With the global economy and way of doing business experiencing massive change, upskilling and reskilling have taken on a renewed sense of urgency, especially by progressive business organisations. Success through these transitions requires major shifts in thinking about how hiring and employee development are done – it’s a new leadership culture.
At different times, different roles become more critical depending on the nature and magnitude of changes and challenges. For example, when input costs are escalating steeply, procurement function comes to the center stage, when sales go down, sales and marketing team gets greater attention etc.
With people gaining new knowledge and skills and acquiring wining personal attributes across functions and inter-functional hierarchy, there is a need to keep people’s talents and capabilities. Do not assume that the person who was best suited for yesterday’s job is the person best suited for tomorrow’s job.
People keep evolving – some evolve faster than others. Some reach optimum level of capacity and capability faster but may get stuck at a particular point but some others learn slower. HR partners need to be cognizant of this fact and should undertake skill, knowledge and talent assessment on a regular basis to mix and match for the betterment of both the business and individuals.
External challenges
Organisations that are challenged by external factors must match many employees to new roles, properly realigning talent to available and high-value positions proves especially daunting and game-changing. The first step requires gaining strategic clarity on the value agenda.
To compete in today’s competitive, disruptive environment and drive business value requires focusing on talent to ensure that the right employee is matched to the right role that will ultimately create the most value.
While this talent alignment is challenging in our typical inherent org culture, when it’s done right, rapidly and at scale by an organisation, the outcome can prove to be a significant performance differentiator. Taking a more organised approach to talent matching as part of a major restricting to face the current challenges trigger numerous advantages.
Whether a company is entering a new market or playing in the existing market, identifying ways to cut costs or becoming nimbler, HR managers must find more effective ways to deploy talent.
When proper and efficient talent-matching practices are missing, filling roles rapidly can become a popularity contest.
Positions are filled based on who knows who – which can lead to unconscious bias – rather than on identifying the best candidate. Redeploying talent in a value-focused manner is essential. It must consider knowledge, skills, intrinsic traits and experiences to match the candidates best for each role.
Assess fit and match talent that reflects each role’s markers for success. It’s important to identify your top talent and ensure this stems directly out of the performance management process, using as much data as possible to understand the fit of the employee.
Benefits
By taking a methodical, and data-supported approach to making human capital decisions at scale, the benefits abound for any organisation regardless of how small or large an organisation is.
A formal and transparent approach with all key leaders’ participation brings about credibility to the process for everyone to accept. It also can help organisations combat unconscious bias, enabling leaders to keep track of the available options versus the actual choices that were made.
It is time to begin exploring different ways to work together and to start mapping talent to tasks. We are moving fast into an economy that is based on talent, experience and knowledge. So, what can your organisation do today to get started?
Here’s a simple suggestion. Create a job bucket. Set aside some tasks or projects that can be picked up by someone in the organisation that has the right skills and experience. Maybe that person has never applied that skill for your organisation, maybe that person has already done this many times for your organisation, maybe it is time to shed some light on this hidden economy and place the job bucket out in the open, for everyone to see and to participate.
You can decide how many tasks or projects go into the bucket. You can even pre-approve what goes into the bucket and ask your leadership teams or management to prioritise these tasks. The key is to open the bucket so everyone can see what is going on and who is doing what. I believe, if you find a way to make it happen and tap into the hidden talents of the organisation, you can ignite new engines of growth.