Embracing Talent Management Technology to Attract and Retain Talent

A burdensome financial dead weight, unfilled job vacancies are costing organizations USD 160 billion per year. The cumulative weight on the top 10 Dow Jones companies adds up to USD 75 million every month. If that number is baffling, then consider the cost of a wrong hire which can be as much as USD 50,000 per employee!

Let’s cut straight to the point here - Talent management cannot continue to operate the way it has been operating for decades now. Numerous internal and external forces are converging to shape it differently. In a business environment where every other resource can be bought or replicated within a matter of hours, talent has emerged as the last competitive advantage. It can make and keep the organization unique; The true USP. And talent managers are being depended upon as the sole drivers of this asset.

Talent management has changed. It is now closely weaved into the blanket of organizational strategy. This missing thread can mean a spoiled blanket, which no stakeholder would be willing to buy.

This article tries to trace the profile of this budding change. Before we try to forge the way ahead, let’s take a deeper look at its driving forces:

Forces Reshaping the Talent Management Ecosphere:

Wrenched from multiple ends, talent management is now being condensed into a close-knit, compact, high delivery function without any space for loose ends or voids.

• Rapidly advancing digital technologies and ecosystems are widening the existing skill gaps. Both organizations and talent are hustling to keep up with the changing business ecosystem. Education institutions that are left far behind in this race offer little hope; so much so that industries have stopped looking at them.
• The workforce is changing. Gen X is retreating and “digital natives” millennials are taking over. By 2025, 76% of the global workforce will be millennials. A large portion of the new workforce is inclined to freelance and gig jobs.
• The global expansion of organizations and the changing nature of jobs are demanding greater talent mobility. The organizations that have imbibed talent mobility in their systems have witnessed an 81% increase in revenue growth.
• Growing competition and squeezing profits are constricting hiring costs.
• Customer demands are increasing and poor services aren’t tolerated anymore. 79% of customers switch to a competitor within a week of poor customer service.

How Talent Managers Are Leveraging the Technology Cushion?

The efficiency of technology is uncontested. It has aced human performance at every juncture whenever the two have gone head-to-head. A flawless assistant, it can address the routine mundane tasks and free mind space for new and challenging ones. Here too it has emerged as the new-age talent manager’s Messiah. Talent managers now use cloud, social, analytics and mobile technologies to up their performance and efforts. These technologies have emerged as a one-stop destination for aligning, processes, people and cultures with organizational goals.

Those who have used these new technologies have paved the way for others to follow.

GE’s FastWorks concept encourages employees to make quick and uninhibited decisions about their learning and deployment. This helped GE build new “regulation compliant ship diesel engine” two years ahead of its competitors.

Talent managers are now using recruiting software to identify, attract, screen and interact with top talent as well as to conduct digital interviews, promote gender diversity, manage and align employee goals with those of the organization, manage mobile talent, promote a learning culture, get data-driven insights into talent performance, retain and restore top talent and to automate high-volume tasks. Organizations using people analytics have witnessed 93% improvement in KPIs, 84% increase in talent performance and 74% growth in revenue. 64% of organizations that have used succession planning tools have reported below industry average employee turnover.

The Way Forward:

Revamping conventional ways can bring tremendous challenges and outstanding opportunities. A switch to better technologies is inevitable now. A study by Brandon Hall Group says that 54% of organizations want to change their talent management systems because of its poor integration with other technologies. A unified talent management system will locate the best hires based on the roots of high performers, will reduce the time to productivity for new hires and quicken employee engagement. The system will also widen the talent net, create talent pools, improve candidate experience and facilitate better onboarding. Building a high impact, digitally sound workforce and offering an excellent employee experience remain the top priorities for talent managers today. Rightly so!