Does HR Really Know its Talent

HR is being challenged in ever-changing ways. Exhausted workforces, mass resignations, sky-high competition for talent, quiet-quitting and an economic downturn mean the pressure may never have been greater. These challenges we are facing aren’t likely to ease off any time soon, and in this environment the tried and tested approaches are starting to seem more tired and testing, especially when it comes to talent assessment.

Talent Management should be at the heart of everything HR does. Nothing happens in a business without the people we bring along with us, so our talent is, was, and always will be the single biggest factor in our success or failure. Navigating today’s working landscape without reliable talent assessment, succession planning and talent mapping is like flying into a storm blindfolded. But all too often, poor execution of these activities means they fail to deliver any real value.

Let me paint you a picture of a typical talent assessment process I've experienced in over a decade of working in HR, spanning many different sectors. To begin with, the process has typically been carried out at most every 12-18 months. This is despite the fact that managing flight risks, meeting development needs and creating succession plans all depend on constantly changing information. HR teams are expected to build a coherent talent strategy around data that is incomplete, out of date, and unreliable. That’s the first problem, and it’s a pretty big one. But it’s far from the only one.

I suspect if you’ve been involved in HR or management this may feel familiar: The talent assessment criteria will be added to a complex spreadsheet of desirable skills and behaviours that employees are expected to demonstrate. Multiple copies of this sheet will then be emailed around the business, with managers expected to complete them for their teams. Unsure of what’s really expected of them - and doubtful they’ll see any benefit anyway - they either approach it half-heartedly or ask for HR to handhold them through it. The skills and behaviours are typically broad and untailored to specific roles, which means they fail to resonate with anyone. Outside of HR - and sometimes inside - the entire process is widely viewed as a box-ticking exercise. After many hours of time and effort spent by both HR and individual managers, the end result is usually a messy collection of inconsistent spreadsheets and slide decks that some poor soul in HR will have to try to distil into a single slide to be taken into a boardroom. It takes so long to complete all of this that by the time it’s done, the data is out of date and largely useless.

This clunky process disengages our leaders, exhausts the HR team and produces talent data that is inconsistent, out of date, and completely disjointed. It cannot be viewed as a whole, it cannot be used to gain insights, plan successions, or support growth. This potentially crucial activity - which, if performed correctly, delivers an exceptionally high ROI - becomes a pointless drain. Is it any wonder we barely even do it once a year?

What’s to be done about it?

A good Talent Management strategy built around the right tools and methodologies can be transformative, not just in terms of business goals and bottom lines, but in terms of employee engagement, development and well-being. I doubt this is a contentious view - it would be a strange HR professional indeed who didn’t think it would be helpful to know:

• Across the company, where are our succession gaps?

• Who is a potential flight risk?

• Which individuals best represent our values?

• Who are our future leaders?

• What training would our staff benefit from?

I’m yet to find a business that doesn’t see the value of having this information, so achieving these things doesn’t require a change of philosophy; it only requires better execution. We need data that’s always up to date, and we need to be able to digest and understand that data quickly and easily. To achieve this, we have to deliver a process of gathering that data that managers find quick and painless. If carrying out talent assessments is a painful experience, managers simply will not engage with it. If it’s a miserable process for them with no tangible benefit, they aren’t going to be willing to do it very often, or put any effort into doing it well. And if the data they provide us is stored in disjointed spreadsheets, we won’t be able to make use of it anyway. But if we give them a way to share this data with us quickly and easily, and ensure they directly benefit from doing so by providing them genuinely useful insights, that’s when things can really change.

Hachette UK adopted Talent Mapper in early 2022. Shortly afterwards, Hachette Australia and New Zealand’s CEO, Louise Stark followed suit. In Louise’s words, it has been “a game-changer”. No more spreadsheets, no more muddled slide decks, no more out of date information. Instead, HR and senior leadership now have access to live data that allows them to rapidly make strategic and operational decisions based on the best information possible. Whether it’s Talent Acquisition, Employee Development, Retention or Career Development, the data is always available, always up to date, and can be visualised however required. The results have been transformative.

Modernising talent assessment is one of the rare business activities where everyone wins as a result. There’s nobody getting the short end of this stick. Managers become more engaged as they have visibility of their talent landscape and access to staff who are more capable and suitable to the roles they’re being placed in. Staff are more engaged as they receive tailored development opportunities and stretch projects, whilst getting more opportunities to work on the things they want to work on. Senior leaders are more engaged with the process, as it’s giving them the information they need to be confident in the decisions they’re making, and HR can focus on acting on the information, not just gathering it.