HOW THE PANDEMIC CHANGED TALENT MANAGEMENT

 

HOW THE PANDEMIC CHANGED TALENT MANAGEMENT

Digital disruption and a shifting workforce is changing talent management, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s been a shift to remote work, and less focus on where talent is located and more on who is the best fit for a certain job. What the pandemic hasn’t changed is that employees, wherever they work, want to feel connected and engaged. They want instant feedback, and to know that they add value. They also want close collaboration with colleagues, even if remote. COVID accelerated the change of hybrid work. The question regarding having the top talent working remotely will be different companies will figure out ways to retain talent that is not physically near them. Talent analytics will play a larger role. Everything is being measured all of the time.

Additionally, we have allowed companies to come into our homes, through technology. The work-life balance line between privacy is blurring. Companies are going to play this different role in people’s lives, organizations will have to become like a family member in some way. Connected to that is this increased focus on employee health and well-being that will continue.

In this situation traditional model will hold. People will come back to work, because the social need for connection will supersede work needs. And for some work have to be in close contact and the home is not designed for working. Our society is no structured that way which can lead to mental and emotional issues, which eventually will come back to the company.

Since March 2020, our workforce has undergone a number of dramatic short-and-long-term shifts, ranging from the sudden, necessary move to remote work, to larger questions surrounding work-life balance and the overall relationship between employers and talent.

What is TALENT MANAGEMENT?

Talent management is an integrated set of processes, programs and cultural norms in an organization designed and implemented to attract, develop, deploy and retain talent to achieve strategic objectives and meet future business needs (Silzer and Dowell, 2010).

The systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement, retention and deployment of those individuals with high potential who are of particular value to an organization (CIPD.2006).

 

In this modern and competitive world, companies generally view employees as the core assets and often rely on their input in the decision-making process for organizational expansion, new product development, competition management and so on. If the employees do not have updated knowledge and practical experience they cannot make the desired contribution to the organization. In this regard, talent management is considered as the most effective process to ensure every employee is capable of performing according to the industry standards and organizational expectations.

Talent matters, and organizations globally are increasingly recognizing the challenges of managing talent effectively in delivering on their strategic agendas (Collings, Scullion and Caligiuri, 2019)

Talent management facilitates in attracting talented employees, motivating them, increasing and improving employee performance, engaging employees, retaining high-quality talented employees, and ensuring continued coverage of critical roles to maintain client and employee satisfaction.

 

What impact has the covid-19 pandemic had on talent management?

There are important takeaways post-COVID:

(i)       Through technology and remote work, talent is geographically dispersed. Before bring talent to work, can take work to talent. If want talent that is in a different location, now can, through technology, take work to that person, develop that person, and retain that person. This trend was there for a while, but COVID accelerated this trend.

 

(ii)     Now with remote and virtual work, observing workplace behaviors is challenging. Whether that’s negative or positive is debatable, but there is a lot of focus on results. But focusing on “results” takes personality and other individual traits out of the equation. But in a virtual setting, this likeability factor can disappear and outcomes, or results, become extremely important. Perhaps this is a good trend.

 

(iii)    What the pandemic did was move people indoors and remotely to work, and a lot of social and psychological aspects came in. Working remotely has caused a lot of stress and burnout people end up working more and questioning the meaning of their work. Most homes are not designed for working from home. Most families are not used to spending so much time together.

 

(iv)   Employees have more control over their work now how they work and where they work. If a high potential employee or high performer, he controlling the conversation. Employers are now listening.

 

(v)     Organizational culture. Culture had been people together in meetings, in the same buildings but if that’s disappearing, the organizational culture is changing and evolving. We still do not know what the new culture looks like. It’s evolving.

 

(vi)   The data is extremely new, but we’ve had talent shortages for a long time.. During the 2008 recession, unemployment was high, yet companies were still saying that they couldn’t find talent. The talent shortage is there all the time, one of the disconnects there is how fast jobs are changing and how quickly people can learn and develop.

 

(vii)  From a company perspective, there’s now a focus on virtual leadership. From a company we are moving from a traditional leadership model, to virtual and hybrid.

 

(viii)Succession planning is also very important. There is this myth that people have to stay with companies for a long period of time. Turnover is part of life. People will leave. The key for both the employer and talent, is how to maximize returns within those the short time periods.

 

(ix)   For talent management, it means that for any organization, retention is critical and retaining talent becomes a key strategy. It must customize careers for the current employees. Companies has to pay attention to each employee to see how the company can help them learn, develop, and grow

 

Talent Management Model

Figure 1 : Talent management model. (Source : Expert360.com)

 

Planning aligns the talent management model in line with the overall goals of your organization. With the correct planning can ensure that seek talent with the right skills and experience. In addition, it assesses current employees to see what is working well for the company.

Attracting talent is all about branding company as an employer. Organizations need to find ways to increase visibility in ways that allow organization to present company as a best place to work. The main consideration here is to make the business more approachable.

The development part of the model involves taking steps to help talent grow within the company. It should be aligned with the employee development plan and includes identifying roles where particular employees could move to in the future as well as considering how to expand workers’ skills and knowledge to fulfill new challenges facing your organization.

Through training and other types of engagement, employees have the chance to create a career without leaving the company. Organizations may achieve this by focusing on compensation (monetary and otherwise) as well as company culture.

After hiring and developing their skills, organizations need to plan for employees’ transitions. Organizations aim at this stage is to keep their knowledge within the company.

Talent management proceedings help business improve performance, allows companies to stay competitive, and drives innovation, help form productive teams, decreases turnover, leads to strong employer branding and motivates others to grow.

Predicting which talent management strategies will be successful in the future is challenging if the environment makes it the equivalent of navigating permanent whitewater (Greene, 2020).

 

 

References

 

Taylor,S. (2018) Resourcing and Talent Management. 7^th edn. Kogan page

 

How the pandemic changed talent management (Back to work better) Harvard business review (2021) [Online]

Available at: https://hbr.org/podcast/2021/08/how-the-pandemic-changed-talent-management [Accessed on: 17^th April 2022]

 

Global Talent Management, David G. Collings, Hugh Scullion and Paula M. Caligiuri Second Edition, Routledge: Oxon(2019)

 

Schweyer,A. (2010) Talent management systems. Canada : Wiley. 

 

Minocha, S. and Hristov, D. (2018) Global Talent Management. London : Sage Publications.