What is Talent Management Software?

[Jon Malbon]

Excuse my ignorance !

I keep seeing this term - Talent Management Software - and wouldn't mind a laymans overview of what it is/where it sits/who manages it/why is it worth buying etc...

So it appears that Companies are tightening their belts and recruitment costs/staff retention is one way of saving costs.

What would be the difference between me linking our HR Database to an Access Database named ' Talent Management System', keeping a Live connection so that all updates on the HR Database, new starters, salary changes, review dates, performance rating, by department, by director etc..are passed through to 'Talent Management System'

Within the system add new fields where directors/serior mgmt/HR can process ongoing reviews on Ability/Potential/Attitiude/Benchmark/Risk of Leaving etc..

I can create graphs from Access to present these figures etc..

What else would an off the shelf product offer me ?

[Jon Malbon]

Thanks Richard and Chris - I'm starting to understand the merits of the system now and its all of a sudden become quite an attractive piece of software to me. I think what Richard said below summarises it all quite clearly - you must be in sales!!

"Line managers already give their employees performance appraisals, pay reviews, development plans and so on - by implementing a Talent Management solution you are providing the line managers with the tools to perform these tasks much more efficiently, regularly, with all the information in one place and a best practise workflow/process to help them focus on the employee rather than the administration."

If I am to look it at like this - then yes - we have a pay review system, an employee scoring system and no company standard for appraisals/development plans so it would obviously make sense to combine it all together killing 2 birds with one stone - a helpful management tool AND a company standard.

Its my job to look into streamlining and better practise so I will be making the recommendation to investigate this further at our next meeting.

I will take this opportunity to say thankyou all for a good debate - For me its certainly cleared up what these systems do and the benefits of them.

Jon

[Chris Phillips]

Jon, I want to pick up on your points abt talent management systems being an overcomplication for line managers, and another task to add to their list. Historically many HR systems have fallen foul of exactly these issues. That is basically because the systems have been designed from the perspective of the HR department. They were aimed at ensuring that line managers complied with processes that HR wanted them to follow for the greater good of the organisation. They just were not designed from the perspective of what would be useful for the line manager in their day to day job of managing employees. There is a new design point to more modern talent management systems though, which is to design the the UI and processes from the perspective of what is going to be useful to the line manager in getting their own job done. That is a very different design objective to trying to help line managers better automate what HR is telling them they have to do. The principle is therefore to make the systems really easy for line managers to use. If they are 'overcomplicated' then they have not met their design objective in this regard. Ironically of course if you give a manager a tool they actually want to use for their own purposes, the HR functions gets far deeper adoption of talent management best practices than by trying to force people to comply to an official process.

The second point that I want to pick up on is that talent management systems are trying to computerise what should be a face to face task. Managing people will always be a face to face activity in my view. No talent management system should try and replace that. What the system can and should do though is help the manager and employee communicate based on better facts and data than they could without the system. Many managers have very good intuitions about their staff as you say, and often times these will be accurate. However, how much better to ground management discussions and decisions not just in intuition but facts abt comparative performance levels, goal alignment, career aspirations and opportunities, developmental progress etc. Our experience so far has been that line managers welcome not just productivity aids, but tools that help them make better management decisions about their people. From the organisations standpoint it useful to think about the analogy with say the sales function. Many sales people and sales managers have excellent intuitions about their sales activities but how many sales managers would want to run their sales operations without the key data they need on leading edge indicators of sales performance and trends. Good intuition is very valuable, but nowhere near as valuable as good intuition combined with relevant data!

[Richard Doherty]

Elements of what I described would be considered strategic HR and thus managed by talent managers and senior executives e.g. succession planning, executive management and high potential management. For a large organisation, managing these processes using excel spreadsheets, Word documents and email undermines the programme by introducing issues around versioning, data security/access and data quality. If the organisation is international with 10,000's of employees these problems become acute.

Line managers already give their employees performance appraisals, pay reviews, development plans and so on - by implementing a Talent Management solution you are providing the line managers with the tools to perform these tasks much more efficiently, regularly, with all the information in one place and a best practise workflow/process to help them focus on the employee rather than the administration. For instance, the systems will tell them when they need to do the appraisal, it will provide them with the appraisal form, it will automatically initiate the digital sign-off process for the completed form and it will keep them informed every step of the way as the appraisal progresses. From HR's perspective, every appraisal will be implemented using an approved form and the process will be controlled i.e. operational reports will tell HR how many forms have been opened, started, completed, approved and so on.

