What are the business benefits of a Talent Marketplace?

Through their talent marketplace, one organisation brought together a team of ten people in a week. Together they created 15 new products, which when brought to market realised 280 million euros of revenue

In this series of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast we’re taking a closer look at talent marketplace. What it is, why its important and how companies are using it. 

My guest in this week’s episode of the podcast is Ruslan Tovbulatov, who first witnessed how HR and people analytics could be a strategic enabler of innovation during his time at Google. This inspired Ruslan to pivot towards the HR/work tech field, first by joining Arianna Huffington at Thrive Global, where he worked in senior product and marketing roles for four years , and now at Gloat (as VP, Marketing) – the company that first coined the phrase ‘talent marketplace’.

When I talk with senior HR leaders in large global companies, talent mobility (and by extension, talent marketplace) is invariably one of the first topics that gets raised. If you think about it for a moment, this isn’t surprising when one considers that a thriving talent marketplace promotes agility, innovation and efficiency for businesses, enables managers to quickly assemble teams to complete projects, and helps employees develop their careers, learning and skills.

As you’ll hear from Ruslan in our conversation, one particularly powerful example of the possibilities afforded by talent marketplace saw a manager in Turkey quickly assemble a global team through their company’s talent marketplace from India, Europe and Latin America. Together this team created a new brand of ice cream for the Turkish market, and because the team was global in its nature were able to introduce a flavour of ice cream that hitherto hadn’t existed in Turkey.

You can listen by clicking on the image below or by visiting the podcast website here.  

In our conversation Ruslan and I discuss:

• The burgeoning HR technology market, the factors driving its growth, why the market has fragmented and what lies ahead ("In the past half year, there has been more investment in the space than there was in the first 10 years of investment in work tech")
• The challenges involved with running a company in a new category of HR tech ("Building something that has the end user and end employee in mind is the core to what we are doing. At the end of the day, what matters is, does the end user engage with the technology?")
• Powerful examples of the business benefits of talent marketplace at companies such as Unilever, Schneider Electric, Nestle, Standard Chartered and Walmart ("When we launched at Nestle, their US President spoke about how the marketplace is the future of work. At Standard Chartered, with the first pilot of 12,000 people, not only did we unlock thousands of hours of productivity that were trapped. We also, and we love this stat, saw a huge uptick in people feeling like there was an opportunity for career growth. At Unilever, the talent marketplace has helped unlock upwards of 500,000 hours.")
• Why implementing a talent marketplace is about change management as well as technology ("We have a change enablement team at the ready to compliment the technology. It is at the management level where we are doing a lot of that change enablement work.")
• We take an in-depth look at talent marketplace, the benefits it provides to employees, managers and businesses, as well as future developments in this field ("The thing that excites me most is more use cases. I talked about how we evolved from, and we already have, full-time roles and gigs and projects and mentorships. But you think about succession planning, dynamic talent relocation and learning, but also knowledge sharing. That is the beauty of what we are enabling, is that we are actually creating a map of knowledge in an organisation.")
• Whether talent marketplace will mean that jobs won’t exist anymore ("Jobs will still exist but I think the way we look at jobs needs to fundamentally shift and is already shifting")

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested or involved in HR transformation, internal mobility, workforce planning, people analytics and HR tech so that’s business leaders, CHROs and anyone in a People Analytics, Learning or HR Business Partner role.

With talent marketplace, you are democratising career opportunity and career development because you are exposing people to opportunities they may never have had visibility into and you are really helping employees find opportunities for growth

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

To listen to the Podcast and read the transcript of my discussion with Ruslan, head over to myHRfuture by clicking on this link: What are the business benefits of a Talent Marketplace?

WATCH THE VIDEOS

As well as the podcast, there will be a couple of videos available on the myHRfuture YouTube channel highlighting two of the topics Ruslan and I covered in our conversation. In the video below, Ruslan outlines the challenges in implementing at talent marketplace and how they can be overcome.

