Navigating Your Way to Total Talent

Today’s workforce is not one-size-fits-all. From permanent members of the team to temporary assignments and contract-based projects, employees are engaging with their employers in new and increasingly flexible ways. This trend presents organisations with an opportunity to be leaner and more agile—but also a significant challenge in managing the many sources of talent. In response, companies are choosing to adopt a Total Talent (TT) approach to talent acquisition that blends MSP and RPO capabilities into a single platform.

Q: What are the advantages of a total talent approach?

A: The advantages of a total talent approach fall into three buckets. The first is speed of hiring. When organisations recruit based on skills rather than work style, they can access talent faster and find candidates with the ability to complete the work. The second advantage is a better user experience. There’s a single point of entry so the experience is stronger and more efficient for both the candidates and for the hiring communities. And finally, the efficiencies organisations gain in resource structure, in volume of activity, and the sourcing mix drives cost control. Talent pools become balanced to operational and commercial needs, and organisations can be much more intentional about maximising internal resources. The ROI is heightened when aligning permanent and contingent labour, and there’s also a reduction in third-party spend by working with a single partner.

Q: How are today’s talent management technologies evolving their capabilities to support a more holistic approach to talent?

A: With the workforce changing and the availability of talent around the world so low, the ability to access, identify, and engage talent is becoming significantly harder—and this challenge is compounded when working across multiple platforms and engagement approaches. At the moment, there is no seamless experience that extends throughout all the stages of the talent journey.

There are lots of new innovative technologies out there that are providing different ways of working and delivering a seamless range of capabilities to manage talent beyond the conventional hiring functionality. The ATS, VMS, CRM—all of those different technologies in the talent acquisition portfolio are becoming easier to integrate with an organisation’s HR administration systems, project management, marketing, and more.

Q: How can HR professionals make the business case for a total workforce solution and gain buy-n from the C-suite?

A: It starts with an organisation adopting a talent mindset. Start by assessing the current recruitment experience and analyse metrics to find efficiencies that can be gained and if those efficiencies are going to warrant the effort of transformation. How long is it taking to identify talent in the marketplace? Are talent gaps impacting the attrition of current employees? Are they having a direct line correlation to the bottom line? Look at the time, the quality, the cost, and the risks. Organisations can assign a dollar value to all of the benefits of finding the right talent at the right cost with the right engagement models in order to build a business case. There is also the cost and time of transformation, and to help with that, AGS works in partnership with companies to evaluate the ROI of transformation and outline the impact on their hiring and engagement practices.

Q: What are some best practices for organisations looking to ensure a smooth transition from a segmented talent strategy to a TT?

A: The move to a total talent approach affects everybody throughout the organisation, so it’s important to give employees a voice and gather their opinions, perspectives, and challenges. Communication is essential. Any business transformation strives to achieve two things: moving towards a benefit and away from a problem. Organisations can use analytics to address concerns and illustrate what a TT will look and feel like, because there are going to be significant changes in the way the hiring team will need to approach talent acquisition.

The key thing is not underestimating the support that’s going to be required in managing the transition. Organisations need to ensure they work with a partner who has the required infrastructure and expertise to lead the charge in the change management journey.

This advertorial was published by HRO Today EMEA in the May/June 2019 edition "Increasing Equality."