The Untapped Opportunities of Effective Talent Planning
It’s no secret that organizations have been looking for bigger and better ways to unlock their talent as a strategy to stay one step ahead of their competitors. But as far as effective Talent Management goes, there are three areas of Talent Planning that represent significantly untapped opportunities, even for some of the most advanced HR functions.
1. Workforce Planning is an organization’s capability to anticipate the supply and demand of talent. To anticipate this need, organizations must consider how to identify the right talent, at the right time, for the right price and leverage its strategic talent sourcing as a competitive advantage.
Many organizations struggle with accurately anticipating their human capital needs and predicting the availability (or unavailability) of suitable talent to fill that need, whether they are building, borrowing, buying, or binding. Additionally, talent planning processes happen too infrequently, often coinciding with an annual headcount planning process. This process commonly happens as a parallel but independent activity to a somewhat duplicative Financial budgeting process, which often engages many of the same business stakeholders. The most effective workforce plans include views of the short- (quarterly), medium- (1–2 years), and long-term (up to 5 years) and treats the planning process as a holistic, strategic business activity.
2. Succession Planning is an organization’s capability to identify critical roles and individuals, and effectively plan for possible changes as the organization and its people evolve. It is one of many key inputs for effective Workforce Planning. This capability often focuses on executive-level positions and personnel, business critical positions, or positions requiring highly specialized skillsets that are difficult to fill.
Succession Planning continues to be a challenge for many companies because the capability often isn’t prioritized, and yet the impact to the organization of doing it poorly can be significant. Effective Succession Planning requires a robust plan for the appropriate positions and people with sufficient lead time to execute effectively. The secret to creating a good plan lies in truly understanding the business you’re serving, building an ongoing, trusted advisory relationship with them (e.g. through your HR Business Partners), and having a good grasp on the supply and demand of talent (from effective Workforce Planning!)
3. Workforce Analytics for Talent Management decisions is still in its infancy, but as the need for HR to move beyond basic data reporting to impactful insights reporting increases, the importance of this capability will continue to increase. It allows organizations to develop and improve the methods for effectively identifying, attracting, and developing talent. To be truly effective with HR analytics, organizations need better quantity and quality of talent management data and enhanced technology. Detailed analyses on the data will help you formulate a hypothesis and ask meaningful questions about your talent. Whatever mechanism or tool you use to derive these insights will enable your organization’s data-driven decision making.
In the talent space, Workforce Analytics is a foundation to inform your organization’s current and future talent skills and capabilities, trends in performance, behaviors and sentiments, and overall employee experience. And as it turns out, having strong Workforce Analytics brings clarity to effective Workforce Planning and Succession Planning.
So how can we start tapping into these Talent Planning opportunities?
1. Align processes within HR and with functions outside of HR to best serve your business clients
2. Prioritize strategic talent planning to avoid unnecessary risks, costs, and disruptions to business
3. Use good quality workforce data to discover meaningful insights that drive better business decisions
When it comes to Talent Planning, if the need exists by the time you act, your organization is already too late; the key is to be proactive rather than reactive. Anticipating and leveraging these strategies will help close the gap in your talent planning. After all, in the war for talent, “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War