GET INVOLVED

If you enjoyed listening to this week's podcast episode, I'd be grateful if you could take the following steps:

1. Please subscribe to the Digital HR Leaders podcast and weekly newsletter to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
2. Please take the time to rate the show on iTunes. We rely on your feedback and support to make the podcast, so this is very helpful!
3. Who would you like to see me interview in future episodes? Let me know in the comments below.
4. Lastly, don’t forget to share on social media with your friends and colleagues, your support is always greatly appreciated!

THANK YOU

A huge thank you to Ruslan for sharing his time and expertise with our listeners. You can connect with Ruslan on LinkedIn, as well as follow Gloat on LinkedIn, and checking out the Gloat website and blog - from which the recent articles below can be viewed.

• What Is Talent Agility, And Why is it Critical for Your Business? (by Adam Etzion)
• What I’ve Learned from Doing Change Management for Gloat (by Aoife Kilduff)
• Why Your Enterprise’s Skill Management is a Mess (by Adam Etzion)

Thanks to Danny Shteinberg, Ruslan Tovbulatov and the team at Gloat for sponsoring Series 12 of the podcast, and also Ian Bailie, Manpreet Randhawa, Caroline Styr and the myHRfuture team for creating the Digital HR Leaders podcast and video series.

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CATCH UP ON THE DIGITAL HR LEADERS PODCAST

If you haven't listened to all of the episodes of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, you can catch up now by clicking on the links below.

