Digital Talent Management Capability

The HR capability is about taking an enterprise-wide view of Human Resources, all the processes, and systems that being used in employing and managing people.

People are still the most invaluable human asset and capital investment in any business, as digital is the age of people. The digital transformation means that companies need to infuse digital into every aspect of the business, shaping the enterprise-wide digital capabilities and overall ecosystem which include people, process, and technology. From talent management perspective, how can businesses build cross-functional people management capability and HR capacity in unleashing talent potential and improve digital competency?

A holistic view of HR: The HR capability is about taking an enterprise-wide view of Human Resources, all the processes, and systems that being used in employing and managing people. Some of the challenges that are able to address within HR include taking an enterprise view of people assets, because, in large organizations, there can be significant inefficiencies which have arisen through siloed approaches practiced in the industry age, people have been treated as resources to plug in, especially in prudent, regulatory compliant organizations. And there are also differences between the process is seen from the bottom and the process seen from the top as well. Holistic HR view ensures the collective human capability is optimal than the sum of pieces.

Coherent design thinking: In addition, the first step in taking an architectural approach to a nominated system-of-interest is to consider the broader "containing system" in the entire organization, its goals, objectives, and strategies, and ensure that the HR system-of-interest is well designed to meet these broader needs. For each of these entries, one can then assess:
a) capability condition in the context of future demands
b) current allocation of responsibilities between executives, line managers, HR function and external providers
c) system dependencies and condition
d) priorities for improvement

Capability integration: There are some of the issues where must be aware of integration of a single HR capability into an enterprise HR capability across all enterprises, arising from particular organizations may not be applicable to other organizations. In addition, national legislative and cultural differences may also lead to different approaches and hence varying capability scopes. The entire HR process is unlikely to be assigned to any one person or group. Therefore, the process will be split as needed depending on the size and scale of the organization. Any attempt to state that there is one and only one way to do this is a futile effort. Further, digital talent management capability needs to have the new digital dimension to handle digital new normal, for example, where there is a global roaming issue and "crowdsourcing" agenda for skills and business advantage - then the talent management task is a lot more strategic and complex...

HR activities: Processes underpin capability. The HR processes only exist to support the managers and employees to carry out their employment contracts and develop employees’ skills, knowledge, and experience. The activities of a manager are clearly supported by many functional departments. These activities are about planning, organizing, resourcing, integrating, measuring, and developing people:                                                                                                                          
-Recruitment
-Employment contracts
-Health, safety, and well-being
-Learning and development
-Performance management
-Workforce and industrial relations
- Organizational development
- Workforce planning
- Policy, procedure, and guidelines
- Personnel and workforce information management

Intertwined capabilities: In organizations with largely automated processes, it is a moot point as to who is functionally responsible. The processes and supporting systems are designed to meet business requirements, implemented and proceed into operation, with minimal human intervention. It may well be that a particular process triggers all subsequent processes and that the "trigger" event varies. No doubt this situation arises and is applicable to other business functions or business capabilities, especially where the business process ownership is separated from the business process execution. Hence, HR capability needs to be well integrated with other key business capabilities of the organization.


Talent Management is the key business capability in digital transformation, it has to be built upon all the dimensions such as scope, alignment, design, execution, governance, metrics, etc. to enforce cross-functional collaboration, and to embed agility into the process of adapting to the changes.