Taleo Research Recommends postings describe and link to some of the best content – articles, blog posts, research, and more – that we have come across in recent weeks. We focus of course on Talent Management and its particular practice areas, but at times also include items of more general interest to HR professionals and technologists. This edition has a focus on the future of talent management, followed by a series of “quick hit” items of interest.

The fourth quarter of the year always involves several annual intellectual rituals, including reflection on the developments of the past year, discussion of current trends, and predictions of what the impacts are for organizations — not just for the coming year, but for the future more generally. The cover story for the October issue of Talent Management magazine, “10 Forces Shaping the Workplace of the Future,” by Daniel Rasmus, describes ten concepts that will shape tomorrow’s organizations: transparency and trust, out-tasking, contracting, contract-to-hire, onboarding, parallel promotions, hire-to-automate, business continuity, demographic shifts, and virtual work. Each of these concepts and trends will have an impact on talent management in organizations, so I recommend you read this article for Rasmus’ insights on each.

Taleo Research has also been thinking about the future a lot lately. David Wilkins, VP of Taleo Research, recently wrote a powerful new research paper titled “The Future of Talent Management, Part 1: Underlying Drivers of Change.” In the paper David organizes critical drivers of change into three large groups: Economic, Demographic, and Technology. The key economic changes he focuses on are the knowledge economy, globalization, and structural unemployment. The key demographic changes are older vs. younger countries, living longer, and workplace diversity. For technology changes he focuses on the increasing rate of change, the effects of digitization, and changes in telecommunications. He then spends some time noting the powerful, amplified effects at the intersections of some of these changes, and notes the unevenness of the effects. It all adds up to a very powerful briefing, one that leads into the forthcoming Part 2 which will describe the talent processes and technologies that can drive sustained competitive advantage and business value by capitalizing on these underlying economic, demographic, and technological changes.

There was also a lot of discussion and reflection on the future of talent management at the Human Resource Executive 14th Annual HR Technology Conference and Exposition held in Las Vegas October 3 – 5. (See my recap blog posting for some highlights and my impressions of the event.) As lead-up to the event, the September 16th issue of Human Resource Executive magazine had a special report section on HR Technology, with six articles on topics such as the importance of talent management systems for holding onto your flight risks, the increasing role of mobile learning, and other hot trends in HR technology. The article “Planning for Tomorrow” by Kristen Frasch provided some good data and insights indicating that “for the third year in a row, HR organizations are increasing their spending for HR technology, with a focus on integrated systems that facilitate workforce planning and analytics.” She reports data from Towers Watson’s 14th annual HR Service Delivery Survey including:

• About one-third (34 percent) of HR and HRIT executives from 444 U.S.-based organizations have increased their HR technology spending in 2011 — compared to only 29 percent in 2010 and a significant increase from the 21 percent in 2009.
• 41 percent  of those polled cited talent- and performance-management systems as one of the their top-three HR-service-delivery issues, followed by streamlining HR processes and systems (27 percent) and increasing involvement in strategic business-driven issues (25 percent).

Tom Keebler of Towers Watson rightly notes that “the need for robust talent- and performance-management programs and enabling technology has never been greater” but that the focus is no longer on “those siloed, transactional functions that were so prominent before the recession. Now it’s on tying those fragmented transactions into a more holistic and integrated talent management system.” He notes that the focus now is on “cross-functional, cross-domain technology, not just what used to be the core siloed technologies.”

Frasch reports similar findings from Bersin & Associates, with CEO Josh Bersin noting that “our research shows that simply having one or more talent systems does not necessarily make an organization more effective.” What does? “Having well-integrated systems. Companies with [these types of systems] have higher ratings on nearly every aspect of talent management” and “are better able to hire, develop, and engage employees” and “are also more effective at talent and career planning, and have higher employee productivity.”
 

Quick Hits

Where Will the Next Wave of Growth Come From?
Joanne Sammer at Business Finance magazine sites a new study from Hay Group in asking the question “Where Will the Next Wave of Growth Come From?” The research, Strategic Performance Management, covered 1660 senior decision makers in large firms across more than 30 countries worldwide. In order for organizations to grow, continuing productivity improvements are required. Sammer notes that to meet the challenge of higher growth rates, “the Hay study concludes that companies need to rethink their approaches to employee performance management, rather than relying on controlling and cutting costs. Yet, a serious disconnect exists between the realization among executives that employee performance management must improve to drive growth and the reality of making performance management systems and approaches more effective.” Fortunately, Taleo’s performance management solutions speak to exactly this need.

Now That People Finally Matter To Businesses, HR is the Next Big Thing
Marcia Conner’s recent Fast Company column “Now That People Finally Matter to Businesses, HR is the Next Big Thing” connects the dots between the rise of social business and the resulting increased importance of HR and HR leaders. And she doesn’t mean HR in the sense of “policy police,” but rather forward-looking, strategic HR leaders — the ones who understand that they need to be centrally involved in the organization’s growth as a social business. She describes four ways that Human Resources can help run the business better, not just run HR better: Identify, synthesize and translate forward thinking into impactful action; discover, nourish, and keep the best people; exemplify creativity, flexibility, and speed; and change the talent management and diversity inclusion conversation. Some leading thoughts from one of the industry’s great thought leaders, she concludes with the message to push the focus from, “What is our strategy?” to “Where should we start?”

Leadership Development Tops Feds’ Training Wish List
Another survey has come out indicating leadership development is at the top of the list of needs in organizations, this time the focus being government professionals. As reported in Federal Times, leadership development top the list in the survey by the American Management Association (AMA). Interestingly, its importance is seen as increasing: it was the first priority of 28 percent of respondents for fiscal 2011, and the first priority of 38 percent of the respondents for fiscal 2012. Critical thinking skills also got a boost in priority going forward, as the priorities for 2011 were leadership development, oral and written communication skills, supervisory training, project management, and critical thinking, whereas the priorities for 2012 were leadership development, critical thinking, project management, oral and written communication skills and managing a remote workforce.

History of the Resume
It seems not a day goes by that another interesting infographic is produced that nicely captures a timely topic or trend. Mashable recently provided the fascinating info graphic from RezScore that includes exactly what its title indicates: The 500-Hundred Year Evolution of the Resume. A fascinating journey!

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Taleo Research Recommends (vol. 2)
Taleo Research Recommends (vol. 1)