Unified Talent Management for the Government Workforce

Is your organization ready for today's talent challenges?As employers, government agencies face a unique set of challenges. Fierce competition to find, keep, and develop the best talent, along with an increasingly intense level of scrutiny is placing human capital front and center. Not having enough staff, not having them properly trained, or having a noncompliant workplace can trigger a public crisis.

Given these wide-ranging priorities, how can government agencies efficiently and effectively manage their talent?

One answer is through unified talent management.

Is your organization prepared? Answer the following questions to help identify gaps.

What are your biggest, current talent challenges?

Do you have the data you need to understand the scope of the challenge?

Do you have the tools in place to track your progress against this challenge?

How can government agencies efficiently and effectively manage their talent?

What Is Unified Talent Management? Unified talent management is a term used for talent management software solutions that handle all pieces of the talent lifecycle – hiring, learning, performance management, etc. It’s not just a patchwork of independent solutions. It’s a single platform that shares data across all aspects of an employee’s career. And while technology is important, unified tools only work in the context of an organizational mindset around holistic talent management, and human capital management strategies that support this mindset.

Unified Technology – One Solution for Success A unified talent management technology solution can help organizations define and use the same criteria for selection, performance management, and development planning. This gives employers visibility into all parts of the employee lifecycle to support key initiatives such as:

• Retaining key talent in a competitive market space by offering employees a view of the potential development path.

• Retaining institutional knowledge by understanding where it resides among senior leaders, and using succession and coaching to make sure it gets passed along.

• Finding the best fit candidates, preventing the time and expense of making incorrect hiring choices.

• Accelerating time to productivity by ensuring that individuals have the right job skills when they move into or up in the organization.

• Providing visibility into performance and succession planning to ensure fairness and compliance.

• Identifying high potential future leaders, building on the potential to create your next-generation workforce.

This gives employers visibility into all phases of the employee lifecycle.

Tools and Integration Data from Aptitude Research Partners' 2018 HR Impact Study shows that many government buyers are planning to invest in talent management technology in the coming year.

• 47% are looking to purchase or replace hiring their solution.

• 43% more likely than other industries to purchase or replace their performance management solution.

• 33% more likely to purchase or replace a learning solution than other employers.

For many, the ability to integrate hiring, performance, and learning may be just as valuable, if not more, than the individual solution itself, because of the visibility and efficiency it provides.

Do you have the tools and level of integration to meet your current challenges?

Do you have the tools and level of integration to meet your current challenges?

Where are your technology gaps? Consider your answers to the previous exercise, and answer the following questions on tools and integration.

Are your talent management processes automated?

Are your current technology solutions stand-alone, or do you have a talent management suite?

How do you measure HCM success at your organization, and can you easily access this data?

Given your current level of automation and integration, which of your challenges listed above will you be unable to address efficiently and/or effectively?

Unified Talent StrategyUnified talent management technology can offer a more holistic view of talent, and infuse talent data in other key business processes. It allows organizations to think beyond performance metrics like time to fill or attendance at learning events, to focus on strategies with an even bigger business impact.

These strategies include:

• Empowering Managers – Managers are the front line of business and talent results, yet we often fail to properly prepare them, particularly on the talent side. They need tools and training to help them track, manage, and communicate about both good and bad performance. So, it’s not surprising that top performers (defined as those with the highest levels of productivity and performance against budget) are 44% more likely to formally train managers in giving feedback.

• Improving Visibility – It’s much easier to convince your people to follow you if they understand where you’re going. As a manager or leader, goals and connections that seem obvious to you may not be so obvious to your team. The more clarity you can give them, and the more connection to where the business as a whole is headed, the better. Top performing organizations understand, and are 25% more likely to have clarity around performance expectations, and 24% more likely to have visibility into leadership roles for individual contributors.

Top performers are 44% more likely to formally train managers in giving feedback.

• Enabling Development – When hiring or trying to retain talent, helping paint a picture of not only the future of the organization, but an individual’s place within that future, can be powerful. People – high performers especially – want new challenges and opportunities. High performing organizations are 47% more likely to indicate that their employees have visibility into development opportunities.

Building Stakeholder CommitmentAs you build your business case, don’t go it alone. Identify key stakeholders, and establish outcomes that address their needs. Leaders, HR, and employees all have different needs and expectations around talent management. Establishing champions up front who can evangelize the value and experience of unified talent management and get on board with a strategy will make change management and adoption much smoother.

Leaders, HR, and employees all have different needs and expectations.

Building Stakeholder Commitment Consider the changes that may be required as you build your case for unified talent mangement. Identify who will be impacted by these changes, and build out your communication plan from the start.

Who do you need on board? Consider the business, HR, and employees. Each stakeholder may be an individual or a group.

For each stakeholder, identify:

• Their role in the process - leader, decision maker, participant.

• Their biggest pain point related to talent management.

• How they measure value/their motivators. What does a win look like for them?

• Key messages to address those needs, based on their role, including a call to action where appropriate.

Build your communication plan from the start.

Developing a Unified MindsetNo matter how sophisticated, siloed solutions are not as effective alone as they are together. Unified talent solutions help bring together data and process in a way that helps organizations deliver against critical challenges. They also support open and honest communication around performance and compensation, which is critical to retention. A unified talent management solution supports ongoing performance management by enabling formal and informal feedback that seamlessly flows into a manager's existing work.

Organizations with unified talent management are more likely to improve resiliancy as well. Resiliancy and communication are critical to creating a high-performance culture. Resiliancy, or the abiity to respond to change, becomes easier when there is trust and transparency, and individuals can see how their work fits into the overall picture. They also are more likely to have managers that have a deeper understanding of issues like compensation, and the ability to empower managers with up-to-date information for ongoing feedback. When considering solutions, government employers should consider the positive impact a unified tool set, as well as a unified mindset, may have on their ability to execute.

When considering solutions, government employers should consider the impact of a unified mindset.

Putting the Plan Together Building a case for the investment of time, money, or resources has to balance business impact with the effort involved. By bringing together the critical business challenges, technology and integration needs, and stakeholders you have identified, you can begin to prioritize where to focus first, and how to approach your journey toward unified talent management.

For each of the key challenges you have identified, summarize and evaluate your plan and priorities by describing:

The Challenge; rated high, medium, or low business impact.

Technology needs.

Development needs.

Communication needs.

Impact of automation and integration to meet those needs.

You must balance business impact with the effort involved.

Getting StartedThe journey to unified talent management can begin today.

• Start with the mindset. Automation and integration from a unified solution will accelerate the results, but changing behaviors doesn't require technology. If performance is a critical challenge, start working toward better quality, more frequent performance feedback, which will cost you nothing. Technology success rests on the organization's ability to use it, which starts with behavior.

• Define potential impact and success in multiple languages. Leaders, HR, managers, and employees all need to clearly see how unified talent mangement is a win for them. Use your stakeholder map to "translate" quick wins, and longer term success, into meaningful impact on what they care about.

• Focus on unified tools to provide unified visibility. Automation and integration to make processes more efficient is a positive step. But the real value of unified talent management is in the visibility to not only see your talent as it is today, but also to begin to be more proactive in shaping the talent you need for the future.

© 2018 Cornerstone OnDemand | moreinfo@csod.com | 888-365-CSOD

Cornerstone OnDemand is the global talent management software provider that is pioneering solutions to help organizations realize the potential of the modern workforce. csod.com

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