How can you measure the value of outsourcing key elements of talent management such as recruitment if you don’t clearly understand what you are trying to achieve through it?
Traditionally businesses have seen outsourcing and, in particular, recruitment outsourcing in relatively simple terms, often bound up with a focus on reducing costs and boosting procedural efficiency. However, over the past few years we’ve seen more and more HR directors understanding the case for using outsourcing in a more strategic way and accepting its value throughout the whole of the talent management chain. Effective implementation of this approach calls for the strategic planning of workforce management to ensure that the management of talent aligns directly with a company’s business goals. But how can this be executed in practice?
The key seems to be a challenging, but nevertheless essential, combination of the ‘big picture’ with a detailed road-map. And realising the big picture means looking at the context the organisation operates in now, and perhaps more importantly, will operate in over the coming years.
Markets change more rapidly today than perhaps at any other time in human history. And that means most businesses need to be re-evaluating their offerings on a continuous basis with obvious consequences for the composition of the workforce. Look for example at Telefónica O2 diversifying into such areas as healthcare and financial services, parts of GE developing consultancy expertise or, at a more extreme level, Nandan Nilekani of Infosys claiming that his company’s role now is not to produce technology but to ‘redefine the boundaries of the possible’. And all this means that the skills-sets which made companies successful in the past may be redundant in the bright new future.
Of course predicting the future is not an easy matter. Anyone who watched the BBC programme ‘Tomorrows World’ in the 1960s or 70s may still be wondering what happened to the robots, routine space travel and three hour working days. But the need to at least make an educated guess at future business direction and what capabilities your workforce will need to make it happen is not something that any serious enterprise can afford to ignore.
Defining the nature of the likely ‘next’ workforce will allow organisations and their outsourcing partners to work out the best ways to reach out to the individuals who will make it up. This will almost certainly mean more imaginative methodologies than traditional advertising or use of recruitment agencies. Instead it will mean careful development of the employer brand and the building of communities through social media to build pipelines of talent that can be drawn upon as specific roles become available.
The challenge for HR professionals and outsourcers alike will be to create plans and structures that are both detailed yet flexible enough to adapt to constantly changing needs. A daunting challenge perhaps, but one that simply must be met.
Paul Daley, director at recruitment outsourcing and talent management specialist, Ochre House. www.ochrehouse.com
