Part 3 of an ongoing series inspired by What’s Next for You: The Eightfold Path to Transforming the Way We Hire and Manage Talent
“If you can’t find the talent necessary to run your business, you lose money.”
As we researched our book, we often heard variations of the following statement: “What do you mean we’re not digital? Our recruiters work long hours sourcing databases with keywords to track our candidates. Our HR systems track everything about our employees. We’re working as hard and fast as we can! Why isn’t this the state-of-the-art in digital technology?”
These comments illustrate precisely why a digital transformation is so essential for converting talent management into a competitive advantage. Everyone is so busy because these “solutions” do not address today’s talent management realities, let alone provide a sufficient foundation for future growth.
Outmoded tools and workflows mean that:
- Recruiters and hiring managers will only get more overwhelmed as time goes by
- Current employees become increasingly worn down and worn out covering for unfilled positions, affecting both productivity and morale
- The talent crisis isn’t going to get any better —and the businesses losses that accompany it aren’t going to get any smaller.
In short, digital tools do not equal digital transformation — or better results —for recruiting and hiring.The dollar losses cited in What’s Next for You clearly illustrate that point.
The answer is not to throw more and more technology at the problem, hoping that processing power will eventually fix a broken system. The path forward requires new tools that fundamentally change how talent management operates, and how the individuals responsible for these activities conduct their day-to-day jobs. In other words, organizations need to apply the right typeof technology to transformthe hiring process.
That’s what AI-based talent intelligence delivers — both the platform and the mindset that drive a fundamentally healthier and more productive approach for finding, nurturing, and retaining talent. And talent intelligence connects these processes in a holistic, transformative way.
Unfortunately, while “more of the same” may be ineffective, it’s also easy. Senior managers like easy. Before a company adopts an AI-based talent intelligence system, its internal champions must make the business case for enabling this change. And for that to happen, recruiters, hiring managers, and HR teams must be able to present that argument in the language that corporate executives speak best, stating the business need for change:
- How much money outmoded talent management practices cost the organization
- The dollars-and-cents issues behind the competitive imperative to fill open positions sooner and reduce churn
- Why increased efficiencies for staff and legacy systems require an AI-based talent intelligence platform
- The cost/benefit basis for talent intelligence — including why the investment in an AI-based platform delivers a rapid, provable ROI that continues well into the future.
The language of the bottom lines demonstrates the hard-dollar benefits that come from moving faster than the competition to find and retain top-tier employees. Talent management leaders must be the change they seek, with financial fluency to convince the executive team as a critical skill.
Talent management is now a strategic imperative. The talent management culture itself must evolve for management to feel comfortable embracing this new approach. Once aligned with overall business and organizational strategies, the digital transformation to talent intelligence becomes much simpler to adopt and support. It also makes talent management professionals an increasingly essential element in corporate growth and governance.
What’s Next for You: The Eightfold Path to Transforming the Way We Hire and Manage Talent, by Eightfold’s Ashutosh Garg and Kamal Ahluwalia, is on sale now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble
