James HolincheckOn Friday, I had an opportunity to meet with several end user and vendor clients and prospects. During the course of these discussions, it started to become clearer to me how social networking and talent management could intersect. In my previous thinking, I focused on use cases. What use cases (or business problems if you prefer) can I apply social networking to in order to do a better job of talent management? I think I was asking the wrong question. Instead of focusing on use cases, I should have focused on the talent relationship lifecycle.
What do I mean by talent relationship lifecycle? It is the relationship an organization has with a person over time. I might be a student at a university and I schedule an interview on campus (become a candidate). I might then apply for a specific job, get hired, work for the company, decide to work part-time, leave the company (become an alumni), work as a contractor for the company, maybe get re-hired by the company, and retire. This is just an example. The reality may be even more complicated for an individual as they might have as many 20 jobs before he/she retires. The dynamics of the relationship between the organization and individual changes as the relationship changes. When I am a passive candidate for a job, a company may use social networking as a way to find me (referral), interest me in the job (help me connect with like-minded and interested people in the organization), and ultimately, sell me on the job. This is one way to do candidate relationship management. It also might use me as a referral source. When I am hired, an organization might want to foster a collaborative work environment leveraging social networking as a way to make connections between workers (internally and externally – customers, partners, vendors, etc.). Relationships also play a role in movement within the company (think promotions, transfers, development, mentoring, etc.). This is classic talent management territory. When I leave the company, hopefully on good terms, the company may still want to continue the relationship with me as an alumni because I might come back as a part-time and/or contingent worker or I might end up working for a customer, partner, vendor, or even competitor. The nature of the relationship changes over time. Even after the employment relationship ends, the relationship still has considerable potential value.
In customer relationship management, there is a concept called customer lifetime value. I think there is an analog in talent relationship management, let’s call it talent lifetime value. This would be the benefit (relative to cost) of engaging with talent through the talent relationship lifecycle. HCM or talent management solutions, as they stand today, do not really manage these relationships. In addition, they rarely have a view the worker/company relationship through the enter lifecycle (especially if someone leaves the company). Moreover, they do not facilitate making connections and developing relationships. This is where social networking comes into the picture. It enables the relationship in the context of individual relationships (I do not have a relationship with the company per se, but with individuals at the company).
That is interesting, but I do not have just work-related relationships, I have personal relationships. In addition, as mentioned earlier, I might have 20+ jobs over my lifetime where I am developing relationships. So, a company cannot have a full view of the relationship capital (and the corresponding potential network effect of that capital on talent lifetime value) if it is private social network that is not connected to consumer/individual social networks. The individual, not the organization, is central and maintains his/her network themselves over their lifetime (clearly that seems to be the case with people entering the workforce today). There are good reasons why an organization may want to have a private social network to foster collaboration with a select group of individuals, but a comprehensive talent relationship management approach needs to marry consumer (individual-driven) social networking and business social networking. This requires a certain level of interoperability. When I make a blog post, it can automatically appear on Facebook Wall. When I Twitter, it too can automatically update my Facebook status. We are starting to see this happen.
Much is made of the Social Graph. However, the true value of the social graph from a corporate perspective may be how it would enable an organization to improves it talent relationship management and increase talent lifetime value. The social graph provides a rich, semi-structured data set that documents the individual web of relationships. Mining of this data can help optimize the relationship between the individual and the organization based on the current (and possibly future if I can forecast it) context.
On the surface, this post might look like another analyst firm attempt to create another three letter acronym (TLA). That is not the intent per se (though if it is the result, I apologize in advance). The purpose of the post was to get my initial thoughts on paper, share it and refine it. I plan on working with my Gartner colleagues, but I also want to involve a broader community.
So, what do you think? Is there a nugget of an idea worthy of exploration? Has it already been explored elsewhere? What I have missed? What have I got wrong? Please comment. I am only going to post this on the Gartner Blogging Network. (GBN) I will post a small stub on BlogERP directing readers to the GBN so all of the comments are in one place.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: HCM, talentmanagement
15 responses so far ↓
1 Syris March 2, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Refreshing post Jim. So many are out there today saying things like “you need to have a strategy to address social & collaborative technologies in your organization” but I have yet to hear anything concrete around what that means or how it can/should be used. Your premise that relationships to talent parallel relationships to customers feels much more practical and actionable in the near term.
2 Jason Corsello March 2, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Hi Jim,
This is a subject we have been also been researching and working with clients to address. We presented on it last week and follow-on conversation can be found at:
http://www.knowledgeinfusion.com/coe/groups/digital-hr
The impact of social collaboration for talent management is absolutely huge. Just think for a second if you could combine one’s social graph (strength of internal connections) with talent data (performance, skills, etc). Add to that the ability to simulate talent mobility with all of that data. Talent management should be about process…it should be about leveraging data to make impactful decisions!
3 Jon Ingham March 2, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Jim,
A focus on talent, or employee lifetime value was something I discussed in my book (‘Strategic human capital management: Creating value through people’) and seems to me to be a natural consequence of a talent, or human capital-centric perspective to people management.
