The Future of Talent Management

Human Resource Management and Talent Management aren't exactly the same, but they have many similarities. We have witnessed that the approach of HR has been shifted to Talent management. Sooner or later it's going to shift to Portfolio management. that's the impact of the gig economy. the new disruptive employment trend, where traditional permanent jobs are replaced by temporary contingent workers. Talent management is about a set of HR processes that are integrated with each other. talent management touches on all key HR areas, from hiring to onboarding and from performance management to retention (Lawler, 2017). the purpose of talent management is to increase performance. Talent management is aimed at motivating, engaging and retaining employees to make them perform better. Talent management is critical to the success of any organization. Without retaining the best talent we cannot provide the best service to our customers. So, what does the new employment trend the gig economy means to talent management?

Companies with effective talent management strategies are more innovative, adaptable to change, greater employee productivity and retain key talent. How can companies manage talent when there is a mixture of contingent workers and permanent workers? The gig workers are enjoying ever needed freedom and flexibility, because they decide what, when and how they will work. According to The Intuit 2020 Report 43% of US workforce is expected to be of contingent workers by 2020. These contingent workers are highly skilled and experts in their area of work. Researches show that when people become experts in their field and when they self actualize they require less effort to motivate and they tend to work on a more free and flexible environment. Surely talent management in a blended workforce must be a challenging job. Hiring contingent workers provide a variety of benefits to the employer, usually time, effort and money spent on to fill a vacant position are huge and which doesn't normally guarantees the hire would stay longer or more efforts needed to put forth to retain those in the long-run (Miller, 2018). The gig economy provides an alternate where temporary hires with expert knowledge and less effort to motivate to complete a given task (Mulcahy, 2018). Although hiring them on a regular basis or motivating them to work for the same company, again and again, is another challenge that is at hand in HR executives.


The world of work is changing, use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and technological advancements in the process of HR is increasing. Especially hiring and onboarding are becoming easier through the use of big data software. There are two main areas that companies need to address in the next era of talent management. To start with people analytics can be very helpful to companies in determining the supply and demand needs of the workforce. these analytics can help companies to have full visibility to the supply and demand of talent, that companies need to drive their workforce. The company's ability to forecast that demand and act against that forecast to make sure that the company have the right people at the right job at the right time. Proper workforce segmentation is another key area needed to be a focus on future talent management. Companies need to distinct contingent and permanent workers and different strategies are required to apply to these segments to create a win-win situation for both employer and employee (Mizrahi, 2018). 

References:

Intuit. (2010). [online] Available at: https://http-download.intuit.com/http.intuit/CMO/intuit/futureofsmallbusiness/intuit_2020_report.pdf [Accessed 20 Apr. 2019].

Lawler, E. (2017). Reinventing Talent Management. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Miller, J. (2018). Council Post: It's Time To Up Your Management Game For The Gig Economy. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2018/08/13/its-time-to-up-your-management-game-for-the-gig-economy/#70b0d93d16e2 [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].

Mizrahi, O. (2018). The gig is up: Thrive in gig economy, where old jobs are obsolete. 1st ed. Austin, Texas: Greenleaf Book Group Press.

Mulcahy, D. (2018). The Gig Economy. [Place of publication not identified]: Skillsoft.

The New Talent Ecosystem

Since the great recession, many analysts have taken notice of the gig economy. A labour market characterized by workers who do not have a traditional, long-term employee-employer relationship. for HR executives and other organizational leaders, these unconventional relationships between employees and workers come with new opportunities and challenges such as; How do I engage a temporary or an on-call workforce? What do contingent workers expect from our organization? How can we effectively deliver on our brand promise and distinctive culture with gig workers? What does this disruptive system mean for recruitment? This week I will be focussing on the impact of the gig economy on recruitment.

When a company recruits a person who is engaging in the gig economy, then it is highly likely that he/she will be highly skilful compared to an employee who spent entire carrier on the same job. these freelancers and contingent workers act as their own boss and by practising these contract jobs they acquire unique skills like project management, budgeting, marketing, problem-solving, negotiating and customer service. in addition they are likely to be exposed to broader businesses and industries. this fresh perspective can often prompt creative ideas that help a business to grow. Another advantage that the businesses have on contingent workers is that it requires a little effort to motivate those workers to get the job done. as they are hired on for a period of time or to complete a particular task. so, rather than fearing a mass exodus of employees moving to the gig economy, recruitment firms should see it as an opportunity to pull in the most highly-skilled and enthusiastic individuals out there who can help the business move forward in both the short and long-term (Meister and Mulcahy, 2016).

