The Talent-centric HR approach

Talent-centric HR approach: employee experience and wellbeing

Improving the employee experience is becoming a priority for HR teams. Fosway research shows it is the number one driver for changing HR systems. This is not a surprise – because of the pandemic, organisations have been adopting flexible and hybrid working to improve employee engagement and productivity. And factors such as wellbeing and work-life balance are now an important part of people operations.

The work experience is changing, and the employee experience of work needs to keep up to speed. This is the new digital work context that HR teams find themselves in. One in which talent management has to be a part of a great employee experience. 

Having a human-centred approach to talent management is now so important to organisations that they are starting to invest in modernising their HR and talent technology stack. They must because, as the pandemic showed, every worker counts in this new flexible and hybrid working world and they expect a better experience of HR processes such as: 

• Performance & feedback, 
• Recognition, 
• Wellbeing & wellness, 
• And people development and career mobility.

These expectations have been amplified by the ongoing skills crisis. More than ever, the employee experience – those micro interactions that make up the experience of work – impacts on employee retention and attraction. That’s why easy to use, responsive and embedded digital HR processes are becoming foundational in the digital workplace.

They are also becoming drivers of competitive advantage. HR teams are shifting to more agile ways of working, replacing slower, more rigid approaches, such as succession planning with talent mobility, annual reviews with continuous performance & feedback, and adding social recognition, employee listening and skills intelligence.

The new priorities for the HR teams

Our HR Realities 2021/22 research reflects this new focus. When it comes to investing in technology, HR teams are prioritising specific areas: 

• Recruiting and talent acquisition,
• Learning and development, 
• Onboarding and re-boarding, 
• Talent mobility, 
• And performance and feedback.

This explains why the Cloud HR and Talent & People Success solution markets are both red hot. 

Many corporates still feel significant and increasing pressure to consolidate to a single HR suite. At the same time organisations want to create new employee experiences that are fit for the modern workforce, and they are often having to seek out specialist solution providers to do so. Many traditional talent management platforms have been slow to innovate, and this has opened the door to new players. 

These new players enable HR teams to accelerate HR process innovation. This is happening across culture, performance, skills, talent and career mobility, employee listening and advocacy. Specialist technology providers enable organisations to innovate rapidly. However, to reap the benefits these specialists bring, organisations must build a strong technology ecosystem to enable a range of innovative technologies to work in a complementary way alongside incumbent HR suites.

Talent-centric HR approach: the importance of data

Key to the success of these ecosystems is data and the ability of data to move between systems and across HR silos. When pre-boarding links to onboarding and learning development, the employee experience becomes more personalised and intuitive for the employee. From an HR operations perspective, the organisation has a clear view of that employee’s progress and areas where they may need support. 

From a skills perspective, data enables the organisation to match employees with skills development opportunities by connecting them to relevant roles and projects. Artificial intelligence infers the skills of employees and suggest potential projects that will help develop a specific skill or skills. 

Finally, HR operations will hugely benefit from employee listening – using technology to understand employee sentiment. Organisations can now keep abreast of what employees are thinking and saying and act on that in a more human-centred way, enabling more agile change and transformation. This is now critically important in the digital workplace where colleagues are working in increasingly flexible and hybrid ways.