Generational Shift + Digital Disruption = Fluid Talent Management

Written by Dr. Tim Sparkes CPsychol AFBPsS, Hudson Talent Management UK

Digital Transformation Is Likely to be Urgent… Soon

Most organisations not born in the 21st century are experiencing — or should be preparing to experience — significant disruption to their culture, their business models and the very way they work. Escalating customer expectations in speed, ease, seamlessness and mobility in their dealings with whatever and whomever they buy from or interact with means that digital disruption will be a necessity in order to drag ‘non-native’ companies up to speed and to strive for competitive advantage. With this urgency come unprecedented challenges in managing organisational transformation included their most important asset: their people.

Starving For The Right Skills In The Right Place

Diana Bersohn, MD for IT Strategy at Accenture, recently highlighted that sourcing the diverse skills sets needed to improve agility is currently the biggest threat facing organisations. To emphasise the point, PwC’s 2015 Annual Global CEO Survey indicated that 73% of CEOs identified the availability of key skills as one of the top three threats to their companies — an eight year high for that question. In the meantime, a recent survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found that for an overwhelming majority of respondents, inadequate workforce planning has prevented them from meeting business goals.

With the continued acceleration of the digital sector combined with its increased fragmentation with the frequent emergence of new roles each requiring specific skill sets, it is perhaps not surprising that this skillset sourcing is not only difficult but perhaps impossible. And it’s not just the skillsets in the sector that is diversifying; where those skills are being deployed also appears to be shifting. The same PwC survey found that the amount of shadow digital spending has seen a dramatic increase from 47% in 2014 to 68% in 2015. The question, then, is where are these skills going to come from and how are they going to be optimised?

Understand The Restless Natives

Much has been speculated about the different generations in the workplace. Hudson’s Great Generational Shift report, for example, highlights the changing needs and expectations of the new emerging workforce. The digital native generations are predicted to be impatient, likely to leave if not happy and stimulated, independent, demanding, hierarchy-defying, technologically savvy and multi-tasking employees. If they don’t feel valued, if they don’t get what they want, they’ll leave; moving from one role to another based on is on offer, whilst the skills needed for a role will change at an ever-faster rate. In fact, the very definition of a role is becoming more fluid and less defined. A Group Head of IT recently said that if a candidate asks for a job description, that candidate is not for her team. And here is the crux of the challenge that organisations will face: how to identify, attract and retain key talent if that talent is increasingly mobile yet decreasingly defined by a set of skills?

Skills-Based CVs: Worth the Paper They’re Written On

The key to answer this question is to focus on mindset over skillset. Defined as an attitude or disposition, an inclination or perspective, mindset is about a person’s approach to their tasks, challenges and opportunities. It influences a person’s belief in their ability to achieve a goal, their perspective to challenges, their reaction to criticism, success or failure, and how they respond to others’ achievements.

With change set to accelerate exponentially in an increasingly digital and disruptive world complicated fragmentation, variety and volume, the very concept and definition of ‘talent’ will equally need to change at an ever-increasing faster pace. No longer will it be corseted by skills outlined by inflated CVs; rather, application of experience, learning agility, the ability to quickly develop and deploy new abilities before moving onto the next challenge will enter centre stage. Mindset, then, will be or already is a core concept underpinning ‘talent’.

The New World of Fluid Talent Management

Whilst much of the focus in the digital literature is on the organisation’s journey and its digital maturity, a much narrower focus has been on the attributes needed from an employee in a digital world. A small survey of CIOs and digital leaders from Hudson round table events recently revealed that there is no clear understanding of the characteristics needed to be effective in the digital environment. However, we do know that 96% of employers would prefer to “hire, promote, pay and retain” people with a particular mindset over a particular skillset (Reed & Stoltz).

That mindset will be about being adaptable, open, resilient and curious, one that is collaborative and learns quickly, that is ‘barrier blind’ and that yearns for speed, change and continuous learning. Indeed, it is precisely these types of characteristic that were identified in Hudson’s research paper, Emerging Leaders; Differences that Matter. The new breed of employee will no doubt reject the hierarchical, status-driven, risk-averse slow leviathans that are many of today’s organisations, preferring to opt for flat, flexible, risk-taking cultures where change is normal, business models are regularly reviewed and agility is the name of the game.

Hiring managers and talent management will need to focus not on the skills and experience but the attitude and application that a candidate brings to the table. Currently being developed with leaders in the digital sector, Hudson’s Pulse Mindset is an example of an instrument that renounces the old skills-based approach. Instead, its results will provide clarification for selection and development based on a digital mindset.

In a place where workforce planning strategy will shrink from three years to three months and where a fail-fast-learn philosophy will dominate over tried-and-tested methods, this type of measure, this type of thinking, this type of mindset to future talent identification and deployment will be the key to securing stability in an increasingly talent-fluid world.