Ellevate network

A talent ecosystem reflects a borderless world of talent acquisition and management with multiple sources of acquiring people. it consists of an extended and evolving series of relationships that goes beyond a traditional talent pool and conventional employee-employer arrangements. A talent ecosystem involves having a pool that is available to any business as an extended, dynamic and evolving network of relationships, instead of as a single static pool. It reflects the disparate and multi-layered market for talent that has become the norm for many firms, particularly those with rapidly changing skills requirements, those in cyclical industries or where talent may move fluidly across regions or countries.

According to research, the current job market is 90% candidate driven. that means you don't pick talent anymore. talent picks you. consequently finding and hiring ideal job candidates especially those with in-demand skills, has become an extremely hard expensive and time-consuming (Sackett, 2018). let's take a look into how we can attract these highly skilled candidates from the talent ecosystem. Research by Linkedin has proven that more than 75% of job seekers research about the company's reputation and employer brand before applying. companies with a bad reputation not only struggle to attract candidates, but they also struggle to retain employees (Miller, 2018). This is why employer branding is one of the emerging recruitment trends. Another important aspect of talent hiring is using data-driven metrics, which can give you great insights on which parts of your hiring strategy work well, and which ones have room for improvement. Paying attention to your HR analytics and using data-driven recruiting has proven to improve some of the most important hiring metrics such as time to hire, cost to hire and quality of hire. Finally, recruitment automation tools are in much need to acquire the best talents. these automation tools help in finding, attracting, engaging, nurturing and converting candidates into applicants. They also streamline, simplify and automate the hiring process, making it faster and more efficient. Technological advances such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learnings are already in place to assist businesses to make the best use of the new disruptive workforce.

References:

Center for Creative Leadership. (2019). Creating a Dynamic and Sustainable Talent Ecosystem - Center for Creative Leadership. [online] Available at: https://www.ccl.org/articles/white-papers/creating-dynamic-sustainable-talent-ecosystem/ [Accessed 15 Apr. 2019].

John Boudreau, J. (2019). MANAGING PEOPLE IN A ‘BOUNDARY-LESS’ TALENT ECOSYSTEM. Human Resource Executive.

Meister, J. and Mulcahy, K. (2016). The future workplace experience. McGraw-Hill Education.

Miller, M. (2018). Talent Magnet. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.

Mrinetwork.com. (2019). RECRUITER SENTIMENT STUDY. [online] Available at: https://www.mrinetwork.com/media/1036/2015_recruiter_sentiment_study_2nd_half.pdf [Accessed 17 Apr. 2019].

Sackett, T. (2018). The Talent Fix: A Leader's Guide to Recruiting Great Talent. SHRM.

HR Planning for a Blended Workforce

Developing a thorough knowledge of corporate culture, plans and policies are fundamental duties of HR managers. HR managers act as an internal change agent and consultant (Kotter, 2010). The growth of the gig economy is inevitable, a change in approach to this disruptive trend is needed. It is time for HR managers to initiate change and act as an expert and facilitator to accommodate contingent workers in the organization and utilize maximum benefit from it. In order to avoid playing catch-up in the coming years. HR professionals have seen a general shift from a transactional focus to a focus on strategic activities. HR also has an increased presence at the executive table and truly can influence an organization. HR does operate in two different roles in an organization, transactional and transformational functions (Nieves and Osorio, 2017). With the increasing use of automation, artificial intelligence (AI) in performing its functional operations there's a current debate that the functional part of HR will be replaced by machines and HR will only operate in transformation. In fact, HR may be more critical now than ever indeed, not having an effective HR system in place may be the demise of an organization.

Contingent workers, agile talents, on-demand workers, freelancers, contract workers, consultants or any alternative form of temporary employment and full-time employees together creates a blended workforce (Mulcahy, 2018). Work preference, resource issues, practical constraints and technology enabled the blended workforce, and HR managers are required to address this in their strategic planning process. Most contingent workers are highly skilled workers, to compete in the market organizations has to adapt to acquiring these talents according to their preference.  Accommodating a blended workforce brings due challenges to HR. Contract workers and full-time workers cannot be considered as same, legally as well. HR needs to be ready to act on all possible positives and negatives of such a workforce. These contingent workers are experts in their field with lots of experiences, this can bring a fresh set of eyes and a unique viewpoint to the perception of the organization. On the other hand contract workers spent less time on work than the full-time workers and achieving higher satisfaction both monetary and non-monetary. This can influence existing key full-time workers to choose their path in the contingent workforce, hence organizations need to be ready for such consequences as well. Some gig workers are in it for building a career while searching for permanent employment. Offering the possibility of repeat engagement to contractors might be a wise investment for the future.

