Companies always have boasted that their people are their most important asset and the source of their greatest competitive advantage. And while that may be true, for much of the last decade organizations rarely were forced to compete for talent the way they fight for customers. That all began to change several years ago, as work became more technical, collaborative, and specialized. COVID-19 has temporarily eased the talent crunch, but it already is showing signs of returning as the curve flattens and more and more states reopen. To attract and keep employees and contingent workers, successful firms of the future must approach their workforce assets strategically, building their brand as talent-centric hiring organizations.
The Talent/Strategy Nexus
As the economy rekindles post-COVID-19, the need to access top talent will resume. Before the pandemic, business leaders considered recruiting and retaining the right combination of talent their greatest challenge. With so many qualified candidates on the market, your organization has the opportunity to align its workforce to optimize your roster of skilled workers. Taking a talent-centric approach allows you to assign the precise mix of abilities to the most important projects. Allocating talent – whether traditional employees or contingent workers – creates a more dynamic view of work and a more efficient use of resources.
With a talent pool that corresponds to your firm’s critical tasks, it becomes less rigid and more responsive to worker needs and balance. Getting there requires a different approach to work tasks. Fortunately, that required mindset shift relates well to the changing nature of work itself. By altering the way you think about work and its relationship with talent, you can design your workflow and workforce to be better organized and make the best use of remote workers, technical advances, and productivity enhancements. The key is to view work and workforce in tandem. In some cases, it may be beneficial to shape future hires to conform to the way your company operates. But in other cases, you may achieve better results by reforming, repackaging, or re-imagining work tasks to match the talent you have available.
Breaking Bad Habits
Becoming a talent-centric organization nudges companies away from traditional notions of work and human resources management:
Becoming Talent-Centric
The better way considers workers’ priorities and how companies can meet those needs in order to keep morale and performance at high levels. Talent-centric approaches find ways to format tasks, processes, policies, dynamics, and work relationships to make jobs and freelance gigs more rewarding and engaging. There are several tactics for creating a talent-centric workplace:
Attracting the best talent available has never been more critical. Companies that succeed in emerging from the COVID-19-induced recession must treat talented individuals as strategic resources. Finding, engaging, and retaining them requires a renovation of workplace practices to demonstrate their value to your operation. You cannot afford to manage workers using outdated, HR-centric methods that do not consider the impact of morale, life balance, and comfort on productivity and profit.
Metasys can help your company position itself as a talent-centric organization. We can show you how to support talented people, employ them in optimal situations, and manage them to their full potential. Contact Metasys today and let us show you how to build and leverage a strategic talent advantage over your competitors.