarina Berg at Spotify, and Katie Burke at HubSpot.
Lars Schmidt (14m 17s):
I think they’re both absolutely kind of leading from the front in this change, and really focusing on employee experience. But also, and you know, you know me, I’m a huge advocate for open source practices. They’re sharing their journey along the way. And so, it’s making it easier for other people, leaders who might want to, you know, emulate some of their practices to be able to do so. And, you know, again, I think that shift from legacy kind of blackbox siloed thinking in HR to more open source and kind of building in public. That’s a huge, with the pandemic, that’s a huge accelerant into moving into this new world of people operations and this new world of work because there are so many leaders who are kind of building a public that you can learn from, you can you can emulate, you can take examples of what they’re doing and bring that into your organization.
Lars Schmidt (15m 7s):
And so that helps good ideas spread and take root more quickly.
Matt Alder (15m 13s):
So, talent acquisition is massively under the microscope at the moment with everything that’s going on. How does talent acquisition fit into all of this? And what are the changes that you’re saying that you’re most interested by?
Lars Schmidt (15m 23s):
Yeah, I mean, look, talent
Lars Schmidt (16m 6s):
Right? So, in the olden days, right, the pre-pandemic days where we typically went on site to interview maybe multiple times, you know, we had to potentially relocate for jobs. We had to do all those things. Those are things that we don’t have to do, in many of us in this environment now. And so, from a recruiting perspective, we have to really be thinking beyond recruiting, it’s recruiting and retention, you know. It’s not just finding great people, it’s creating a compelling value prop. It’s helping them understand perhaps the ambiguity the organization faces as it relates to return to workplace or other plans. It’s really making sure that you are investing equal effort and time in both the pre-boarding stage, you know, the period of time between when somebody is accepted and offered when they start and onboarding.
Lars Schmidt (16m 54s):
Since a lot of that is happening virtually these days, you know, the hires that we’re getting are not as sticky as they may have been, if they’ve come in, they’ve met you in person and you’ve gotten coffee with them, or share the meal. You know, we’re doing everything via Zoom in many cases right now. And so, if somebody comes in and they’re sold a job, that isn’t meeting the reality of being in that job, you better believe it’s going to be incredibly easy for them to just go and change. And so, I think it’s really important for us and recruiting to be able to adapt with that. We’ve got to be very open and transparent about our opportunities. We’ve got to do as much as we can up front, to help candidates be able to see themselves in an honest and accurate way in that role, so that they can self-select in or out based on how that aligns with their interests.
Lars Schmidt (17m 43s):
So, yeah, and I don’t think that’s gonna change next year. I think, you know, this might be this year of the great realignment or whatever you want to call it. But that is, this is not just a 2021 event. This is going to carry into 2022, and it’s just going to continue to put the pressure on recruiting teams to be able to, you know, attract talent into their organization, you know, recruit talent and you know, do that in an environment where there’s so much more mobility and fluidity of talent. But people also have a lot of options. And so, yours will be one of likely, you know, many they’ll have the opportunity to consider.
Matt Alder (18m 23s):
So, one of the key enablers and drivers of all of this that we’ve touched on what we haven’t really mentioned in detail yet is technology, and the speed at which technology is developing. Are there any particular tech trends that you’re following closely? If we have this conversation in 18 months, another 18 months-time, will we be sitting in the metaverse having it? What’s on your radar in terms of technology?
Lars Schmidt (18m 48s):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that we get excited about tech before, it’s really here. I mean, we did the same thing with AI a couple years ago, or, you know, all the vendors were saying, you know, “Our tool is based on AI.” And it wasn’t but just hearing AI and kind of pique our interest like, “Ooh, what’s this?” And I think as we move into this new environment, there’s certainly a hype bubble of the moment around, you know, the metaverse, and even Web3, and everything that comes with that from, you know, DAWs to crypto to, you know, NFT’s and community. I mean, there’s so many layers to that. I don’t, you know, I’m actually I’m writing my annual what’s next for HRPS for Fast Company right now.
