Creating a modern talent experience

Today’s workforce is changing—and organizations are looking for ways to recruit and retain workers in the face of disruption and evolving technological demands. Do you have the right strategy and skills in place to create a modern talent experience?

As I work with my clients on their talent agendas, I see them grappling with two key issues.

The first is digitization and how to best use technology to improve productivity and put the employee experience at the centre. Bhushan Sethi recently blogged about the value of looking at the employee experience holistically and making sure talent initiatives align with business objectives. For example, today many organizations are reviewing their processes such as performance management and experimenting with how digitization can both improve productivity and accelerate personal development.

The other issue is how to be agile and achieve better and speedier decision making. Many employers already know that using people analytics (both benchmarking and predictive analysis) to drive talent-related decisions will lead to improvements in convenience, speed of customer service and business operations.

One reason organizations are at different levels of digital and analytics maturity is a lack of skills. We know from PwC Canada’s Digital IQ report that Canadian executives are struggling to find the adaptability, collaboration and leadership skills to harness digital technology.

As well, human capital functions (and control functions such as finance and risk) need to expand their capabilities by partnering with other departments to advise and operate in a multi-project environment. They have to be able to find new perspectives within their organization, such as reaching out to technology teams to get foresight into actions they should consider taking next.

Is Canada neglecting digital talent?

As it stands, Canadians aren’t as focused on addressing digital skills as their global peers. In our 20th CEO Survey, 56% of Canadian versus 79% of global CEOs rated digital skills as somewhat or very important.

We also see this trend in Digital IQ’s talent analysis, where 46% of Canadian executives rank a lack of properly skilled teams among the top barriers to getting results from digital technology. But global respondents see it more seriously, ranking it as their number one concern. As well, Canadians are less focused on creating a digital culture and supporting initiatives meant to promote a digitally savvy workforce.

Canadians see better employee experiences and improving talent retention and recruitment as secondary goals for digital investments. But integrating digital internally needs to be a priority because organizations that invest in the right skills and foster a strong culture will emerge as winners in the digital era.

Millennial and Gen Z expectations

Leading organizations understand that the latest customer-facing technologies drive business advantage. For them, social, mobile and cloud technologies are critical for getting work done, connecting with customers and driving the business.

But they also realize they need to deliver that same modern, digital experience for their talent. They have to provide their employees opportunities for connection and collaboration—such as digital talent exchanges and online learning—to drive employee development, engagement and performance. (We discuss some of these strategies in one of our recent financial services publications, Human capital 2020 and beyond.)

Employees today expect to have the same convenient digital experiences at their workplaces as they have at home. Millennials and now Gen Z live in an always-on environment, where they can get things done at the touch of a finger. For example, at PwC we use a Snapshot app, which enables employees to request and review developmental feedback in real-time and in a way that is a user friendly.

 Transforming talent through the power of perspective

Are you ready to create a modern talent experience? True transformation comes from using the power of perspective. Only with the right balance of business acumen, expertise in creating unique experiences and insights into integration of emerging technology can sustainable change happen. By approaching a challenge from multiple angles, we can rethink what exists, make way for what’s next and develop a talent solution that’s truly transformative.

In short, talent leaders need to think about how to create mobile, intuitive and real-time employee experiences that will attract a new generation of talent to their organization. To deliver on this experience, organizations need to develop or access the right digital skills.

When it’s all said and done, digitizing talent processes will give organizations access to previously untapped data through new intelligence methods and data sources (e.g. wearables). This information is incredibly powerful when integrated into priority business decisions.

How is your organization using digital technology to create an engaging employee experience? Let me know in the comments.