Define TALENT before getting into Talent Management

The new age HRMS Software applications facilitate innovative HR practices to identify, nurture and manage Talent, enabling increased focus on Talent Management as a compelling theme and a MUST HAVE for organizations to win in the market place. 

However, there are challenges as well for HR practitioners and organizations for which they cannot depend /or expect the software to provide them with answers.

Going through the research reports like “The Deal in 2020” by the Work Foundation  http://www.theworkfoundation.com/DownloadPublication/Report/255_255_deal202_050710.pdf one cannot help wondering, if the future workforce will not be loyal, is likely to be more ready to freelance and work on specific assignments basis, will the definition of "Talent" be same as in the past?

Before organizations decide to embark on a journey of Talent Management, taking a step back may help us navigate better. Organizations might be better off answering questions on:

a)    What do we mean by Talent?

b)    How do we Define Talent?

Without answering these questions, if we plunge headlong into Talent Management strategies and start evaluating or implementing Talent Management Software, it is likely that organizations will find they are no better off than when they started, that too after investing millions of their currency.

Talent in this age of disruption does not limit itself to a prescribed definition that might have helped us in the past. And Talent for today’s context or ability to manage 'Business As Usual" is irrelevant. It is an age of constant innovation, that too extreme, to stay relevant in tomorrow’s world, and “Tomorrow’s context” has to be the main theme. 

In one of the conferences I attended, a senior HR practitioner of an organization boasted how they identified and earmarked a future Talent – one of the future Talent was a person who came back to office on a holiday because there was a fire in the next building and this person wanted to ensure their office is not affected. The HR Practitioner was eloquent on how they identify such significant contributors who walk the extra-mile and earmark them through a fast-track “future leaders” program.

While the act of ensuring our office is not affected in a fire can be construed as a dedication and may attract a reward, does it really define “Talent”?

Can an organization afford to keep looking at skills they have? Or should they look at skills that will be needed tomorrow? Can organizations afford to look at employees based on their loyalties, or dedication to their work? Based on how much time employees spend on their work or based on how much work they complete within a specific time span – the typical ‘Productivity’ conundrum?

Or would it be significant if organizations start looking for people who think completely out-of-the-box and moot ideas which alter the ways-of-working drastically? Even to the extent of completely changing the definition of “work” or “productivity”?

When an organization gets started with an idea on crowdsourcing to help resolve certain types of problems or projects, will the “Talent” in this context be the person who moots the idea of crowdsourcing or the people who manage the crowdsourcing activity?

Too many questions and no straightforward answers.

Some of the key issues looming up on organizations across the world is their ability to quickly adapt and redefine how they view / categorize Skills / Competencies and Talent. How they assess both and how they go about transforming the thought processes within their organizations on these areas.

Any Talent Management program, either manual or on a software application will be inadequate to help organizations if at a fundamental level, organizations do not define what is Talent for them. A software application, whatever be its rating in a wave or quadrant will not be able to do this for them. It is their own internal assessment and honest introspection that will help them find the answers and lead them towards their future.

Thanks

Venkat

Exciting Use Cases - Successfactors tools to Attract, Engage & Retain

Recently had the opportunity to talk to one of the Successfactors’ product Engineering teams on product philosophy and I was gladdened by some of the things Successfactors is working on.

We all are aware that Successfactors provides one of the best User Experiences as an Enterprise Cloud HCM system. But what is interesting is the direction Successfactors is working towards which is actually enabling organizations to have necessary tools in their philosophy to Attract, Engage & Retain.

On-Boarding is no more about checklists and routing of forms to be filled. Successfactors is trying to make On-Boarding as an experience for HR, New Employees, Managers. Now organizations can have a bonding exercise via personalized Welcome Video from Managers to the New Recruits.

What’s more, candidates can have the list of people they need to meet on First Day and maps on how to reach them, all delivered to their devices.

Some of us may argue that compared to other business processes in organizations, these are "NICE TO HAVEs" when it comes to HR. However, in the context of War for Talent, these are the use cases that provide the means when HR talks about Attract, Engage and Retain.

The way in which scenarios and use cases are being rolled out in the world of Human Resources augurs well for the road map to move beyond “Consumer Grade” to “Consumerization of HR-IT”.

HCM Technology - Are we Duplicating On-Premise onto Cloud?

Recently I had attended a series of HCM Technology Appreciation programs sitting through presentations and product demos of multiple HCM products like Oracle Cloud HCM, Successfactors, and WorkDay. 

After all the presentations and demos, I was not 100% convinced that at their current level, the products enable an organization to fundamentally change HR or have technology enablement at a different level.

Yes, we have fantastic User Experience (UEx) and we expect that this will enable organizations to engage better with their workforce and users. I could appreciate the kind of innovations, improvements that have been brought in HCM Technology through these products. 

One product seems to be focusing on 'depth" of application, while another seems to be focusing on the "breadth" of their suite.

"Customizable" has given way to "Configurable". Fine. How has that changed ways-of-working for HCM?

I could not stop feeling the current race is more about changing the delivery mechanism of HCM software applications than fundamentally changing the way HR works /or enabling HR at a much deeper level.

To a large extent my disappointment comes from the fact that we still see quite a bit of record keeping in the products. There has been tremendous improvements with a conscious effort to reduce the number of 'clicks' or 'user entries', but still I couldn't help getting the nagging feeling of duplicating On-Premise HCM into Cloud.

Take any of the Talent Management areas: Succession Planning - this was available in On-Premise as well; Performance Management - was available in On-Premise as well. Yes, the UEx probably was not as great as these products, but the functionalities existed. 

And that's where I couldn't stop wondering are we just duplicating the functionalities of On-Premise into Cloud layer with a vastly improved UEx and are we hailing the removal of coding as the next messiah? 

Probably there is still a lot more to come as Cloud HCM technology and that's the next wave that will start once the shift from On-Premise to Cloud domination / hype cycle is over. 

I believe we have still not "consumerized" HR-IT.

Would be great to get opinions from the HCM Technology experts across the world.

Thanks

Venkat