I suggested that at its deepest extent, the perspective would result in an approach I called career partnership, in which employers would encourage their best employees to leave at certain points in their careers in order to return as even more talented employees later on, thereby maximising their total contribution to the employer.
Either because social media was still in its infancy, or more probably, because my knowledge of social media was still very scant, I didn’t discuss the social media applications of this perspective but the two things clearly support each other well, with social networking supporting TLV over TRL (just trying to help you get your new acronyms established), and also with the possibility of talent management supporting employees’ social effectiveness.
And it’s the second of these that I think has the most value – combining the value of each employee’s relationships along with their performance, skills etc, as Jason is suggesting.
I think there’s a third opportunity too: helping to transfer our focus fom just talent itself (ie the individual) to the social unit (the team) which will increase our understanding and ability to manage contribution to business performance at this level too (increasingly important given that the point of performance in most organisations is no longer the individual but their team).
4 David Vanheukelom March 2, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Jim,
I think you are spot on with your analysis based on the work we have done , albeit early stages of maturity, with various clients.
At the moment, we continue to use the term “enterprise social networking” to represent the enterprise and extended-enterprise (alumni, customer, partner) social relationships people in business context have over time, representing the social collaboration, social communication, conversations, and information/content sharing of these connections. In this context, not only employees and ex-employees (alumni), but also partners, suppliers, and customers can serve as “talent” that is beneficial to an organization`s business strategy and competitive advantage – e.g. soliciting product feedback, innovation factories etc.
As the extension of a talent management strategy, the talent relationship lifecycle serves as a great example of how talent and social relationships are a critical component of a companies overall talent and business strategy.
5 Scott Lietzke March 2, 2009 at 3:53 pm
This is great thinking and even better, problem solving. I’m constantly looking to take learnings from the the “social” and “community” phenoms – tools, patterns, etc and extend them into the enterprise.
But beyond relationship management and nurtured communication strategies, collaboration will be a key interaction in our daily work lives. Supporting, validating, debating the results of our work amongst our peers in an organized and managed arena, hopefully within the enterprise applications we used to generate our ideas; only posting to Twitter in real time, when you’re ready and you check that option. This being the biggest policy challenge, securing the conversations around the “proprietary” part of our day
6 Lisa Rowan March 2, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Hi Jim,
Thought provoking. I wonder, though, if putting it into the nomenclature of the life cycle limits some facets of socialization. It isn’t just about the employer to talent linkages but also about the network that the talent builds on its own and how that can positively impact business, e.g. employee blogs and/or twitters and has the chance to improve the name recognition of the employer brand (and their own brand.) Personal example, I saw a client tweet a general question and I answered if offline and was thought to be helpful, without this a missed opportunity for achieving good customer service.
Make sense?
Lisa
7 Naomi Bloom March 2, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Jim, Excellent post. And we’re thinking along the same lines. As part of a normal update cycle for my HRM Domain Model “Starter Kit”, I have been testing my person object model and the associated killer scenarios and application architecture principles to ensure that they would hold when a range of social media are applied within the person/organization context. Some enhancements needed, perhaps, one or more additional roles of person with respect to the organization, but the model holds up very well — better than I expected. What’s really new here is the multiplier effect, almost a viral effect, of my network when leveraged via various communications mechanisms, and Twitter is an excellent example. If you’ve chosen who you follow on Twitter wisely, and you’ve earned their respect enough to warrant their responding to a question, then you’ve magnified tremendously — and very quickly — your ability to get real work done. Those of us with great networks of knowledgeable colleagues have always been able to reach out for information, problem-solving, job or business opportunities, but it’s been slower and more tedious to do so via phone/FAX/email than it is via LinkedIn groups or Twitter clusters. But this combining of the reach and speed of social media with the integrity of one’s network is of benefit to us as individuals but also to whoever else benefits from our work, including clients and employers.
8 Jim Holincheck March 2, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Thanks for all of the great responses. I am sorry I have been able to respond as quickly, but let’s get started.
- Syris, Thanks! That is what I was going for.
- Jason, Cool presentation. There are definitely some good thoughts on the intersection of talent management and social software. I agree that is how it is evolving right now. However, it feels more like an add-on (social software as a layer on top of talent management), than it is a different way of think about about the employer/worker relationship and the value of that relationship over time. We should continue to discuss.
- Jon, you are right that employees who leave are often much more valuable when they return. That is also something different from the customer relationship. There is no additional value generated when a customer leaves and buys from another organization. However, an individual’s value often increases as they grow in knowledge and experience. I agree with both you and Jason that there is a notion of a profile that marries structured data (like competencies) with unstructured data that is captured from various internal and external applications. ZoomInfo is my favorite example of this kind of dynamic profile generation. As Jason has pointed out in previous discussions, it is what you do with the data that matters. The concept of TLV provides a different lens on the value of the individual/organization relationship. There is a reason professional sports teams recruit athletes at such a young age these days. I think they intuitively understand the concept of TLV.
David, you highlight an important point in the broader definition of talent. Talent is not just full-time, part-time, and contingent workers. Talent should includes customers, partners, and vendors as well. The notion of the extended enterprise is not only relevant in understanding your current talent supply, but in this context it is relevant because an individual may move between these different categorizations multiple times during their working career. The relationship dynamics and relationship value may intensify or diminish multiple times.
