- Talent leaders at industry-leading organizations use AI-native talent intelligence to align HR strategies to executive priorities.
- With the data and insights from talent intelligence, they can have more focused conversations and real impact on the bottom line.
- AI can have big benefits in recruiting and talent management, including faster hiring times, better employee engagement and retention, succession planning, increasing organizational agility and reducing costs.
How can aligning talent strategies to overall business goals help an organization weather an ever-changing business environment? This is one of the top questions C-suite executives are asking HR leaders right now.
Most HR leaders would say that it’s the quality of the talent in the organization — yet it’s tougher than ever to attract and retain the best employees.
David Perring, Chief Insights Officer at Fosway Group, explores how technology and strategy can be applied to today’s realities in talent management — and how those practices can help talent leaders build on that momentum for continuous improvement.
To understand how HR strategies — especially those powered by AI — are impacting change, Perring spoke with three talent leaders from some of the EU’s top-performing organizations, including Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), Vodafone and EY, at this year’s EU Cultivate to learn how talent intelligence is giving them a competitive advantage.
Related content: See how Coca-Cola Europacific Partners is using AI in talent management.
Executives need top talent to grow business
There’s a lot on talent management professionals’ plates these days. Prioritizing executive needs makes the plate-balancing feel even more precarious.
CCEP produces, bottles, and sells Coca-Cola products in 30 countries. One of the company’s priorities is to ensure growth in developing markets. Magda Malé-Alòs, Talent Management Director for CCEP, said they have two main focuses for HR to support executive priorities in this area — building capabilities and enhancing culture.
“We’re using artificial intelligence to predict the culture adaptability, to understand the potential of our people to keep on growing in the organization, to personalize development journeys, and also to ensure that we retain the critical knowledge within the organization,” Malé-Alòs said.
For Vodafone, delivering a seamless digital and communications experience is all about the customer. Talent is at the heart of this objective.
Carl Clarke, Director Talent, Learning, Leadership, Skills, People Performance, and Talent Acquisition at Vodafone, said that their executives are focused on “buying” and “building” the best people in the industry. A big part of that strategy is focusing on emerging skills.
“The simplest way for us to bring in the best people to Vodafone is to give candidates a great experience that promotes our brand,” Clarke said. “We’ve been using the Eightfold platform for two years now, so that’s given us a great runway to make improvements in that space. At the same time, almost two-thirds of our business is in the tech space. We know tech skills are really in high demand externally. Upskilling and reskilling is critical for us to democratize this within the organization.”
As a global business consulting firm, EY supports clients through technology so they can operate and grow their businesses.
“They talk about cost, growth, and the ability to flex,” said Antony Shields, EMEIA People Consulting Partner for EY. “The ability for us to be able to bring the best of EY to our clients is so critical that it’s not just a question of cost, realignment, productivity, and experience — it’s actually the ability to impact our top line as well. At the core of our strategy are skills and AI. We’re also finding that with a lot of our clients currently.”
Related content: Watch how communications company Vodafone is reinventing its talent processes with AI.
Finding balance between talent strategy and technology
To successfully sell the importance of AI-powered talent intelligence, HR leaders must show how the technology serves the bigger picture. Having a clear understanding of this enables talent leaders to be more proactive in conversations with executives.
“If we do this right, using the right tools and tech, this makes a really big difference to your bottom line,” Clarke said. “[Executives] definitely get much more engaged in the conversation.”
But before anyone can adopt a new technology, cultural change has to take place. That means changing how people think about AI.
“We decided to start with data, but before implementing the Eightfold tool, we didn’t have a lot of information on our talent,” Malé-Alòs said. “We didn’t have the right tools, but we needed something that was a platform that was helpful to drive our strategy and change the mindset.”
How AI enables transformation
These organizations have already implemented talent intelligence, but adopting a new technology is only the start. Talent leaders must continuously document AI’s impact on HR operations, including recruiting and talent management. The biggest shift has been a move toward more data-driven operations and decisions.
“There’s a lot more focus on data and analytics,” Clarke said. “These are now the cornerstone of what managers are asking for — more insight. Now that does need a different muscle within the organization to really help focus on that. You also find that some of the typical roles that you were looking for you don’t need as many or as much of. There’s a slight rebalancing within the broader function.”
For CCEP, Malé-Alòs agreed there is more focus on data. In addition, her organization now has the ability to personalize the employee experience.
“This is something that is helping us to make sure that we are not so one-size-fits-all,” she said. “AI is helping us democratize opportunities, which is a game changer. Transparency in opportunities and making sure that everyone can have an opportunity. Without this support, it wouldn’t have been that clear or that transparent.”
At EY, Shields said there was also a mindset shift within the HR organization itself. It required a different approach to people management at scale.
“The combination of the newness around artificial intelligence and skills means you are messing particularly with the very core of what people hold dear,” Shields said. “That combination means that you have to take a different approach around change. Change for your internal teams, change for your people, change for people management — because that, to me, is the biggest sea cultural change that is landing now.”
Reaching goals and delivering outcomes
Of course, when you’re working with the C-suite and aligning talent strategies to drive business outcomes, you must show proof that your efforts are working. At Vodafone, numbers like a 40% reduction in costs and 50% reduction in time to hire have gained attention from the C-suite. Clarke said there’s still work to be done.
“The big piece we’re working on now is now the upskilling and reskilling piece — 25% of the organization has done skill profiles, which is great,” Clarke said. “They’re getting personalized learning recommendations, but we need to get that number up this year so we really benefit the entire organization.”
At CCEP, Malé-Alòs said there are three measures that have significantly improved since implementing talent intelligence.
“One measure we look at is adoption,” she said. “We didn’t have good adoption in the previous systems. Now we have 80% adoption in the countries where it’s launched, which is circa 20,000 people.
“Then we measured employee engagement, and we increased six points in just one year after we launched,” she continued. “The final measure is succession planning. We wanted to have at least 75% of the replacements for the ELT (Executive Leadership Team). We had 80% compared to the benchmark externally in the market, which is 57%.
Shields said EY has thousands of employees on its Eightfold platform, with an adoption rate of almost 80%. For EY, both internally and for its clients, looking at outcomes is supporting its leaders’ imperative to become a skills-based organization — not just in theory but in tangible results.
“What’s really fascinating in the data is you look at the culture change and the agility,” Shields said. “You’re seeing those organizations that are on this journey reporting that they’re seeing a four-times improvement in how they’re driving some of their cultural programs, and then a 2.5-times improvement in how they are able to manage change in a changing world. It’s really interesting to see that data at scale now coming back for those organizations that are on the journey.”
Watch the full panel discussion, “Advancing your HR strategy: How to embrace executive priorities with AI,” on demand now.