Lars Schmidt (19m 28s):
And I did mention the metaverse of Web3 as things that will be down the road coming, and we kind of have to have our eye on them. I think crypto of that kind of Web3 category, crypto in the metaverse will probably be things. Well, crypto is already real for some companies. Some companies are paying employees in crypto or giving bonuses and crypto. I think we will see, as you know hardware barriers to access with virtual reality continue to shrink. You will see more use cases for the metaverse broadly and you’re already starting to see that where companies, especially fully remote companies, they’re using virtual platforms for onboarding, they’re using it for, to creating kind of lounges where employees can go and play games and just hang out with each other in the metaverse because they can’t do that in person.
Lars Schmidt (20m 19s):
So, I think those things are here now, and there are real, but there are very isolated in terms of their use. I think what we’ll start to see more of sooner will be tools to support, you know, asynchronous coordination, and communication. So, whether it’s, you know, Loom or Miro, we’ll see more of those platforms. I think we’ll also see more of an emphasis on kind of learning platforms as well. Because again, in the backdrop of this great realignment, our ability to engage and upskill and reskill and develop our teams will be a huge determining factor on our ability to retain them. And so, I think we’ll see more of an emphasis. And that’s, you know, again, that’s not new technology, I think that will just be an increased emphasis on that technology that exists, given the climate that we’re in.
Matt Alder (21m 10s):
Absolutely. You know, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve had virtual reality and blockchain in my final slide of my technology presentation in terms of what happens next for about four or five years now. It’s interesting to see finally, shape up by. I agree with you, I think that there are other, perhaps more pressing things that most companies need to sort of look at and consider first. One of the things that I’m being reminded of while I’m talking to you is just how much is going on at the moment, and how much has happened in the last 18 months. Out of everything that you’ve seen and heard about and experienced, what’s the one thing that surprised you the most?
Lars Schmidt (21m 53s):
That is a really hard question. Because there’s been, there’s been so much surprising. You know, I think, honestly, to me, it’s probably the resiliency of our field. And I’ll elaborate on that. I mean, I often call the field of HR people of the department have plus one, right? Because when you look at all of these events that have happened in the last 18 months, and even prior to that, you know, so many things just get added to our plate. Okay. “Oh, give HR that.” “Oh, yeah, our people are scheming team can handle that.” And often, it doesn’t come with the, you know, the requisite resources, or budget, or tools to be able to do that successfully. Yeah, we figure it out. And again, you know, there are some instances where we don’t, and this isn’t a universal statement.
Lars Schmidt (22m 35s):
But I think when you’re talking about the kind of best in class teams, the resiliency to be able to, you know, in the face of all of this adversity, all of these changes, all of these things that are, you know, based on humanity, shaping events, right. These are once in a generation events that we’re experiencing. But to be able to go through all of that and still successfully, you know, navigate our companies and our teams through that, that the level of resiliency that that requires is just, it’s something I think we don’t talk about enough. And it’s not about, you know, “Oh, we have to toot our own horn. And you know, people aren’t out there clamoring for credit. It’s kind of a silent work that’s happening, but it’s happening everywhere.
Lars Schmidt (23m 16s):
And to me, I think you asked me what surprised me. I don’t know that, I guess I probably do find that a little bit surprising, but just the level of scale of what these practitioners have been through yet continue to deliver and perform despite great personal difficulties and hardships with that, to me, I think that’s something that, that I really kind of look back and with a lot of just pride in our field, honestly.
Matt Alder (23m 43s):
Yeah, I know, absolutely. And, you know, huge kudos to everyone who’s out there, who’s out there doing the work in such a crazy and difficult, you know, during such crazy difficult times. So, wanting to talk a little bit about what might happen in 2022. Obviously, I don’t think either of us gonna make predictions based on the level of uncertainty at the moment. But I’m interested to perhaps dive a little bit deeper into your interview, your views around Hybrid, because, you know, as you sort of alluded to earlier, with companies pushing back that returned to the office or abandoning it all together, how do you think Hybrid is going to be developed?
Matt Alder (24m 26s):
Because it’s been an interesting debate this year to see it go from a theoretical debate, to a practical debate, to everyone saying it’s the future, everyone’s saying it’s doomed, and you have to be one thing or the other. How do you think is going to play out?
Lars Schmidt (24m 39s):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think when you look at the three constructs of work, right. You know, co-located, everybody’s a one located, one location, fully distributed, you know, there are zero offices and everybody’s 100% remote. We’re Hybrid, Hybrid is by far the most difficult. And even within Hybrid, there’s so many different flavors of Hybrid. It could be you know, what days you go into office, it could be where you work, it could be when you work, it could be the choice to opt into multiple set structures, it could be having no set structures, and the employees just figured out, and the managers figured out. So, there’s so much the variance, even within Hybrid itself, is so massive. And so, I think because this has never really been a working model under the scale from which it is today, and it will be, you know, in 2022, a lot of companies are kind of trying to figure this out.
Lars Schmidt (25m 30s):
And so again, I think one of the shifts we’ll see in 2022, is the shift, again, from what I frame is kind of Hybrid 1.0, you know, basically just doing all of your office-based things virtually, or digitally, to Hybrid 2.0, which is actually intentionally engineering more asynchronous coordination and communication. Again, adopting more of the fully distributed model, working practices from you know, documentation and things like that, I think we’ll start to see more companies be much more intentional about designing that into their Hybrid constructs. I think we’re also going to see a lot of companies that are going to think that one way will work and try that and find out, it’s not going to work. And then try to do something else.
Lars Schmidt (26m 10s):
And I think this year, you know, in parallel with that shift towards async, we’re also going to see a lot of companies, you know, kind of experiment where they build, they view hybrid as an experiment, and they’ll see how it works. And they’ll make some changes, and, you know, some things will go well, and some things won’t, and some might try to revert back to collocated, when that’s safe to do so. Others may just give up on having offices and move fully distributed. So, I think some companies that are entering 22, with Hybrid in mind will not be departing in 22, in a hybrid model. So yeah, I think, there’s a lot still to be figured out. And because it’s such a new model at this scale, you know, we don’t really have these concrete kinds of proven practices, “Of okay, well, X is definitely the best way to do meetings, and Y is definitely the best way to do culture building activities.” Where we’re figuring that out.
Lars Schmidt (27m 3s):
And it also isn’t a one size fits all approach where like, some of those approaches will work on some companies based on, you know, their culture, and locations, and leadership, and others. You could port that same policy or the same program that works really well in that environment to another company, and it’s going to fail miserably, because they don’t have those same things. And so, you know, in short, I see a lot of continued volatility for hybrid as companies try to get this right in the new year.
Matt Alder (27m 32s):
So final question, what are your hopes for 2022? What would you like to see happen over the next 12 months? What’s your Christmas wish?
Lars Schmidt (27m 42s):
Christmas have, um, you know, I think I’m optimistic on Hybrid, but I’m more optimistic on employee choice and flexibility. I think companies that really prioritize flexibility and choice are going to be the ones that come out on top as it relates to this, you know, this hyper competition that we see for talent right now. Those things will happen organically and naturally. I think what I would like to see, two things I would like to see, is one, again, us being really much more intentional about moving from synchronous to asynchronous. And there are times absolutely where synchronous is the way to go. And you have to whether it’s, you know, some meetings, some cultural things, I think that that is a given.
Lars Schmidt (28m 25s):
But I think companies that really kind of master that balance, the right balance between sync and async are going to unlock so much time and potential for their businesses. The other piece I’d like to see is, in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, I think we had a different, we began having a different conversation around diversity, equity, and inclusion in our workplaces and in our societies. And I think that we’ve lost a bit of that momentum in 2021. And I would really like to see that, you know, that continue to be a focal part focal component of how businesses and organizations and people leaders think about their roles in building work environments that work for everyone.
Lars Schmidt (29m 9s):
And so, I would say if I had two wishes, those would be the two. You only gave me one, I took two. So, I feel a little bit greedy. But, you know, I think both are really important for the field.
Matt Alder (29m 20s):
That’s quite alright this Christmas.
Lars Schmidt (29m 23s):
Yeah.
Matt Alder (29m 25s):
Lars, thank you very much for talking to me.
Lars Schmidt (29m 29s):
Thank you, Matt. Good to chat with you, as always.
Matt Alder (29m 34s):
My thanks to Lars. Also, my thanks to all of my guests in 2021, my sponsors, and everyone who’s listened and supported the show. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple podcasts, on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next year. And I hope you’ll join me.
