Bringing high quality talent into the business in a disruptive market

Work is becoming more disruptive and dynamic, business leaders today are encountering challenges widespread across their organisations, most notably in talent. Sharon Looney believes that leaders in the HR space are struggling to adapt to the pace of change.

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“We continue in the HR landscape to trail behind the rest of the business in terms of our agility to respond. In many cases, we’re failing to keep up with change,” said Sharon Looney, Chief People Officer, CoreHR.

There is increasing pressure in the HR space to win the war on talent. Managers must ensure that they have the right people with the right skill set to achieve business goals and develop the leaders of tomorrow. However, is there a secret formula for attracting the best talent in business?

“If you want to attract the best, you must have the best talent inside. It’s very difficult for businesses to attract the best talent if managers aren’t able to showcase that they have best people working for them during the hiring process,” continued Sharon.

“One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that businesses have the right calibre of person inside the organisation to attract further high-quality talent.”

“Businesses can benefit from involving their best employees in the hiring process so they can attract like-minded individuals.”

It requires continuous investment to make the hiring process engaging enough to attract the best talent.

“The most strategic and best hires are made when you don’t have an open position in the organisation,” continued Sharon.

“Businesses must develop the skill to get people immediately engaged and place them in the right place within an organisation.”

“Employers may not have the perfect role for them at a given point in time, but managers should be open and courageous enough to look at creating that role internally for them.”

Not just hiring when a position is available is something that HR professionals need to start looking at.

The whole conversation about talent attraction and development is changing due to rapid shifts in work. Steve Dineen believes useful skills that were originally ingrained in a sector for ten years are now only relevant for three. A different approach to talent attraction and development is needed to stay in tune with the paradigm shift.

“Because of new skills, we need new roles. First-generation e-learning isn’t going to get us where we need to get with our people. Therefore, we need something different,” said Steve Dineen, CEO, Fuse Universal.

“Organisations, roles, and skills are changing faster. Businesses must be open to learn the next thing because what they’re doing now probably won’t be as relevant in a couple of years. Having a mindset of developing talent continuously is an absolute mainstream recruitment need.”

Opportunities for career progression and proximity to key decision-makers in the business are hugely important and becoming more valuable to top talent.

“Top employees care about how close they will be to the key decision-makers within the business, they want to be visible,” said Sharon.

The final choices on talent management and attraction lie with HR and talent teams. Every employee in the business has a responsibility for talent attraction when defining what it takes to be part of a team.

“Everybody in the business should understand what it takes to be a successful and valued team member inside the organization,” continued Sharon.

“Once that happens, it becomes very obvious when a high-quality hiring decision happens.”

Sharon believes that it remains crucial for every leader to be scouting the talent market all the time, whether they are hiring for a position or not.

“The higher the calibre of talent you bring into the organisation, the more talent differentiation you have to do. Consequently, recalibrating the expectations of performance,” said Sharon.

“The higher the calibre you’re bringing in, the more spotlight it puts on those who once were solid performers. Calibrating and keeping an eye on that and understanding the wider implications for your performance management strategies can boost performance significantly.”

Additionally, many businesses can heavily benefit from using learning technology as an attraction and retention tool.

“Companies can use it as a publicity tool to convince talent that they could work for a business that prioritises the development of its workforce,” said Steve.

“It’s about using people, culture, and technology to develop those people at the fastest pace. Technology allows you to digitise and make that new way of learning available to everyone.”