• EP 57: Jeroen Wels - How Unilever has created a culture of internal talent mobility
• EP 56: Ina Gantcheva - Why Are So Many Companies Building Talent Marketplaces?
• EP 55: Guru Sethupathy - How Capital One delivers value at scale with People Analytics
• EP 54: Ethan Bernstein - How Can HR Help Organisations Prepare for Hybrid Working?
• EP 53: Wagner Denuzzo - How HR enables business transformation at Prudential Financial
• EP 52: Wenshan Xu - How Singapore uses skills data to support lifelong learning
• EP 51: Dave Ulrich, Brigette McInnis-Day and Rupert Morrison - The Future of HR: How can HR can be more value and business focused?
• BONUS EPISODE: David Green & Ian Bailie - 'All Eyes on HR' - HR Predictions for 2021
• EP 50: Renil Kumar - How Wipro uses People Analytics to enable hyper-personalisation
• EP 49: Michael Arena - How ONA can help understand the impact of virtual and hybrid working on innovation and wellbeing
• EP 48: Daniel West - How to Democratise People Analytics to Drive Agile Decision Making
• EP 47: Melissa Harper - How Bayer is redefining the workplace around Purpose, Innovation & Culture
• EP 46: Chin Yin Ong - How people data can drive better business and employee outcomes
• EP 45: Vidya Krishnan - Making learning a habit that matters at Ericsson
• EP 44: Simon Brown - How Novartis promotes learning curiosity to drive business value
• EP 43: Kat Kennedy - Improving Employee Experience through Learning, Skill Development & Mobility
• EP 42: Gianpiero Petriglieri - How Do You Create a Learning Culture in the Workplace?
• EP 41: Lynda Gratton - How can HR help shape the re-skilling and learning agenda?
• Bonus Episode: Diane Gherson - How IBM is Reinventing HR with AI and People Analytics
• Summer Special #5: Sophie Rwegera Khadhraoui - Building a People Analytics Function in a Humanitarian Organisation
• Summer Special #4: Dan Cable - How to help people love what they do at work
• Summer Special #3: Torin Ellis - What is HR's Role in Creating Diverse and Inclusive Organisations?
• Summer Special #2: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic - What is the role of leadership in times of crisis?
• Summer Special #1: Amy Edmondson - How to create Psychological Safety at work
• EP 40: David Green - How can People Analytics drive business value?
• EP 39: Jeremy Shapiro - How People Analytics has progressed in the last ten years
• EP 38: Heather McGowan - How Covid-19 is accelerating the Future of Work
• EP 37: Thomas Rasmussen - How National Australia Bank has scaled People Analytics
• EP 36: Ravin Jesuthasan - Six imperatives for HR in the Future of Work
• BONUS EPISODE: Amit Mohindra & Dawn Klinghoffer - What is the future of People Analytics?
• EP 35: Peter Hinssen - What is the role of HR in driving and enabling innovation?
• EP 34: Bruce Daisley - What do business leaders want from HR?
• EP 33: Dirk Jonker - Why People Analytics needs to behave like a start-up
• EP 32: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic - The role of storytelling in People Analytics and Data Visualisation
• EP 31: Piyush Mathur - How Johnson & Johnson uses People Analytics to drive business outcomes
• BONUS EPISODE - Heather Whiteman, RJ Milnor & Ian Bailie (Live at PAFOW) - How to develop the HR skills of the future
• EP 30: Katy Gray - How Arup uses reward data to drive behavioural change
• EP 29: Uri Ort - What is the future of talent assessment?
• EP 28: Zara Nanu - The role of People Analytics in Gender Pay Analysis
• EP 27: Julia Shaw - How can technology reduce bias in the workplace
• EP 26: Stela Lupushor - How HR can be a Catalyst for Change
• BONUS EPISODE: Volker Jacobs - How to scale Employee Experience
• EP 25: Julie Digby - How HR Drives Transformation and Org Design at Mars
• EP 24: RJ Milnor - How McKesson uses ONA to identify what drives high performance in sales
• EP 23: Rupert Morrison - Rethinking Workforce Planning & Organisation Design
• EP 22: Dawn Klinghoffer - The Evolution of People Analytics at Microsoft
• EP 21: John Boudreau - Reinventing Jobs: The Future of Work and it's impact on HR
• EP 20: Tanuj Kapilashrami - How Standard Chartered designed an exceptional Employee Experience
• EP 19: Anna Tavis: What is Agile HR and how are companies adopting it?
• EP 18: Sarah Johnson: How to use employee surveys to create strategic value
• EP 17: Leena Nair - How HR drives business value at Unilever
• EP 16: Keith McNulty - HR 3.0: more data driven, more agile and more business focused
• EP 15: Jason Corsello - The Shift From HR Tech to Work Tech
• EP 14: Jill Larsen - How does the CHRO successfully partner with the CEO
• EP 13: Frida Polli - How AI and Behavioural Science can reduce bias in recruiting
• EP 12: Ian O'Keefe - The Workforce Analytics journey at JP Morgan Chase
• EP 11: Dave Ulrich - The role of HR in the Digital Age
• EP 10: Jordan Pettman - How Nestlé uses People Analytics to measure Gender Pay Gap and Equity
• EP 9: Catalina Schveninger - The Evolution of Corporate Learning at Vodafone
• EP 8: Richard Collins - How is Automation, AI and Analytics changing recruiting?
• EP 7: Katarina Berg - Spotify's CHRO on Leading HR in a digital world
• EP 6: Nick Holley - How HR can become more business relevant 
• EP 5: Eden Britt - How to build a People Analytics team in a global organisation | The People Analytics journey at HSBC 
• EP 4: Yvette Cameron - How Blockchain will disrupt the Future of Work and HR Technology 
• EP 3: Didier Elzinga - How to Create a Culture First Company 
• EP 2: Edward Houghton - The Head of Research at the CIPD on Driving Business Performance with People Data 
• EP 1: Sharon Doherty - How to transform HR to be more digital and building a culture of diversity

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David is a globally respected writer, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. As an Executive Director at Insight222, he helps global organisations create more cultural and economic value through the wise and ethical use of people data and analytics. Prior to joining Insight222 and taking up a board advisor role at TrustSphere, David was the Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM Watson Talent. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations embark upon and accelerate their people analytics journeys. David also hosts the Digital HR Leaders Podcast on myHRfuture.

SEE ME SPEAK AT THESE EVENTS

I’ll be chairing and/or speaking about how to drive business value and employee experience through people analytics as well as the Nine Dimensions for Excellence in People Analytics model at the following upcoming events:

• 5 March - HR Core Lab: People Analytics
• 19-22 April - People Analytics World