As we delve deeper into talent management, it is critical to understand the key frameworks that underpin it to arrive at analytical and predictive models:
• Talent and skill forecasting—predict resourcing, talent requirements and skill
• mixTalent acquisition—alignment of hiring with your business strategy
• Churn and attrition—predicting employee churn and attrition
• Potential—predict future leader talent; deciding on “whom to nurture, grow and invest in”
• Performance—support employees to achieve goals; predict top and bottom performers.
Talent and Skill Forecasting—Anticipate and Predict Resourcing, Talent Requirements and Skill Mix
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse
1 Challenge • Resourcing for growth: Once a white space is identified in a geography, what skill sets and how many people does a company invest in? Overinvesting with lack of growth undermines the P and L, while underinvesting with high growth leads to opportunity loss
• Forecasting quantity and quality of resourcing required to fund growth areas/businesses: Where do labour/skill surpluses reside? What skill sets are required?
• Rightsizing: At what pace should a company reduce headcount in one part of the business (low growth/geography) to fund resourcing in another part of the business/geography?
2 Opportunity • Resourcing is still based on estimated growth numbers rather than a data science approach?
• Talent and skill set forecasting is still done intuitively
3 Methodology • Talent analytics quickly and quantitatively measures a set of identified factors using the “data science” approach
• The factors underpinning “resourcing” and “talent/skill set mix” are then applied to a specific business growth scenario
• To eliminate bias, data science needs to be leveraged to first collect data samples, build, evaluate and then deploy models around talent, workforce planning and rewards
4 Benefits/outcomes • The right resourcing and talent mix to resource for growth and business requirements
Talent Acquisition—Is your Talent aligned with your Business Strategy
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse Business outcome
1 Hiring effectiveness • What is the current hiring status—open versus closed?
• What is the “time to fill” status for all critical vacancies?
• What is the optimum channel mix that drives sourcing effectiveness?
• What is the channel conversion rate (consultants, direct portals, referrals, media, etc.)
• What is the assessment to selection ratio?
• What is the walk-in to on-boarded ratio?
• What is the offer to joining ratio?
• What is the quality of hire?
Operating cost Growth
2 Recruitment cost • What is the direct, indirect, total cost per hire?
• What is the cost per hire mix across grades, functions, locations, roles?
Operating cost
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse Business outcome 3 Attrition and churn • What is the voluntary, involuntary and total
attrition by manager, function, location, grade, roles, business unit?
• Who, when, why and how of attrition? What are the key drivers of attrition across roles, functions and locations, teams?
• What is the flight risk of critical talent? What is estimated impact on business?
• What is the % early attrition within first 3 months? What are its key predictors?
• What is the correlation between voluntary attrition and business results? i.e. sales target achievement, customer service levels, etc.
Operating cost Growth Innovation Brand reputation
4 Succession • What is the succession pipeline for key roles?
• What are the talent gaps across role hierarchies?
• What would be our future talent requirements 3–5 years from now?
• Who among your talent pool are likely to impact, sustain and grow into leadership roles and who are likely to burn out?
Growth Leadership risk
5 Retention • What are the key drivers for “future leader”
talent?
• What is the success ratio of talent retention programmes?
• What are the key drivers for critical talent retention?
Growth Leadership risk
6 Career development • What is the success ratio post promotions, role, business unit, function, location or reporting manager changes?
• What is the impact of redeployment, transfers and churn on the business and team?
• Are certain career pathways contributing to higher retention levels of critical/future leader talent?
Operating cost Growth Leadership risk
Churn and Attrition—Predict Employee Churn and Attrition
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse Business outcome
1 Challenge • Reporting a prior year’s employee attrition is at best interesting, but it says little about how to solve for “attrition”
• Understanding mega workforce trends is good but will not help predict who will leave or how to hire employees who perform and stay engaged
• Current attrition management efforts are often a stepping stone to greater insight
Operating cost Growth
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse Business outcome 2 Opportunity • Employee attrition has moved from being a hot HR
topic to being a hot CEO/CFO and analytics topic
• Employee attrition models (like customer attrition models) deliver direct and significant ROI to the business
• Who, when and why of attrition a “black box”
today
Growth Cost Sustainability
3 Methodology • Talent analytics tools quickly and quantitatively measure “raw talent” for the targeted set of employees using the “data science” approach
• The factors underpinning “raw talent” can be measured
• These can be applied to job families and roles. For instance, a set of persona traits may match up pretty well with a particular job family while others may not. As an example if you were to take the case of a job family related to accounts and finance, a trait such as “attention to detail” may well be a strength but can also be a weakness for a job family related to sales; service orientation could be great for a job family related to customer service or hospitality but may not be relevant for a collection agent. Different sets of persona traits are reflected in individuals across multiple job families