Scott, you bring up a great thought on security and privacy. With all of this data floating around there are certainly legitimate privacy concerns. As you say, an individual can choose whether or not they participate in various forms of social networks, but employers have to be careful about how they use the data that they mine about the talent relationship. I could see serious problems if it is used to discriminate or for other nefarious purposes.
Lisa, you are quite right. It is a two-way street. An individual employee can not only enhance his or her own value by collaborating, building, and contributing to their network, but it can also create value for their employer (or even former employer and potentially future employers, if my thesis is correct).
Naomi, it is important to point out the power of networks. It is interesting that your domain model needed little tweaking to accommodate social media. I have been of the opinion that it would be hard to create a structured data model that would encompass the breadth of information available on the web and via social media, but would love to hear more about what you have found.
9 Diane Morello March 4, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Jim: What you’ve found, in my view, is the mother lode of the 21st century. The social fabric connects human beings to one another and to whatever they apply their collective energy. While businesses agonize over the perfect attraction and retention toolbox, the mother lode is right there: The best retention tool is the quality of the people around us. Personalized social tools like Facebook and Twitter enable us to see different facets of people, like holding up a gem and seeing all its sides as it turns. People become smart and fascinating human beings again, more than names on a “to” or “from” line.
Betsy Burton and I did “maverick” Gartner analysis on the future worker 2015 several years ago and we offered several hypotheses that mesh with your concept: 1) Future successful employers will be *clients* of the energized workforce. 2) High-trust social patterns will underlie 21st century success. 3) Companies that act as if they own or control people will be obsolete by 2015. (With huge companies faltering after playing electronic shell-games with people’s money, that rings especially true.)
People tapping into the best of themselves and into the best of others is the heart of being human. Doing so in the context of business and institutions is only a by-product.
10 Jason Berkowitz March 6, 2009 at 10:44 am
Jim,
The key phrase in what you wrote (and what the ATS companies don’t seem to get yet) is “I do not have just work-related relationships, I have personal relationships”. The way to use social networking in a long-term recruiting and retention sense is not to try to build a private social network that you force candidates into (i.e., come join the XYZ Company Private Talent Community), but rather to insert yourself into candidates existing social networks (i.e. please let XYZ join your existing networks and be in a long-term relationship with you). In order to do this, you have to follow all the “rules” of social networking, or you become just another commercial venture spamming people’s network with self-serving messages. It will be hard for companies to master the art of creating a network experience that resonates with candidates, alumni, etc. and doesn’t come across as blatant self-promotion. I predict we will see an explosion of consultants helping companies do just that. It’s not what we do at SharpObject Consulting, since we only work with RPO providers, but maybe we should consider adding that service…
11 090306 Transformation Links | johnsumser.com: Recruiting News and Views March 6, 2009 at 11:42 am
[...] Talent Relationship Management — Social Networking Meets Talent Management in the Talent Relations…The interesting thing about the "enterprise space" is that it is such a minor portion of the economy. (Enterprise space is consultant speak for "Fortune 2500"). The budgets are large, decision making is glacial and innovation is usually the enemy. Being the ‘analyst’ who covers that beat is an ofthe thankless job. It’s really cool when someone like Jim Holincheck gets a chance to actually see into the future. It’s a challenging feat from that position. [...]
12 » Talent Relationship Management March 6, 2009 at 3:38 pm
[...] at the Gartner blog , Jim Holincheck discusses the concept of a talent relationship lifecycle – the relationship an [...]
13 Grandma March 8, 2009 at 9:24 am
I actually don’t think social networking is the holy grail of collaboration. It certainly caters to Gen X and Y but there is nothing wrong with a low-tech, high-touch approach to relationships. I wrote about Web 2.0 and chatting here:
http://grandmaslaw.com/?p=23
14 Working Girl March 11, 2009 at 9:13 am
I like the idea of lilfetime relationship management and agree that social networking platforms could evolve into a tool to help with that. I do question whether a high social index is necessarily a predicter of high performance, however. Just because high performers tend to be well-connected, it doesn’t necessarily follow that popularity leads to success.
Of course, you didn’t actually say this but I have seen it said elsewhere.
As for tapping into existing social network platforms I wrote a somewhat satirical posting about that here – I think it’s an interesting possibility and agree that open source networks will be more effective than private ones but I don’t think we’re there yet.
http://ls-workgirl.blogspot.com/2009/02/future-of-business-applications.html
15 Meg Bear March 16, 2009 at 12:27 am
Glad to see more people talking about this, I agree this is the kind of thinking we need to be doing more of in our industry. I agree with Lisa’s point that this (networking) is not just about the company but also about the individual. I think that is why my tweet response that I’m not comfortable with the name “Relationship Management” since I agree with the relationship part, I somehow think that the implication that a social network can (or should) be “managed” feels a bit anti-web 2.0 to me.
Thanks for opening the discussion, it certainly is nice to see so many people attempting to get first hand experience to help craft their thoughts and opinions. I appreciate that.