Will Talent Management be the Next Hot Thing in HRO?

One of the challenges for any business, including HRO, is balancing meeting today’s needs while getting ready for the future. I am seeing a positive tone change emerging in HR articles, blogs, service provider and consulting firm research and marketing. Broader workforce issues are starting to get attention again, and will hopefully lead to more business for HRO.

Talent management is one of the topics getting a lot more coverage. After the deep cuts, cost controls and contraction of the labor market of the recent past, employers are now interested in how they are going to shape their talent programs going forward.

HRE Online has a very good article by Tom Starner, Refocusing on Talent Management, that references recent talent management research by Ernst & Young and Mercer. According to Mercer, 51 percent of surveyed employers rated talent management as a top priority, and 76 percent expect it will be a top priority in the next three to five years.

Ernst & Young’s study highlighted three key initiatives: rebuilding the internal talent pipeline; understanding and coordination global talent for key positions; and offering flexible work strategies.

With the expected slow return to growth, employers want to know how well targeted talent management investments are working. Mercer reports that only five percent of respondents were confident in their ability to effectively measure the impact of talent decisions and investments, and 41 percent said they were not at all effective.

Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) research indicates that high-performance organizations were more than twice as likely to emphasize the measurement of talent management (37 percent) than low-performing organizations (16 percent).

A talent management application suite can help organizations manage, track and report on talent management activities, and there many in the marketplace. But some clients have learned that no matter how capable the application, if it isn’t well understood and used, it is no bargain.

Mercer has just launched its new offering, Human Capital Direct, a rewards and talent management consulting and technology service based on software from Peopleclick Authoria. Mercer is embedding its own intellectual capital, and will be implementing and hosting the software and surrounding the whole package with pre- and post-implementation consulting.

Companies can get talent management applications as stand-alone services. The same is true for the broader systems that cover HR, payroll and more; buyers can contract directly from Oracle and SAP for HR SaaS applications. They can also obtain them as fully supported BPO services where vendors such as ADP, Logica, NorthgateArinso, Infosys and others add portals, tools, services and reporting, along with implementation support and hosting.

I always like seeing a full range of available HRO offerings, from client-managed to vendor-managed, from basic cost saving functionality to fully featured transformative vendor relationships. Each type and level of HRO has its time and place.

Can talent management be turned into a full platform BPO service? Is now the time? Mercer is hoping the answer is “yes.” What do you think?

Linda Merritt

NelsonHall

Research Director, HRO 

Linda Merritt, Research Director, HRO, NelsonHall

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Tags: ADP, Ernst & Young, hr outsourcing, HR SaaS, hro, HRO providers, Infosys, Institute for Corporate Productivity, Logica, Mercer, nelsonhall, NorthgateArinso, Oracle, Peopleclick Authoria, SAP, talent management

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