07/07/2022 | News release | Distributed by Public on 07/06/2022 23:48
When SumTotal attended Learning Technologies 2022 - Europe's leading conference for organizational learning and technology - we found that many organizations have a renewed focus on talent management practices as we enter a post-pandemic world. More specifically:
To keep your talent management organization competitive, improve your data collection and utilization to drive better outcomes.
Talent management connects learning and development with career paths and goals. Simply put, it aligns your business needs with your employees' desires to grow and improve their own careers.
Before we talk about how you can use data to improve your talent management practices, it's important to answer this question: "Why is improving talent management important?"
Here are a few of the key benefits associated with improved talent management:
Of course, the benefits of improved talent management can only be attained if you're able to harness and act on data insights.
This starts by understanding the difference between good and bad talent management data.
Good data is current, accurate, and relevant for specific business purposes. If you're tracking specific talent data "just because," letting it become outdated, or failing to collect data that helps you make key decisions, you'll be awash with useless information.
So, how can you separate good data from bad data? Start by determining specific business goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) - once you understand what outcomes you want to drive, you can work backward to figure out what data you need to collect in order to measure those outcomes.
For example, if you want to use talent management data to improve your hiring, start by building ideal candidate profiles based on your organization's talent needs. Collect data from existing employees to identify what skills and traits are a good fit, then use this information during the hiring process. Post-hire, track new employees' progress to see if the candidate profiles you compiled were effective in improving outcomes (e.g., by yielding faster onboarding or improved performance).
No matter your talent management system, it's crucial to keep your data clean by removing former employees from the system and ensuring current employees' information is up to date.
Next, let's look at some of the ways improved talent management data can benefit your organization.
Talent management data can show where your workforce is strong and where it's lacking from a skills perspective.
Making talent data easy for recruiters to access can help pinpoint candidates with the potential to fill skills gaps in your organization. During the interview process, recruiters will know what to ask to ensure each candidate can meet your business' needs.
Improved talent management data makes compensation planning easier and allows you to create a pay-for-performance culture. By using data to track everyone's progress, you can ensure employees get the compensation they deserve.
This will keep your best employees engaged and happy, while providing incentives to meet business goals.
By using talent management data to illuminate the makeup of your current workforce, you can identify what your business will need to achieve its growth goals and determine whether you have the in-house skills to do so.
Ultimately, creating a talent pipeline will make filling vacancies easier - particularly for key roles.
Because effective L&D and talent management require a substantial investment, it's important to have metrics in place that measure ROI.
By providing clear data on retention, progress through learning programs, skills attainment, and more, a talent management system can make it much easier to justify continued investment in your programs.
As we cross into the post-pandemic world, developing a strong talent management program will be critical to establishing and maintaining business success.
Want to learn more about the challenges that learning professionals are predicting in a post-pandemic world? Download our latest infographic packed with data from the Learning Technologies 2022 conference.