This Week in Talent (12th October)

I am experiencing major FOMO right now. My colleague Alastair is in Vegas for the global HR Tech conference and before it starts has scored tickets to see U2 in the ‘Sphere’; Nadine is attending the AFR Energy & Climate Summit in Sydney, and Will is Melbourne/Sydney bound for TQ’s inaugural Employer Brand masterclass series. Whilst I love WFH and my sleepy suburb of Somers, I am very jealous of my 3 colleagues this week!

For those that haven’t been to HR Tech before, it is probably the largest industry conference in the world. This year they are expecting 10,000+ attendees, 300+ speakers and 400+ exhibiting vendors in the expo hall.  I last attended in 2019 and it is a monster, you need a day just to visit the expo and the sheer scale of the event and various talk-tracks is pretty over-whelming. I cannot wait to hear Al’s news and views in the coming week.

Attending conferences is great for professional development and growing your network, if HR Tech is too far to travel, then do consider attending ATC2023 in Sydney in November, I am really looking forward to the return visit to Luna Park, it was such a great event last year. There are some fab HR tech vendors attending too – you can take a look at them all here.

Speaking of ‘Tech’ I have been running a poll on LinkedIn asking people to vote on the following:

The results support my hypothesis that HR/Talent is often trying to solve the wrong problem.  First, let me acknowledge this is only the opinion of 144 people, and the scenario posed is quite unrealistic, however, it does point to the fact our industry is Tech & tool obsessed sometimes to the detriment of the real underlying problems that exist in business.

Here are three common issues I regularly see in my consulting work:

• Talent teams don’t embrace change, and refuse to adopt the new tech, or sometimes the new approaches to recruiting the tech enables e.g. move from reactive to proactive hiring.
• Under-investment in employer branding strategy and recruitment marketing means all the new tech does is speed up and amplify the distribution of poor or confused messaging to the talent market.
• Hiring Managers and leaders are operating in an old paradigm where they ‘still own the talent’, they ‘don’t want to develop the talent within, and insist on continually buying it from the market’ and where they believe ‘recruitment and development is HR’s problem’ not theirs.

Fixing, or changing mindsets and behaviours is hard work, it takes time, and the process can be highly frustrating for those who want to see immediate results. However, if done, and done well, mindset maturity of talent teams and leaders will underpin the success of any tech related transformation efforts.

Tech is no silver bullet; it is purely an enabler.  I encourage talent leaders and teams to face into the harder work of maturing talent mindsets and behavioural change. Ultimately, this will be the fuel and accelerant to your strategy, merely supported by the technology rocket-ship.  A rocket ship with no fuel won’t ever leave the launch pad and you move no further forward. Understand and address mindset issues as a priority and the business case for tech will take care of itself.

 Talent Maturity Model & Diagnostic

TQ has developed a free Talent Maturity Model assessment for organisations to use. It contains 8 dimensions, 3 of which are mindset related and 5 enablement focused. It will allow you to baseline your talent practices maturity and better understand your strategic priorities.

HR Tech 2023 Exhibitors

Check out HR Tech’s expo hall and explore some of the speaker sessions too – it may be one ‘bucket-list’ event to attend at some point in the future. Connect with my colleague Alastair Schirmer to ask him about his experience in 2023.

The organization of the future: Enabled by gen AI, driven by people

Interesting article on the impact of AI and the workplace, in particular its influence on employee experience and talent management practices.  Find out why McKinsey concludes with this: “There is no time to sit back and learn from others’ mistakes. Invest deliberately. Get your hands dirty. Start now.”

Engaging Graduate Talent Report

If you are involved in Early Careers programs, this research paper commissioned and released by ‘The Career Conversation’ is a fantastic read. Find out what early careers talent is looking for from businesses as they transition to the workplace and how some companies are responding to this need.

Why has burnout hit ‘record levels’, and what can be done to stop it?

Aaron McEwan from Gartner has conducted extensive research into the pandemic and its effect on work and workers. He states that we are in the fourth pandemic wave, one resulting in record levels of burnout.

Reimagining Hiring and Learning with the Power of AI

LinkedIn announced some serious product updates to its Recruiter and Learning products last week.  The natural language search capability using generative AI will drive significant productivity gains for sourcers and recruiters. They have also announced CRM connect which allows recruiters to connect LinkedIn with CRM’s (initially Beamery, Avature, Clinch, Radancy and Jobvite).