Rethinking The Principles Of Talent Management
There are at least three generally accepted components of a basic talent management strategy: learning & development, employee engagement & retention, and talent mobility.
All of these are important to building a successful business, all of these are connected – and all of these need to be reconsidered, in an era of powerful new technologies.
1. Learning & Development 📚
The World Economic Forum has estimated that automation will displace 85 million jobs by 2025, and 40% of core skills will change for workers. Meanwhile, two thirds of employees say that they are more likely to stay with an employer that invests in upskilling or reskilling them. (The 2024 Career Optimism survey)
A robust learning and development (L&D) strategy is key in the changing world, where critical skills are in short supply. Organizations must prioritize developing the skills of their existing employees, rather than trying to plug gaps with external hires. L&D is more and more about agility and efficiency, and therefore needs to be more proactive and dynamic.
In the past, L&D programs were largely linear: focused on upskilling employees to meet the demands of their current roles. Today, organizations need a continuous learning culture, where employees are encouraged to develop a broader range of skills that can adapt to the evolving demands of the business.
“Because we’re all navigating change constantly – and I don’t see that ever letting up, ever; it’s just going to continue to accelerate – I would try and instill continuous learning as a core value of the organization. Then you’re creating an adaptable workforce who is already used to new concepts.” – Elle Lebourg, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Hilti
New tech; new skills
The rise of AI and automation has, of course, accelerated the need for reskilling and upskilling. Employees are expected to be agile learners, capable of acquiring new skills that may not have been relevant just a few years ago.
AI is top of mind for employees of all kinds. Do they have the access and skills to use it in their roles? Will their roles be replaced by automation?
Only 38 percent of companies are offering training in AI literacy, despite 82 percent of leaders saying their employees will need to develop new skills to work with AI. – LinkedIn
What’s interesting is that AI itself is ideal for solving this challenge, in that it can help employers design better learning and development experiences. With AI, you can offer personalized learning pathways, delivering targeted, just-in-time training (in both technical and soft skills) that aligns with both individual career aspirations and organizational goals.
How can AI improve L&D?
AI-driven skills assessments can identify gaps in employees’ skill sets (with greater accuracy) on an ongoing basis. By mapping current skills against future needs, AI helps design personalized learning paths, tailored to individual strengths and weaknesses.
AI-powered adaptive learning platforms can even adjust the content and difficulty of training modules on the fly, to keep employees engaged and challenged.
Then, data can easily be fed back to L&D teams, to improve content for the future, or tweak the format of training programs.
“AI can help validate [skills proficiency] and then predict: if you have this next experience, if you have this next exposure, if you have this next class (cause it’s not just about class), you’ll be able to grow in those skills that will ultimately lead to whatever your dream is.” – Jacqui Canney, Chief People Officer, ServiceNow
AI-powered L&D not only accelerates employee growth, but also aligns learning initiatives with organizational goals, ensuring that employees develop the most relevant and necessary skills (for whatever your business is hoping to do next).
A new learning experience
Today, the focus is shifting from traditional, classroom-based training to more experiential and on-the-job learning opportunities. Microlearning platforms and virtual reality (VR) simulations are becoming integral to L&D strategies, allowing employees to learn in ways that are more interactive, immersive, and connected with their daily work.
When it comes to content delivery, AI can simplify complex subjects (through Natural Language Processing), provide real-time language translation to break down global barriers, and personalize learning modules to cater to different styles and abilities, fostering inclusivity and accessibility for employees worldwide.
Using AI to enhance L&D one of many new ways you can enhance employee engagement: but it also ensures that learning is more relevant, and more easily accessed and applied.
2. Employee Engagement & Retention 🤝
Employee engagement has always been critical to retention, which is in turn critical for business success… but the ways in which companies engage their workforce have changed significantly.
Workers, particularly in younger generations, desire more flexibility – across how, where and when they work, as well as what they work on. They are looking for greater purpose, and an experience at work that mirrors the more personalized experience they have as consumers.
Traditional engagement strategies – annual surveys, company-wide meetings, and standardized benefits – are being supplemented, or even replaced, by more tailored and dynamic approaches.
AI and data analytics are, again, playing a crucial role in this evolution. By analyzing employee behavior, preferences, and feedback in real time, organizations can be far more agile and responsive in their engagement tactics.
Improved employee understanding
AI tools can analyze employee feedback from surveys, social media, and internal communications to gauge morale and identify areas for improvement.
AI-driven predictive analytics can forecast employee performance, identify potential flight risks, and suggest interventions to retain top talent – before it’s too late.
Interventions may include L&D opportunities, but might also involve offering flexible work arrangements, creating a more inclusive and supportive workplace culture, or providing more tailored career development pathways.
“It's a huge one for Just Eat Takeaway right now: How are we looking at our internal population, which kickstarted this whole idea of us to move to becoming that skills-based organization, but how do we increase our retention rates? How do we retain those top performers?” – Olga Power, Global Director of Talent Acquisition, Just Eat Takeaway
Enhanced performance management
AI can also enable more frequent and meaningful interactions between managers and employees, such as through real-time feedback systems, which can enhance job satisfaction and reduce turnover.
It allows managers to get quick answers to questions, easy insights around performance and sentiment, and even nudges in the flow of work to reach out to disengaged employees.
