10Eighty were happy to welcome friends and guests to our partner Fuel50’s London FuelX 2022 conference where HR professionals and industry thought-leaders gathered for a celebration of those who implement best-in-class talent experiences for their people.
Anne Fulton, founder and CEO of Fuel50, got the conference started by addressing the challenges presented by the current talent crisis. In essence, her message is that we need to transform the work experience to include everyone in a talent community.
Talent counts
The talent crisis is real in every corner of the world and competition for talent is going to remain a part of our reality.
Employers are finding it difficult to source talent – statistics from staffing company Manpower reveal that 78% of employers are having difficulty finding skilled talent. Naturally retention is high on the agenda as a result.
Then, we’ve all heard of quiet quitting – the problem of keeping people engaged at work is a hot topic. A lack of career development is a key reason cited by employees leaving their roles in recent months.
The talent risks today:
Reskilling – we need to identify skills gaps and increase skills-based learning.
Succession – identify retention risks early, mitigate churn and plan at every level.
Increased costs – people and organisations are re-evaluating their jobs as never before. Every level of the business needs to be prepared for what Anne dubs “The Great Renegotiation”.
Resilience – with all the stress on business as a result of churn and change, workforce wellbeing is an operational imperative.
Looking towards 2025:
We will see an increasing rate of technological innovation, outpacing workforce readiness.
Competition for talent will be fierce and in terms of digital skills – this will mean upskills and reskilling gaps will be getting bigger, and faster. Employers will need to identify and support at-risk talent for workforce sustainability.
Talent will be the competitive differentiator
Workforce resilience will be under pressure as talent becomes more selective and robust retention strategies will be crucial.
The economic climate, inflationary pressures and constrained growth opportunities will add pressure to the system. We need to create growth strategies and recognise that workforce agility has never been more important.
So what we need to concentrate on is talent optimisation and building an agile, resilient workforce. We need to focus on the right people, in the right job at the right time – a workforce of right-fit talent that is reskilled for the future.
This means we need to build jobs with human-centred approach, personalised jobs tailored for the talent, rather than moulding the person to fit the role. 10Eighty have long stressed the need for more employee centred HR processes and policies, it make sense.
Bench strength says Anne, is not just about having the right players on the bench, but about playing the right people.
Bridge building for talent communities
Strategies in the war for talent are evolving:
Buy – to the external market to buy talent that can’t be built in-house; in the current climate this is not the best option. Internal talent is a much better and more effective choice, they will out-perform an external hire. Grow you own talent.
Build – invest in learning and development to grow your talent pipeline, your team want this option. You need everyone in the organisation on a personalised learning journey to grow the capability needed for the future.
Borrow – cultivate communities of talent within the organisation. This strategy centres on workforce agility, build an internal gig economy.
Bridge – build an engaged talent pool of people who are aligned with your organisational vision so you can reskill for the future. Partner with candidates, associates, other organisations and institutions to build a talent community.
Best practice
Anne pointed up Fuel50 research which shows that there is a strong correlation between HR best practice and organisational performance. Investing for the future is key here and Anne quoted research around who is investing in a talent marketplace over the next 3 years:
1 in 4 organisations are now investing in building a talent marketplace.
1 in 3 want to see a coaching and mentoring marketplace.
2 in 3 want better skills intelligence – workforce analytics are really important and need to improve.
Josh Bersin points out “better run companies are able to make better decisions, faster”, to do that you need data.
Use of a 70/20/10 learning model for skills development really works in our current context. Where experiential learning is 70% of your learning focus, you will have a powerful and effective tool for employee engagement and development.
The Fuel50 AI enabled talent mobility platform means using your HR data and intelligence to build career architectures that enable your talent marketplace.
What we are looking to build is a workforce that is ready, armed and able.
