The Evolution of Talent Management by Larry Dunivan

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The Evolution of Talent Management by Larry Dunivan,


Since the term was first coined more than 10 years ago, talent management has become the call to action for a more consultative, knowledge-based role by human resources in overall business management. The premise was simple: Talent management enabled companies to focus not only on attracting the best people, which they had always done in a competitive marketplace, but also on retaining them as well as developing existing staff.

In other words, talent management from a technological perspective provides companies the opportunity to have the best staff on hand to respond to business needs. But two of the variables are always in flux and result in a constant re-evaluation of the talent management premise. First, technology: The capabilities we have today and those we can expect in the next few years have dramatically expanded the range of possibilities.

Secondly, and more importantly, the past 10 years have seen dramatic change in business circumstances and a corresponding evolution in the roles of business managers and talent managers.

Today, talent management is enabled by more than an administrative point solution. In its best incarnation, it positively impacts and influences all aspects of an organization's operations. Companies have much to gain from shifting talent management away from core human resource functions and empowering business roles to design more capable and efficient workforces that meet tomorrow's needs. But a review of the technological evolution, and the business changes happening in tandem, is important to guide our choices today.

Founding Talent Management

Part of the challenge of understanding the evolution of talent management lies in defining the term. "Talent management" has become a blanket term that applies to a broad range of capabilities, but not one of those capabilities, taken alone, defines it entirely.

Talent management involves a variety of strategic functions: engagement, on-boarding, performance and compensation management, among other administrative workforce management functions. On a daily basis, talent leaders respond to an enormous volume of demand, and technology companies helped manage it with talent management solutions. That variety of tasks defined the technology approach, and the result was best-of-breed point solutions for these capabilities, which talent leaders adopted in response to each specific need.

As a result, talent managers found themselves at the center of a tangle, a broad range of disparate, occasionally integrated systems serving niche talent purposes. "Talent management" had become an umbrella term for solutions that addressed a specific need, without necessarily enabling comprehensive talent processes. This technological challenge coincided with a business challenge of epic proportions. The economic downturn and subsequent workforce reductions have made identifying and leveraging the best talent within an organization - rather than securing it from outside - the key to organizational performance. With that challenge came opportunity: What had traditionally been perceived as a talent requirement now began to migrate toward a more central business planning function.

This perceived migration has impacted how talent management systems are defined and what functions they are expected to perform. First, where previously point solutions managed by talent leaders were an acceptable option, companies now recognize the need for systems integrated with an overall technology infrastructure overseen by talent managers. Second, to effectively manage an organization's workforce, a core system of record is needed to enable not only administration tasks, but the holistic views that identify an individual's talent attributes. Companies are beginning to recognize the value of integrated core systems that can manage the entire talent management cycle - from talent engagement to performance management through succession planning.

An Evolutionary Environment

The migration of talent management from essentially a human resources function to a key centerpiece of overall business management is under way and brings a series of changes to people and their roles as well as the systems that support them.

Talent management used to be performance management focused. It was about bringing in the right people and measuring them against job requirements. During a strong economy, this was acceptable. In a down or slow economy, however, it is critical to not only have the right talent in the right positions, but also to identify performance gaps within the organization and to retain top-performing individuals while broadening the abilities of the whole workforce.

Companies recognize that without formal development processes supported by strategic talent management processes, growth opportunities are limited and skill at the managerial and leadership levels becomes ineffective. Therefore, this shift away from strictly a human resource function to a more integrated, organization wide talent management function requires talent leaders to assume a more consultative, strategic adviser role in which they help business leaders assess talent and identify where skills and ability gaps exist. As a result, learning and development has emerged as an essential talent management element, and business leaders now rely on talent managers to provide critical resource development.

This environment of change - where talent management is a key concern for senior business leaders - also shifts the initiation and the execution of purchasing decisions to those leaders and favors more integrated talent management solutions that support overall strategic directions over disparate, incremental system purchases.

A core challenge of the integrated system, though, is that while it enables talent management to be handled well at the business level, business managers and executives can't recognize its value if they're unable to share critical commonalities, such as organization or supervisory structure, or benefit from industrywide best practices.

The evolution of talent management from a point solution to an integrated and strategic management role won't stop here. Because these capabilities - talent engagement, goal and compensation management, and learning and development - build upon and reinforce one another, talent leaders, line managers and executives alike view the integrated suite as a valuable provider of a single source of reference for workforce planning. However, more mature and integrated talent management operations will help companies reach higher potential. And as such, the future of talent management will continue to use talent leaders as strategic business consultants, and purchasing decisions will continue to migrate further up in the business organization.

A Cloudy Yet Bright Future

As far as talent management technology is concerned, the popular view is that the future is cloudy. Although not in full deployment yet, the potential of cloud computing will provide talent management and many other technologies with tremendous capability. Interestingly, what is seen as the primary effect will align nicely with what's been described thus far: the progression of talent management systems from specialized human resource tools to user-focused business tools.

Where building the kind of integrated systems that modern talent management requires used to involve time-consuming back-end data and application integration, the promise of the cloud is that much data integration can move to the user interaction level - where it really matters. Thus, the cloud has the potential to accelerate a shift away from the back end toward the user - so the line managers, individual employees and other organizational functions become responsible for maintaining profiles, updating experiences, reporting and playing an integral role in talent management.

New innovations that rapidly can be deployed in the cloud may encourage a deeper focus on how users interact with the solutions. Adoption is hindered by poor usability, so when users are enabled to develop workspaces that meet their individual needs - such as graphical versus spreadsheet views - the intersection between their roles and the overall corporate goal is clearer.

That increased focus on the user and business goals will usher in a new era of talent management, one where technology enables the function to address elements that are not only knowledge, skill or ability based, but also cultural and psychological. It also allows managers to evaluate performance based on captured experiences, which is more predictive of an employee's flexibility and adaptability.

Perhaps most important, cloud-based talent management can offer users cost-effective and flexible ways to deploy their now-richer view of talent within an operational area and across a company. Time-bound "rental" of a working environment frees organizations from costly infrastructure investments as they emerge from a period of economic recovery. These cloud options may even change the landscape of solution purchasing. Time will tell.

[About the Author: Larry Dunivan is general manager of global human capital management products for Lawson.]

The Evolution of Talent Management by Larry Dunivan