“I think the single biggest lever you have to change how people experience the workplace is through the engagement they have with their managers. So [AI coaches are] a really meaningful way to upskill managers and provide the support.” – Caroline Heller, Senior Managing Director, Global Head of HR, BlackRock
Dynamic goal setting should also be possible with AI-powered tools: set data-driven goals, which always align with individual capabilities and organizational objectives, to ensure employees are always working towards relevant and achievable targets.
Ethical AI helps promote diversity and inclusion, by reducing the biases within recruitment and promotion processes. It ensures that decisions are made based on skills and potential rather than who someone’s friends are in the organization, or where they’ve worked before. This is likely to have a positive effect on people’s engagement, loyalty and productivity at work.
Improve productivity & communication
The shift towards remote and hybrid work models means companies must find new ways to foster a sense of community and belonging. Virtual team-building activities, regular check-ins, and transparent communication channels are essential to maintaining a connected and motivated workforce – and technology is making them easier than ever.
But it’s not just about what AI can do for those HR teams and managers hoping to reduce attrition. Employees trained in AI best practices, encouraged to embrace the power of AI, and made comfortable with its many benefits, will likely find themselves more engaged and productive within their roles.
While 49% of people say they’re worried AI will replace their jobs, 70% say they would delegate as much work as possible to AI to lessen their workloads. Business leaders, meanwhile, are 2x more interested in using AI to increase productivity than to cut headcount. – Microsoft
3. Talent Mobility 🗺️
Internal talent mobility – the ability to move employees across different roles and functions within an organization – is not a new way to retain top talent, and fill critical skills gaps. But it still seems to be underutilized as a strategy.
Our survey of workers found that nearly a third of those currently looking for a new job are doing so due to a “lack of opportunities for growth and progression” (32%). Meanwhile, in a LinkedIn survey, only 15% of respondents said their organization had encouraged them to move into a new role.
In an era of rapid technological change, ever-evolving skills requirements, and new preferences around ways of working, talent mobility is actually becoming more about flexibility and adaptability than simply retaining high performers.
Organizations need to rethink how they approach internal mobility. Instead of simply moving employees from one static role to another, companies should focus on creating fluid career paths that allow for continuous learning and growth, and allow for slick redeployment of skills as business needs change. AI can help.
Using AI to gather skills insights
Like the other pillars of talent management, internal talent mobility relies on a deep, up-to-date understanding of your workforce: the skills they have, might have, or could learn.
AI can help you build a picture of the skills you have internally, and also identify employees who are ready for new roles or projects (perhaps in different departments or locations) based on their current skill set and potential for growth.
Advanced analytics can identify skill gaps within the organization, and suggest potential internal candidates who could be trained or reskilled to fill those roles. This not only helps to optimize the workforce, but also fosters a culture of internal growth and opportunity, which can be a powerful driver of engagement and retention. It’s all connected.
“Ideally our entire workforce should be part of our talent pool, and now that we are putting a content-based and skill-based job role architecture in place across our entire footprint, it gives us a totally different visibility of what we actually have access to.” – Stefan Begall, VP & Group Head of Talent, Telia
AI-powered talent matching
To make all this data usable, you will need to invest in, or develop, internal platforms that match employees’ skills with available opportunities within the organization. This could include project-based work, temporary assignments, cross-functional training, or full-time roles in different departments – but the key is that the recommendations are solid, because they are based on high quality data about someone’s actual and potential skills.
Encourage the formation of cross-functional teams that bring together employees with diverse skill sets. This fosters innovation and allows employees to develop new skills while contributing to high-impact projects.
Ensure that career pathways within the organization are transparent and accessible. Employees should be able to see the skills required for different roles, and – as discussed earlier – have easy access to the resources they need, in order to acquire those skills.
The ideal talent mobility solution gives employees more control over their careers, and more flexibility in how they work, and encourages them to stay with the company – while ensuring the business is able to deploy skills where they are needed, as they are needed.
“There’s no static information anymore. Everything is constantly living, moving, and breathing. And so we’re weaving that into our careers and development strategy... We’re launching technologies to enable job matching. We’re working on change management with hiring managers to really understand how to cross-pollinate talent across the organization. It’s a really exciting time that all supports the empowerment of the employee and their career.” – Ash Walvoord, AVP Talent Management, Verizon
Develop, engage & redeploy talent with ease 😎
A skills-based approach to talent management can help bridge the gap between employee aspirations and business needs. This is not just about filling roles; it’s about building a dynamic and resilient workforce that can adapt to changing business needs.
“Skills-based practices can help employers upskill workers and provide learning opportunities to enable internal mobility and boost retention… provide on-the-job training and continuous-learning programs, and develop internal road maps to promotion from entry-level roles without requiring a degree.” – McKinsey
Luckily, AI can help power real-time skills intelligence, as well as a recommendation engine for the ‘next best action’ in terms of L&D, engagement or redeployment, so that large companies are able to bring skills-based talent management to life effectively and efficiently.
AI helps you gather and normalize data around the skills in your workforce and wider talent pool, and deeply understand the capabilities and potential of your organization. It helps you build and manage a dynamic Job Architecture that also describes the roles and job families in your organization in the language of “skills needed”.
It helps you easily identify skill gaps and areas for growth, and it helps you match people to the right kind of learning program, mentor, new role, new team, or other opportunity.
In a world where everyone needs to learn more about the power of AI, HR is clearly no exception.