Operating cost Growth Reputation
4 Benefits/outcomes • Reduced churn and attrition contributes to increased sales and higher customer satisfaction
Growth Service level
Potential—Predict “Future Leader” Talent
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse Business outcome
1 Challenge • Who are the core group of people who will lead the organization into the next phase of growth?
• Who are the people to invest behind?
• Who are the people that must be retained for the longer-term health of the business?
Sustainability Growth Cost
2 Opportunity • Future leader talent identification is still a “hit and miss” exercise
• Predicting “who will lead in the future?” is still a perception driven and intuitive exercise
• Developing a leadership talent pipeline and talent pool to be based on hard data and insight
Growth Reputation Sustainability
3 Methodology • Talent analytics tools quickly and quantitatively measure a set of identified factors using the “data science” approach
• The factors underpinning “future leadership potential” are then applied to predict the likelihood or otherwise of somebody being more likely to succeed in future leadership roles
• The predictive model developed can then be tested and validated
Sustainability Growth Reputation
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse Business outcome 4 Benefits/outcomes • Making the right choices about our future leaders
is critical; we should care about investing behind the right people who will provide the right leadership; we should care about optimizing learning costs
Growth Sustainability Cost
See Exhibit 3.1.
Copyright: Acumetric Global Solutions Pvt Ltd – all rights reserved Exhibit 3.1 Performance versus potential—9 box grid
Performance—Support Employees to achieve their Goals; Predict Top and Bottom Performers
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse Business Outcome
1 Challenge • Underperforming employees dramatically hinder top line and bottom-line results
• Your business has a ratio where 1 bottom performer wipes out performance of “x” top performers. Do you know the ratio for your business?
• What is the performance distribution across teams, locations, business unit, grades and managers?
• Which are the high-performing and
low-performing managers and teams over history?
• Why are some teams, functions, business units outperforming others?
• What is the correlation between performance and compensation; vintage in grade, qualification, engagement level, manager leadership style, span of control, tenure, role changes, retention programmes, etc.
• What are the key behaviours and competencies that drive high performance?
• Are career pathways defined for high-performing individuals?
• What are the factors that differentiate high performers from average and low performers?
• Does the organization differentiate between high-, average-, and low-performing individuals and teams and if so how?
• Does this “differentiation” contribute to higher retention among high-performing employees and teams or is the correlation tenuous at best?
Sustainability Growth Profitability
2 Opportunity • Predictive talent analytics uses a similar, predictive cost–benefit approach used by financial institutions for making credit decisions
• In high volume employee situations (sales, call centres, bank tellers, engineers, service centres, data scientists, etc.), marginal improvements can result in significant business results
• When predictive analytics reveals that one
“wrong-fit” recruit eliminates the value of x
“right-fit” one, recruitment decisions immediately get impacted bringing out the value of analytics to the recruitment process
Growth Sustainability Profitability
Dimensions Areas to investigate and analyse Business Outcome 3 Methodology • Talent analytics tools quickly and quantitatively
measure “raw talent” for the targeted set of employees
• This dataset proves to be extremely useful in creating high value predictive models and enhancing missing or incomplete data. In many cases, the raw talent dataset provides the independent variable needed in predictive models
• Existing KPI data is used. There is no requirement to implement a full HRMS solution before starting on predictive modelling
Sustainability Growth Profitability
4 Benefits/outcomes • Sustainable business growth with profitability
• Raising the bar on performance right through the role hierarchy
• Embedding and reinforcing the right “behaviours”
that drive business performance
Growth Sustainability Profitability
Analytics models can as a result be developed across the following areas:
• Passive talent pool recruitment
• Recruiting “right”—via personality trait clues and gamification triggers
• Leadership pipeline/succession triggers
• Potential versus performance triggers
• Talent mix forecasting and mobility.
High-impact predictive projects can also be taken up in the following areas to enable organizations take proactive actions to maximize retention, engagement, performance and productivity:
• Predict top and bottom performers
• Predict employee attrition and churn
• Predict future leader talent potential.