An extra 15%? That’s a huge opportunity. Even if we achieved a fraction of this then surely, it’s enough to get the function (and maybe you) the recognition it deserves.

A comforting statement: There is no one size fits all, nor is there one definition to suit everyone. That means you’re not doing it wrong... but probably could be doing it better.

We see lots of examples of how Talent Management and Talent Acquisition are deployed and would like to share quickly how businesses are showcasing great results with some simple tactics.

As Talent Management professionals, we believe a key part of the success of a company is down to how we develop, retain and mobilise our existing talent.

You’re spending piles of cash bringing people in through external recruitment, but if we don’t maximise their potential by creating great talent plans then they’ll bounce out straight away, costing us even more money.

1st Reason: “…we don’t have great data to work with”

We hear this a lot. That’s where a lot of ’talent’ professionals accept defeat (is that you?) and don’t ask the next question:

There is a big hole in your data. We know. We see it all the time. (It’s why we exist) (We’ll show you how to fix this).

So what does this lead to? Naturally, you focus on the areas where you do have data. Create some great stuff only for it to become undone because those holes in the wider data set start to manifest themselves in reactive ad-hoc fire-fighting talent plans, inefficient pieces of work that suck up all our time.

We vow, like a new year’s resolution, to obtain more data to become proactive. Then it hits us...

2nd Reason: “…why we can’t”

Think about the simple maths involved. If you have 1000 operational managers, then that’s approximately 12.5 weeks of back to back meeting (no breaks!) to capture the actual data.

Then even more time to turn it into any form of meaningful insights.

...oh and then create the Talent Management processes of the back of it (you know, your day job 😊).

The above. The short term reactive low-value processes.

Ad hoc meetings; differing levels of competence within our talent community following different methods of working; sporadic succession planning (sometimes just for the top 100 employees - that’s if you’re lucky); fire-fighting flight risks; business-critical roles going unfilled, and zero chance in becoming strategic about redeploying existing talent. And repeat for another year with the promise we’ll definitely get it fixed next year. (Sound familiar?).

You’d have the full sight of what talent you have and be able to:

We know as Talent professionals how much money we could start to impact on the bottom line. It’s huge. It’s CEO exposure huge. We wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t already know the impact we could have, "if only we had this data".

With this data, your job becomes instantly easier and gives you the headspace to, dare I say it, finally start doing some of the strategic stuff we’re employed to do.

You can use this data to guide your line managers to take more accountability for the management of their talent. After all, it should be those owning it with our support. But how can we support them if we don’t know what’s going on?

Surely, we can agree on that statement?

If we don’t know what we’ll need, we’ll always be on the back foot. Not a great place for a forward-thinking Recruitment Leader.

How many times have you heard from colleagues in your business that recruitment is too slow, not capable, doesn’t understand their needs?

Why are they too slow? Too reactive?

(You might want to read our blog on Pre-Recruitment)

That’s all they’ve ever known about how recruitment works. They are too busy trying to fill current live demand to even think about what is coming down the line. Think how scary that is. How big a business risk that is. Your TA team is not even thinking 3-6-9-12 months ahead for your talent needs.

You need to educate them on the importance of extracting future demand information from all aspects of the business and how it will transform the TA delivery and credibility.

Proactive recruitment starts well before the hiring manager thinks about going to the ATS. We know this. You know this. Your recruitment team might not.

Because your recruitment team is busy, they don’t find out about the vacancy until it hits the ATS. Now it’s too late and this will invariably lead to a costly empty seat in the business (a big commercial no-no). More and more of our HRD customers are starting to show the positive commercial impact that reducing empty seats in the business has on the bottom line to their C-level peers.

If you want to know more about calculating and the impact of Empty Chair Time in your organisation, drop us a line.

You need a simple way of retrieving all the future demand gaps for reasons like retirements, flight risks, internal movement, maternity, growth, org change, projects, new sales, etc. Having this information will result in a huge financial impact on your business and big credibility gains for your recruitment team. That’s what we do. We do it for other large organisations in every sector and we see the results first-hand.

Another reason that puts even the most forward-thinking recruitment leader off putting effort into this process is that they’re already too busy. Think how flawed that logic is.

By having the foresight of what is coming down the line, they will be in a much better place to provide a more consultative and strategic approach to filling more roles, faster with often less effort required.