From the employee's perspective, they will have more visibility on the appraisal process, they will be able to log into their talent portal and view their current (and previous) appraisal. Depending upon the Talent Management programme, they may be able to update their career aspirations, join internal professional networks and so on.

HR, the line manager, the employee and the company all stand to gain from the implementation of a Talent Management solution.

Richard, Jobpartners

[Jon Malbon]

Thanks for taking time to reply. On the face of it, it looks all singing and dancing - although I could imagine it being seen as an overcomplication by line managers and another regular 'task' to add to thier workload. Its all fine and well having 'Talent Reviews' and 'Executive Management' but are the managers going to use it or pass it over as new terminology bullsh..? its hard enough trying to get your managers to use a salary review system where all they have to do is put forward a budgeted salary proposal and justification for thier staff once a year - or having to get your appraisal notes back from them.

As a manager you have staff, good ones, bad ones, ones that want to progress, ones that plod along, ones that think they should earn more money...

The amount of time processing all of this information for each individual into a system ? Will the final result not just be telling the manager what he already knows ? B wants promotion, C wants to leave as his job is boring, D is unsettling the team, E isn't happy that she is not getting enough training.

Are we not just trying to computerise a face to face task ?

(employee) im unhappy can I get some training on X ?

(manager) you look a bit distracted with work. Is there a problem anything I can do ?

Am I missing the point ?

[Peter Gold]

There you go Jon, you (hopefully) now know!

[Richard Doherty]

Jon, in your initial post you talk about recruitment/retention (and I imagine Talent Management) as a way in general of saving money. I’d like to contend that saving money isn’t the main driver for strategic, enterprise wide Talent Management programmes. Lots of organisations are beginning to invest in Talent Management, because they firmly believe that attracting, developing and retaining the best employees will bring their business competitive advantage. A number of our clients view their Talent Management programmes of such strategic and competitive importance that they do not communicate anything externally about them.

We talk to a lot of companies who have tried to either build their own Talent Management system or leverage their existing HRIS. These systems often evolve into systems of record rather than workflow/process management, are only used by HR and are, thus, of limited value. A big issue with in-house built systems is scalability – they typically can only be used to manage small populations (a few hundred employees or so) – a true enterprise wide Talent Management programme needs to touch every single employee in some way.

Moving onto Talent Management systems: they should be fully integrated i.e. there is no point using system X for appraisals, system Y for succession planning and system Z for recruitment. A single integrated system, offers a single version of the truth, a single, common UI, a single system to integrate with the HRIS and a single vendor to build a long-term relationship with.

The Talent Management system should offer collaborative tools for HR, line managers and employees to manage the people processes at the core of Talent Management. I’d suggest the following people processes should be included in any Talent Management programme:

- Recruitment
- Performance appraisals
- Succession planning
- Internal mobility
- Compensation review management
- Careers paths and personal development
- Internal, professional/social networks
- Talent reviews
- High potential management
- Executive management

All of these processes are linked in one way or another and will touch every single employee in the company to a greater or lesser extent. By systemising the management of these processes, companies are fostering best practisc and standardising the way in which talent data is collected, stored and reported on.

As Chris says in the previous post, ease of use is key as these solutions are potentially rolled out to every line manager and employee in the company.

The technology behind the Talent Management system is also important as, for instance, the performance appraisal process is a bit of a rollercoaster i.e. everyone gets appraised at the last minute, at the same time, meaning that thousands of people will potentially be using the system at the same time putting extreme pressure on the technical infrastructure. You need to be sure that the system can cope with these peaks and troughs.

Richard, Jobpartners

[Chris Phillips]

Jon,
You have indeed asked a huge question here Jon! There are a few things I would start with as comments. The first is that in my experience organisations are increasingly planning to have a single 'system of record' for talent. You imply this in your initial post when you reference the building of a separate database for Talent Management. When you are looking to manage your whole talent pipeline there is value in having all the relevant data in place, and the HRIS systems were never designed for the purpose i.e. to hold data for internal and external candidates, pre-hire skills info, performance reviews, goals, succession plans, career aspirations, mobility, potential etc.

