Restructuring Your Talent Strategy Through Workforce Planning

Organizations, big and small alike, draw strategies and build cultures that seek to fulfill customer requirements. Talent management is the preferred and exploited tool used to drive organizational health and customer satisfaction. However, what most companies overlook in the rush to gain a competitive edge and stay relevant in a digital age is their human capital. Interestingly an organization’s satisfied staff is likely to outperform the competition by 20%; so says a SnackNation article.

Employees who feel satisfied with their jobs, the parameters of job satisfaction still remain respectful treatment, compensation, benefits, and job security; are 12% more productive. Of course, the dearth of the right talent at the right place is making CEOs press organizational issues. Instead of only chasing new target markets, employers need to focus on retaining and nurturing their current talent pool.

In a dynamic business environment, talent can be turned into a competitive advantage for businesses if paired with strategic workforce planning, states a McKinsey article. By leveraging workforce planning, organizations validate their capability and capacity to drive home the planned business strategy.

Filling In The Gaps

According to an Accenture research, 61% of employees feel under-skilled to transition into a digital business. This shows that companies will have to invest the time and effort to train their staff better to allow for business strategies to be translated into business operations. Breaking away from the stringent silos and blurring the boundaries of responsibilities and making your workforce acquire multiple skills are the ways to overcome this hurdle. Think of the financial crisis that led banks to lay off their front-office jobs and gave rise to a need for regulatory staff.

Businesses need to provide agility to their teams for them to be able to transition from one role to another, without their business outcomes taking a hit.

Rewarding Change

Nine out of ten companies still depend upon the performance of an employee to evaluate their appraisals. According to a McKinsey article, companies such as Microsoft and GE are giving these dated methods of performance evaluation a miss as they lack a process that allows regular feedback and the necessary training.

Companies are implementing performance management software that helps profile separate individuals, instead of deciding according to the average employee performance. By using better data, some companies are severing the ties between performances and compensations entirely.

Changing leadership profiles

Strategic quality monitoring looks to revamp the entire organizations and not just the lower tiers of the structure. Leaders too need to rise to the occasion in order to drive the changes they envision. 

According to a McKinsey article, in order to coach people to be different, the coaching to has to undergo change. Leverage performance management software and include these practices that are likely to deliver the desired results –

• Change the way in which feedback is provided
• Back feedback by actual instances
• Discuss scope of improvement

Implement a talent strategy that drives in-house growth to experience actual business efficiencies. As Accenture pointed out, people and not just technologies will drive growth in the age to come.