Outdated policies need to be addressed and reviewed. HR should consult with its internal client functions to determine what work is best accomplished by full-time employees (eg. Work tasks involving sensitive intellectual property) and that work which can be accomplished by contingent workers. Process mapping is often used to identify the tasks and flow of work which should be allocated to in-house staff or contingent workers. Limited strategic business competencies as well as focus on transactional functions of HRM by HR managers can be identified as key HR experience barrier to adopt the hybrid workforce (Kotter, 2014).  New policies and procedure are needed internally on how to govern access to information for both sets of employees, data security, sharing confidential information and trade secrets, attorney-client privilege etc. Having a through background assessment before acquiring high skilled talents on contracts must be done. The disruptive work environment involves huge risks as well as benefits.

Having a talent pool and awareness of the skills lack can help the organization to get the right fit on temporary hire. The most important aspect that HR must keep in mind for this change is to educate existing employees about the transformation, by coaching them and making them more accepting of this new staffing ideology. Only when freelancers and full-time professionals work together seamlessly, can this new staffing model succeed.

References:

Kotter, J. (2010). Leading change. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press.

Kotter, J. (2014). Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World. Boston, M.A.: Harvard Business Review Press.

Mulcahy, D. (2018). The Gig Economy: Skillsoft.

Nieves, J. and Osorio, J. (2017). Commitment-based HR systems and organizational outcomes in services. International Journal of Manpower, 38(3), pp.432-448.

The Gig Economy, and why it Matters

Globalization, de-industrialization, automation, and digitization – all have had and continued to have a disruptive effect on traditional jobs and working practices throughout the world (De Stefano, 2015). A gig economy is a free market system in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short term engagement. the digital element is argued to be the primary distinction between the gig economy and the traditional working arrangements. there are currently four broad types of platforms that have been identified; higher skilled creative and IT tasks that can be performed from anywhere; low-level repetitive work that can be performed from anywhere; manual service work that can be performed on the customer's premises and lastly work that involves driving and delivery. Many talented people have decided to leave the traditional workforce in exchange for freelance work in their area of expertise. This gives them desired flexibility in their lifestyle. Working with this emerging system is becoming a challenge for Human Resource Managers. If the best talent is no longer available for an in-house position, HR managers must find ways to either create long-term contracts or to develop other suitable talents (Lawrence F. Katz; Alan B. Krueger;, 2015).

Leading companies in the gig economy

Some might argue that outsourcing and freelancing have been there for the past 25-30 years and why it has become the new talk of the town? People have been doing independent work for a time in memorial. Especially in the field of education (lecturers), software engineering, consulting etc. This is just a matter of technology making it easier than it ever was. Technology enabled a lot of people to become free agents to live much more flexible work lives. And so that’s the very positive side of the gig economy. It brings agility, flexibility, and innovation (O’Brady, 2014). Whereas employment benefits such as pension, medical insurance are the downside of this disruptive economy. HR departments will have to reckon with what that means for the future of talent recruitment, acquisition, development, and retention.

Source: BMO wealth management survey 2017

According to the World Economic Forum human capital report 53% of the working world are employed and 13% of the working world are self-employed. the rate of self-employment is increasing throughout the world year by year. and its time for HR managers to adapt to the new working world and plan human resource management accordingly (Todoli-Signes, 2017). According to Intuit by 2020 as much as 40% of the American workforce will be contingent workers or independent contractors. Most see gig economy as a positive trend, employers are eased with downsizing along with the burden of labour security expenses they have to offer for permanent employees. If a business is successful it means it has a competitive advantage over its rival. Competitive advantage is about differentiation. Independent workforce is undifferentiated. A successful business cannot hire any worker through any sort of gig economy type if that job involves creating or maintaining its competitive advantage. Thus, HR managers are with the task to accommodate both in house and contract workers in the most efficient way. Embracing a flexible workforce, identifying roles that could feasibly adapt to the gig economy.  Integrate gig workers and workforce by offering gig workers a sense of belonging, which in turn will make it easier for HR managers to establish a pool of go-to freelancers that they can rely again and again.

References:

De Stefano, V. (2015). The Rise of the 'Just-in-Time Workforce': On-Demand Work, Crowd Work and Labour Protection in the 'Gig-Economy'. SSRN Electronic Journal.

  Katz, L. and Krueger, A. (n.d.). The rise and nature of alternative work arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015.

O’Brady, S. (2014). The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It by David Weil, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014, 424 pages. ISBN: 978-0674725447. Relations industrielles, 69(3), p.655.

Todolí-Signes, A. (2017). The ‘gig economy’: employee, self-employed or the need for a special employment regulation?. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 23(2), pp.193-205.