Three Digital Tilts for Talent Management Innovation

The digital tilts for talent management are to build the creative and productive working environment and grow a natural affinity into a "talent.”

People are always the most valuable asset in any business in the past, today, and future. The focal point for talent management does shift from managing people as cost & resource to asset and human capital. In essence, the business is running by people (employees) for the people (customers), and digital is the age of people. The question is how to develop, assess and motivate your people, and put the right people in the right position with the right capability to solve the right problems? There are three modern tilts for talent management and performance management innovation:

Continuous Performance Management focusing on the FUTURE The traditional performance review in most organizations today is an annual routine which focuses on the past, with quantitative measures, or just an administrative process without clearly defined business goals and even full of internal politics. The point is, the past is over, and any forward-looking businesses need to go beyond "keep the lights on," to leverage talent management for fulfilling their visions and achieving their strategies. The performance review should focus on future with frequent interactions and evaluation of talent both qualitatively and quantitatively in a continuous way. One of the important tasks of each manager is to help each employee succeed. In most cases, that should be the overriding general goal. Evaluation is an ongoing process, ideally, it happens daily. It is not just about a performance appraisal or focusing solely on an individual. It is about optimizing an organization's most important assets, its employees and that requires many different initiatives and actions in order to build collective human capabilities. There's the process of continually aligning abilities, talents, aspirations, etc., to important work that an organization needs to be done and of providing feedback to employees on how well the organization feels they are delivering on their commitments. Talent Management includes such things as optimizing the talents of employees at all levels, building a culture that supports the objectives that the employees are to achieve, providing positive reinforcement and corrective feedback and linking both thought processes or behaviors to appropriate consequences, and aligning the organization for success.

Talent Management analytics is no longer 'nice to have,' but 'must have' practice: Information is the power nowadays, data analytics brings important indicators on how HR and organization should focus and invest in human capital and organization efforts on people. You need to make analytics as talent management routine work and spent a lot of efforts. So related technology development and investment are necessary to improve the analytics efficiency. Keep in mind, though, humans are a complex asset, you need to understand them as a WHOLE person, not just the pieces of data. Hence, avoid those analytical pitfalls, focus on talent empowerment, not just “data boom”: ”Measure everything," companies run the risk of demotivating their employees. Taken to an extreme, analytics can dehumanize the workplace and cause top performers to grow weary of the need to conform to the myriad new standard. The goal of talent analytics is to discover talent strength, develop talent ability via a data-based, tailored approach. There's a thorny journey on transferring the value of talent analytics to the organizational success ultimately.

Integrating the “heart “ and “mind” part of Performance Management, Talent Management, and Culture Management: A manager is involved with his/her people and is there to teach, advise, listen, correct, reward, motivate, and discipline, to make things change for the better. This is the essential of Performance Management. A change in focus from evaluating the individual to partnering with the employee, evaluate the quality of the interactions the employee has started with the manager and employee. When you lead a business or an organization, you really need to be passionate about what you are trying to achieve for the customer and long term prosperity of your organization. You then need to be able to convey this vision to your people and show cognitive understanding for both the customer and your people - this is the 'heart part.' The 'mind' part is then all about: objectives, goals, the alignment of the business strategic goal and the employee’s career goals, talking to people, empathy, appreciation, and encouragement. Performance Management is more as planning than tools.Performance Management gets "stuck" when the people in charge get "stuck." Performance Management uses performance evaluation as the main tool, it will not be of much value. The digital people management need to integrate talent management, performance management, and culture management as a holistic people-centric management discipline.

The digital tilts for innovating talent management are to build the creative and productive working environment to grow a natural affinity into a "talent,”“ believe in "building talent" where it would otherwise be underutilized or dormant. Just like gardeners to grow the plants, talent/staff managers have to know their employees so well, watering and fertilizing in a different way, some blossom fast, others take the time to get matured. Treat people as the human capital to invest in, remove barriers to unleash their potential, communicate what's needed, get information from, and give to employees that is essential for improving their engagement and performance. The human capital management approach provides the definition of expectations in a quantitative as well as qualitative way, empower employees, encourages motivation & innovation and rewards the employees for effort above and beyond the normal expectations, to reach both their career goals and the companies' strategic goals for running a high performance business.

Posted in: Innovation,Talent Master