How to thrive and prosper in the talent economy

On April 22, the Management Association of the Philippines organized a webinar “How to Thrive and Prosper in the Talent Economy.” There were a lot of great insights and actionable points. I have attempted to summarize here some of the more critical and relevant ones on what organizations should do as they emerge from the pandemic and face a myriad of current and prospective global challenges—inflation, food shortages, climate change, wealth and income divides, etc.

There were two key realizations that were amplified during the webinar: the future of work and workplaces has accelerated and achieved better clarity in the past two years; and, the importance of placing talent and people first in organizations as key enablers of success and Human Resources (HR)’s role in achieving this outcome.

The future of work and workplaces

It used to be that all you had was organic (regular employees) and inorganic (nonregular contractual) employees/talent. According to Deloitte in its article on the Open Talent Economy, you now have five different types of talent:

• Balance sheet talent: full-time statutory employees whose headcount and costs are in your balance sheet;
• Partnership talent: employees or talents you have tapped for your company that may belong to a partner or a joint venture;
• Borrowed talent: contractor/agency employees or talents working in support roles;
• Freelance talent: employees or talents hired for specific projects, sometimes called as the independent “gig” workers.
• Open-source talent: talents or employees who provide services for free, either as part of a community or advocacy.

In this future of work, we should adopt more flexibility, diversity and creativity in managing our workforces. Labor laws that are far less rigid and consider the rapidly evolving dynamics of the workforce are necessary for enterprise competitiveness. It is also critical to take the long view when we plan for our talent and manpower, appropriately called Strategic Workforce Planning. Let us not only look at quantities, but also the quality of the talents. This involves identifying the critical capabilities and competencies that define exactly the types of talent we really need and may be completely different from the profiles of incumbents.

We have all heard about the Great Attrition and Great Resignation phenomenon in the United States. For certain organizations and roles, employers are scrambling to achieve a balance between operational continuity and employee health and safety, especially since the pandemic is still raging.

It is therefore crucial for progressive employers to analyze, which roles and which organizations could be subjected to any of these alternative work arrangements: work from home; work from office; work from anywhere; work where effective; and hybrid work.

To have this flexibility and agility, digital collaboration tools are a must.

Your company’s strategy in this regard will have to be adaptable and dynamic as the pandemic situation could change from time to time.

The role of HR

COVID-19 has placed HR in the center of our businesses and organizations. In the future, I foresee an even more significant role. There is an expectation that HR should be an even more strategic function and work closely with the CEO or the head of the organization in ensuring overall value creation.

In the book “Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Placing First,” it is recommended that the CEO drive the talent/people agenda and that HR play the roles of transforming the business and unleashing the power of your key talents. By doing so, the organization will be able to leverage its talents and its people as a source of competitive advantage.

Ram Charan, global advisor to CEOs said: “Today, and in the past, most companies are paying too much attention to finance, numbers, money; but they forget it is people who conceive strategy, who execute and who deliver the numbers.”

The first step to have the above People First mindset is to have a strong and progressive HR function led by the chief HR officer at the same level as the chief financial officer. Alongside the CEO, this is what is called as a “G-3”. This way, you provide equal attention to both people and money, two CEO levers that enable organizational success.

The key challenge for business and HR leaders is building and developing a culture that drives and sustains high performance while at the same time keeping the workforce engaged and enabling the organization to be “agile”—adapt on a real-time basis to the changing external environment. This assumes additional complexity in remote or hybrid environments.

Much has been talked about in the webinar about elevating the employee experience to drive the customer experience as a key component of culture building. To win in the marketplace and gain a competitive advantage, customer obsession is key and having memorable “signature experiences” with your customers is key. The connections between front liners and customers should continue to be as strong as ever.

Part of the employee experience is an engaged workforce despite new work arrangements. In this regard, virtual collaboration activities could still be staged. Listening to employees, through surveys or empirical research, could still be done by finding out what our employees really want to enhance the employee experience.

Here are examples of what has been the priorities of HR for the past two years: management of COVID-19, employee health, work from home arrangements, environment, social and governance (ESG) /sustainability initiatives; digital transformation/enhancing digital literacy; organizational agility and building deep purpose organizations.

Of course, the core HR processes of recruitment, retention, total rewards, employee relations, learning and development, leadership development and performance management continue to be key processes crucial to an organization’s success.

Technology as enabler

The ultimate differentiator in the talent economy is the employee experience. Therefore, the organization who will be able to provide the best possible employee experience to its talents will have a competitive advantage over its competitors.

To make this happen, the organization needs to leverage on technology, which involves three key aspects:

• Data-driven talent/people decision-making: The higher the quality of data, the more effective the people actions will be.
• Hyper-personalized experiences: The technology should be user-friendly and easy to use, and contribute to a positive employee experience.
• The system should drive agile business operations. Speed is of the essence and the tech system should allow leaders to minimize process steps and do whatever is necessary to minimize, if not eliminate, bureaucracy.

Therefore, to thrive and prosper in the talent economy, the April 22 webinar discussions recommend:

• Determine the future of work and the future of workplaces in our organizations;
• Elevate the role of HR in our respective organizations;
• Build and develop a culture that is aligned with the rapidly changing environment;
• Upgrade our HR ways of working to deliver greater value; and,
• Leverage HR technology to create an employee experience that could serve as a competitive advantage. INQ

The author is co-chair for strategic HR Management of the MAP Human and Management Development Committee. He is founder and CEO of 1-HR.X Pte/ Ltd. Singapore, and a member of the faculty of De La Salle University Graduate School of Business. Feedback at [email protected] and [email protected].