Talent spotting? It’s talent management that drives business excellence.

Talent management is more than just training and appraisals. To support business excellence your talent management systems and processes must provide the mechanisms to achieve the right level of skills at the right time.

The importance of talent management in modern business

We live in a technology supported world, where robotic automation, artificial intelligence and the internet of things, are changing the way we work and are having as big an impact as the mechanization of farming practises 100 years ago.

This does not mean that tech will replace people, but rather the skills people need to work alongside the tech have to change.

A 2017 report by McKinsey ‘Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages’ highlights some of the changes foreseen as technology advances and becomes more integrated, and suggests that 50% of current work activities are technically automatable.

Managing this change in skills, qualifications and competencies, as well as the types of resource to perform them, is going to be the key to unlocking business excellence.

Competency alignment

Identifying competency requirements for the future requires an alignment between strategtic planning and resource planning.

Competency sourcing (closing the competency gap) should inlude technological resources as well as human resources undertaking activites to streamline processes.

With strategy providing direction, and corporate performance management providing process and indicator benchmarks, competency derision can be planned and aligned with strategic and operational performance, ready for sourcing.

Closing the competency gap

The competency gap is the difference between competencies available and those required to fulfil the strategy. Closing the gap comes in 5 main forms;

1. Training current people/teams
2. Recruiting additional resources
3. Hiring people with the right skills
4. Contracting with the right agency/company
5. Buying the right technology

The pros and cons of each sourcing method is for the company to decide, but the talent management software being used should be agnostic and enable each approach.

Appraisals and strategic alignment

Appraising resources in line with agreed objectives, and keeping those objectives aligned with the current strategy ensures personal and corporate achievement.

As strategies move away from cyclical to ‘always-on’, so should appraisals. A simple streamlined process used more regularly far outweighs a complex annual approach—as does the ability to perform 360 feedback on all human resources.

In their appraisals factsheet, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development views regular performance conversations as an integral part of multi-level feedback. This ensures goal congruence and also promotes an open and honest culture for the wellbeing and development of human resources.

OK I’m interested, where do I start?

At IFS we provide a human capital management suite that incorporates talent management and is integrated with the rest of the ERP system and with our corporate performance management solution. This supports achieving the right level of skills at the right time and in the right place.

Go onto the IFS website www.ifsworld.com to find out more, or email me on steve.treagust@ifsworld.com.

IFS develops and delivers enterprise software for customers around the world who manufacture and distribute goods, maintain assets, and manage service-focused operations. The industry expertise of our people and solutions, together with commitment to our customers, has made us a recognized leader and the most recommended supplier in our sector. Our team of 3,300 employees supports more than one million users worldwide from a network of local offices and through our growing ecosystem of partners. For more information, visit: www.ifsworld.com