In a recent conversation, an HR practitioner friend asked me: after so many years in the spotlight, is Talent Management still a topic worth researching? The answer is in every CEO survey: CEOs cite talent and skills as the No. 1 internal constraint to business growth. Talent Management keeps CEOs awake in the same way as 20 years ago (when PwC did their first CEO survey).
What’s new is digital business adding more volatility than never before. The “which business are you in?” question is answered way more dynamically – think of the Business Moments concept: a business moment is a transient opportunity in which people, data, businesses and things work together in unique, situationally adaptive ways to create increased value over and above what would have taken place ordinarily. Amazon’s newly opened grocery store (Amazon Go) is an example of a business moment. If competitors adopt this store model, it is no longer a business moment. Evaluation of business moments becomes the way to define your business and competitive strength.
It took Talent Management processes over 20 years to become standardized and automated, with organizations spending a lot of time, energy and money on transformation projects and technology solutions. But the current race for speed and agility, where the vast majority of organizational skills has to be revisited or reprioritized in the next 4 years, cannot be won with yet another revision of processes and technologies. It requires redefinition.
Redefinition revolves around three key themes and associated challenges:
- Shift of responsibilities from HR to workers and expansion of scope to non-employees – how we create relevant experiences for these roles?
- Continuous evaluation of processes and experimentation of solutions – how we keep Talent Management agile?
- Making good people decisions faster – how we leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for decision augmentation?
My newly published research “Digital Business Redefines Talent Management Applications” (Gartner access required) note provides a holistic roadmap for redefinition of Talent processes and technologies to tackle these challenges. I will also be presenting the highlights of this research in the upcoming UNLEASH event in London on March 20th, where I look forward to understanding your perspectives, challenges and insights.