As the global workforce rethinks its priorities, employers need TI on their side
The great resignation is coming. In the US, July saw a record 10.9 million job vacancies, and here employers are bracing themselves for our own ‘big quit’. Talent acquisition (TA) teams are feeling the heat; post-pandemic, people are re-thinking how they work, where they work, and who they work for - making it harder and harder to attract and retain talent.
“TA teams are working harder than ever and capacity is stretched as candidates prove harder to source and have greater options,” says Martin Retschko, country leader Australia/NZ at talent intelligence (TI) specialists Armstrong Craven. No wonder that over the past year, the appetite for talent intelligence in Australia has surged.
TI combines and analyses sources of information about the external talent landscape to support business decisions, explains Retschko. Combined with an internal view through talent analytics, this offers a 360 degree outlook to enable more informed, strategic talent decisions.
“For organisations, deeper knowledge of the external market including quantifying all sources of talent and then determining how to position their EVP in the most competitive way is now key,” says Retschko.
“Organisations are grappling to fully understand how the external talent landscape has shifted - including current job seeking behaviours and career preferences. The talent pools employers have traditionally targeted are behaving very differently, requiring a deeper understanding of how these changes impact both attraction and retention of talent.”
In addition to talent attraction, TI can help HR accelerate its performance around pivotal goals, such as informing D&I strategy. “A company may be aiming for representation at leadership level. TI can reveal what is motivating leaders in the market from a career perspective, and how to attract and retain talent,” says Retschko.
However, he points out, the application of TI is broad and provides critical data to inform establishment of new talent hub locations, organization design, reward strategy and M&A where for example, TI reveals valuable information such as leadership capability, departures and talent availability.
Like all market research, TI leads to more informed decisions and ultimately better outcomes for both employers and their people through more informed talent strategies including development of career experiences that resonate strongly in each candidate market, says Retschko.
“TI identifies current and future talent pools and provides deep insights into their career seeking behaviour and preferences. It also captures the dynamics of specific talent pools from a supply and demand perspective. This is an exciting time for organisations to become a lot more data-driven and to use that intelligence to look at how they can compete more effectively for talent.”
While in Australia few organisations have their own TI function, there is still plenty HR and TA can do in this area. Retschko advises thinking of TI as less of a function and more of a mindset.
“TA and HR can start using the data they already have and building knowledge of the external market to provide more context for the business, to find out how their unique proposition as an employer sits within the market.”
Some TA leaders are doing this, says Retschko, but they need to take it to the next level.
“Because of the pace and dynamic nature of the market, that means doing it more consistently, accurately and in a deeper, more purposeful way. It’s understanding the gaps you have. All the work we do usually starts with a question. What is urgent and important right now? Start with something that is going to be impactful for the business. You can collect a lot of data, but it has to help solve strategic questions.
“It might be 'What is attracting talent to competitors?'; 'How does our leadership capability compare in the market?‘; 'Where can we set up a new talent hub?' Or, ‘How can we leverage our new remote work policy?’"
The Big Resignation might be coming but talent intelligence can not only help organisations hold their ground through this immediate shift, it can also support a talent strategy that remains one step ahead in an ever-changing world.
For more about talent mapping and intelligence, see armstrongcraven.com
