The ‘access to talent’ debate continues on across the globe, despite the unprecedented times we’re living in, amidst COVID-19. This single fact remains: organisations still want quality hires. They still seek to find, engage and pipeline quality people, be they permanent, contingent, part-time, board members – all categories of talent.
But accessing quality talent today is tricky. The issues facing employers in the talent marketplace of today are many and diverse.
The Challenges Of Today’s Talent Marketplace
- The uncertainties of change in dealing with the impact of technology
- The impact of COVID-19. Today’s extraordinary situation doesn’t mitigate the challenges of accessing the best talent for your business. It does shift the dynamic to one that’s more complex and unstable
- The resultant changes in skills demand; the need for talent training and development, redeployment and new hires is omnipresent
- Younger generations with lower employer loyalty, and higher self-fulfilment desires, than the generations before them
- Fewer applicants in the market. And organisations with old-school thinking, are disregarding the potential of contingent workers.
What’s critical to remember in this complex market dynamic, is the powerful edge your business can sustain by engaging the high-quality individuals.
They’re still out there.
And your opportunity remains to find, secure and manage them.
Unfortunately, what we’re seeing repeatedly, is a talent marketplace that is still being approached without the right level of insight and adaptation to the new world order – be that from a strategic, technological standpoint, or from the perspective of generational understanding.
The Big Issues Facing Business Leaders
When you consider some of the biggest issues facing business leaders today, you’ll understand further, what I’m getting at. These include…
- Being able to attract and retain the right talent
- Developing the workers currently in your organisation
- Adjusting to the new talent marketplace, where contingent and non-employee talent is on the rise
- Performance management of all categories of talent
- Establishing a culture that gives your organisation a competitive edge for hiring
- Long-term talent cost reduction
…amongst other factors.
But notice the commonalities here?
Quality hiring – both finding, being able to acquire, manage and retain high-quality talent – across all categories of workers, is the single biggest competitive advantage your business can establish right now. It’s that simple (or not, depending on where you’re at in the strategic workforce planning cycle).
Once you understand the business impact of accessing the leading talent in the market – be they permanent or contingent – your approach to accessing talent, will undoubtedly shift for good.
Why? Because high-quality talent is up to eight times more productive.
Source: McKinsey
But having access to talent isn’t that simple. It’s a long, strategic road, one with incredible rewards if you approach it with intellectual rigour and the engagement of all relevant stakeholders in your business.
3 Key ‘Access To Talent’ Considerations
In today’s marketplace, there are three main factors to consider in your access to talent approach:
- Establishing a quality strategic workforce plan
- Establishing a quality talent acquisition strategy
- Adapting your business, hiring and talent management approach to the new generational impacts in the talent marketplace
I’ve taken a deep analysis of each of these factors to assist your business in finding, securing and retaining great people.
Now is a perfect time to act.
When we finally come out of our current lock-down situation, and business starts to operate with greater normality, your business will be way ahead having done the strategic planning and hard work now.
Yes, these are uncertain times.
But this is also a time of opportunity – if you know how to find it.
As one of the world’s leading providers of contingent worker management solutions, CXC is well positioned to optimise all elements of your contingent workforce strategy. With operations in more than 50 countries across five continents and decades of experience, we can assist with every aspect of your program.
If you would like to find out more about how we can help please contact us here.
