Job crafting—the art of shaping, molding, and redefining your job to make it more personally meaningful—is gaining momentum; the gig economy is growing in leaps and bounds, disrupting the traditional workforce; and digital employment brands have become integral to driving talent attraction. What’s a savvy HR professional to do?
Forward-thinking people managers understand the ‘adapt or die’ nature of the current talent management challenges and are re-imagining their strategies to align with the needs of the modern workforce. They’re re-evaluating their approach to everything from initial contact with prospective employees and learning and development strategies to leveraging actionable data from their people analytics platform.
As people have become accustomed to Siri, Alexa, and Google Home in their personal lives, they now welcome—and even expect—similar interactive experiences in their work life.
Talent acquisition has become another kettle of fish entirely, with technology taking centre stage. Cognitive technologies are improving the recruitment process by combining AI, predictive analytics, and behavioural engineering to manage the basic, time-consuming tasks related to recruitment, especially for high-turnover service and manual labour-based positions (e.g., clerks, waiters, construction workers). For example, AI recruitment software like this Russian robot can cut the time and cost of recruitment by a third, interviewing hundreds of applicants simultaneously via video or voice calls and narrowing the field to the top 10 percent of candidates.
The modern learner
Retaining high-performing employees is an integral piece of an effective talent management strategy. Today’s employees, especially the growing cohort of Millennials, value collaboration, teamwork, and flexibility. A reflection of these ideals, the “modern learner” craves an always-on, collaborative, personalized, mobile, and peer-to-peer learning experience.
In support of the “modern learner,” companies are moving away from traditional Learning Management Systems (LMS) to a decentralized approach to learning that leverages the flexibility and convenience of technology (e.g., “always-on” learning and development opportunities accessible through various mobile platforms). According to Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report, the organization’s role is to create an environment and systems which enable employees to constantly learn and relearn through self-directed professional development.
Technology disruption
As technology disrupts the talent management paradigm, more and more HR professionals are using the tech tools at their disposal to improve the employee experience by understanding their people at a more meaningful level. In fact, according to a Bersin by Deloitte report, more than two-thirds of companies are now using an analytics platform to capture data about employees’ needs, desires, and goals to truly understand what drives their team. Armed with this information, HR professionals can design personalized opportunities that best motivate and support each individual. As Bersin notes, “Employee-related data is just as important or more important than customer data, because it tells you the secrets of how to manage your business better.”
As the transformation of the modern workforce continues, organizations will face a wide array of talent management challenges. By using all the tools, technologies, and strategies at their disposal, companies can attract high-performing talent while nurturing employees through a focus on increasing the quality, meaning, and value of the work.
Get more insight into how HR professionals are redefining talent management and the employee experience in our latest ebook: The future of people management in the digital age, part 2.