The second point I would raise is that talent management systems are not just a place to dump data and generate reports. One of the keys to really effective deployment of talent management strategies in my opinion is embedding good people management practices into the day to day behaviours of the line management. Two (but not the onlytwo!) pre-requisites for this are to provide managers with talent systems that are very easy to use and help them solve the day to day people management problems they have when running their teams/departments. The important point here is that the issues managers face often dont fall neatly into the individual silo's of HR process e.g. succession planning, performance reviews, recruitment etc. There are many use cases that ilustrate this but take a scenario where a manager wants to think through reorganising part of their team. The manager may want to model scenarios based on info from succession plans, current performance, pre-hire skills, career aspirations and potential all at the same time, to look at the impact on current goals and projects, to gather feedback on these scenarios from different stakeholders etc. So to deliver this ease of use you need a very good, consumer-like UI, processes designed for line managers that can access all the necessary talent data, and good embedded analytics capabilities to support decision making and modelling. You also raise a valid point that when you look at talent management from the perspective of the line manager it is a daily challenge so you need tools geared towards, for example, constantly gathering feedback in the talent management system directly from your email environment.

You can extend these same concepts to think about how the individual employees understand and manage their own careers within the organisation. Lots of people regularly use job boards, social networking tools etc to manage their career opportunities outside the company but most companies arent using the same approaches to harness this ambition within the company. Talent management systems should aspire to provide tools that allow employees to research and plan their next steps within the company, build development plans, and get mentoring and coaching. This topic of employee empowerment is probably a whole thread in itself!

The last point that I want to make is around the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. You can of course build a system in house and it will be the design that you want. However talented the IT team it is limited by the resources you have available (on an ongoing basis) and/or the knowledge of talent management best practices within the company. I am concious of Peters no advertising rule here but one of the things we have concentrated on at Taleo is building SaaS products for talent management that build on the experience of working with hundreds of large companies for several years, but that are highly configurable to needs of the individual company. The point here is that (whoever the SaaS vendor is) there is value in the community that that vendor supports which does not completely comprise configurability for the individual organisation.

So much more we could discuss but I hope that keeps the ball rolling!!

Chris, Taleo

[Peter Gold]

Jon, you are on the right track. I will be doing a lot more 'education' around this over the next few months as even I have to dig deep to get clarity around it! I reviewed on of the TM service offerings yesterday and have more to look at next week and the week after that; by then I should be the guru! We are yet to hear from the vendors other than Vurv so far.

[Jon Malbon]

Wow...some quick replies - Thanks all.

Still not 100% on it but from what I've read here there seems a little bit of crossover with the HR/Personnel System. Our HR System already caters for performance reviews which are recorded annually (i.e. where you sit on a performance grid, new, competent, exemplary etc..) but the detail behind this which is probably gathered in appraisals is usually managed by department and is not recorded by HR - also they may work at this 'senior' level but could right well be underperforming - not so much as to invite disciplinary action - but enough to not justify being on that level for the next x years rotting !

So from this, excluding recruitment - which seems to be often included with these systems - is a portal type system allowing managers to record standardised appraisals that HR can access to identify the high performers, low performers, high chance of leaving etc.. and if necessary do something about this throughout the year instead of having to wait until the next appraisal to come along - and they're gone !

It seems a very good way of continuosly reviewing performance - and forcing an action to combat/praise good and bad work.

Thats if i'm thinking along the right lines with this !?

[Gerald Morgan]

Hi Jon

While I have not personally used stepstone, and I am not endorsing it, they are one of the major players in this space and their website articulates pretty well the benefits on offer. As co-founder & CTO of a business called tempz.com during the last dot.com boom I helped put the entire temp recruitment process, from attraction through to timesheets and payroll, on-line. So I agree that you could probably do much of what you need with in-house development - especially as I understand Next do a lot of in-house bespoke IT work.

Whether Access is up to the job would, I suppose, depend on how much data you are looking at and how many people need to have access to it at one time.

With my latest hat on - as MD of an IT recruitment business - I suppose I should mention The "non-system" side of reducing agency costs and total life-cycle employment cost...

Partnering in-house with selected external recruiters who can add genuine benefits is often better than outsourcing or insourcing the whole caboodle. A good agency will be pro-active on your behalf and get to understand not just the skills required but the culture too. This way you will be presented with a very short list of candidates all of which are likely to be suitable - rather than having to sift through hundreds or thousands of CV's trying to find the diamonds. Once hired then, again, both in-house employee care and external "after-care" services such as training, leadership coaching etc. can be beneficial in retaining good staff.

Gerald Morgan
MD
ReadyPeople Ltd