Future Proof
In corporate HR we don’t do that. We don’t say
“if you have talent that will benefit my business, and
ultimately my customers, I will find a way for you
to be part of my workforce. I’m going to put all the
opportunities in one window for you, whether you’re
full-time or part-time, a permanent or contract
worker, a freelancer or somebody who works 10
months in the year, whether you’re a graduate
or a returner”.
That is the essence of total talent: we’ve got to turn
it around and be talent-led. There are talented people
out there who, for their own reasons, are looking for a
certain relationship with the business. And I need to
be able to tell them that whatever that relationship
is (within reason and the law), from a total talent
perspective, we will enable them to do their best
work in our company.
A connected workforce
What’s in it for organisations? The ability to meet
customer demand and to attract even more talent
into your business.
Customer demand never comes in units of one,
but full-time employees do; so it’s hard to match
demand and supply. You’re trying to fit a square
customer demand with a round workforce. You
might respond “that’s why we use contractors”, and
I would agree – but it’s not connected together.
How do you bring in your alumni, or make a
referral network out of your contractors? There is
legislation in certain countries that has made people
nervous about connecting some of this, but I think
we now understand that, to respond to customer
demands, we need an agile set of capabilities that
more closely match what the business requires.
The second benefit is that you will be able to
attract even more talent because you are offering
flexibility. People talk about being “employers of
choice”, and about “flexibility” – but they don’t give
candidates options. Some organisations are on that
journey – displaying temporary and contractor roles
alongside full-time roles; the Washington Post Talent
Network and the PwC Talent Exchange are steps
“The industrial
model of 9-5 with a
few weeks’ holiday
doesn’t cut it for a
lot of people”
alexandermannsolutions.com
10
in that direction – but no one is doing it fully.
Total talent is about bringing all these things
together and saying “the business requires a talented,
agile workforce to meet the demands coming at it
today, and also the unexpected demands of growth”.
That is achieved when you have a more rounded
approach to the workforce, and that’s where the data
and analytics come in.
Making opportunities
visible
If you have a strong brand you may not struggle to
attract talent, but you’re going to miss out on certain
talent if you don’t show people there’s an opportunity
for them to work for you.
Most companies have these opportunities, they’re
just not making them visible. They’re not bringing all
of their opportunities together to connect them to
the total workforce – for existing staff and external
candidates. So people are leaving because they
don’t know about the opportunities and people
are not joining for the same reason. A lot of this is
about communication and making more of what
you’ve got today. It’s complex to make all this work,
because there are many different systems and