How COVID is Driving Growth in Talent Management Technology

There’s a significant change going on in Talent Management Technology & the world of work!

As organizations struggle to adapt their hiring strategies to meet automation and AI-driven workforce displacement, COVID-19 is also forcing companies and employers to take a hard look at their talent acquisition strategies. 

For instance, hiring managers now emphasize hiring employees with good moral character, work ethic, and talent, above those with a specific skill set.

Now more companies are incorporating virtual hiring solutions and talent recruiting technology while rethinking their entire talent management strategies to make the best of a bad situation.

 

The rise of virtual hiring solutions

As a result of  the coronavirus pandemic, virtual hiring solutions have gone on from novelty to a necessity.

More companies have adapted their talent acquisition strategies in the face of COVID-19 in order to launch virtual solutions to optimize the hiring and onboarding processes; groups like Instant Teams and OData quickly come to mind.

All of these emerging trends point to the changes to the future of work. 

Here at Grayline Group this has been a recurring theme in our CATALYST TALKS segment, in which we’ve sat down with numerous thought leaders and experts to analyze and assess these changes from different angles and perspectives. 

For instance, Instant Teams was founded with the purpose of easing the process of building and assembling virtual teams for companies.

On the other hand, OData wants to help organizations figure out easier ways to tap into underutilized talent pools of people stretched across the globe in order  to perform repetitive tasks efficiently and faster than AI or machine learning can do.

Virtual hiring solutions are providing critical support for talent acquisition when it’s needed most.

More companies are now leveraging these high-tech and high-touch solutions to find talents internally and externally.

Virtual solutions are easily scalable, cost-effective, and perfect for boosting organizational agility despite corporate sector vulnerabilities and uncertainties during COVID. 

People like Michael Sarraille and George Randle, authors of The Talent War, also deserve mention for their efforts to help companies, HR professionals, and hiring managers better quantify and qualify the skills, training, and attributes of current employees and future hires. These efforts will go a long way to help predict employee success and help leaders make smarter hiring decisions.

 

AI for talent acquisition is not one-size-fits-all

The use of AI within the talent acquisition sector is expanding each year. 

The technology helps make candidate engagement and onboarding easier and can help hiring managers get better insights to predict employee success. So, it’s no surprise that 96% of senior HR professionals would rather leverage AI to greatly enhance talent acquisition and management. However, some companies are finding out the hard way that AI is not a one-size-fits-all solution!

Certain repetitive tasks can be easily automated and the potential for AI and machine learning in talent acquisition and management will only improve. However, there are instances where certain repetitive tasks are more complex, thus much harder to program and hiring people to perform these tasks will be a more efficient solution.

It’s becoming clearer that talent acquisition challenges and their corresponding AI solutions should be evaluated within their individual contexts.

 

People matter most in the workplace of the future!

In 2018, Elon Musk tweeted, ‘Humans (people) are underrated!’

While robot efficiency continues to improve at an incredible pace the most important component is still the worker, put simply, the people. This is a position we’ve maintained in several editions of our CATALYST TALKS segment.

COVID-19 has shown us even further that human skills still matter most at work, while not disputing that data science and AI skills are also critical to the future of work.

“The workplace of the future will more than likely involve humans working alongside machines, rather than machines putting humans out of a job.”

MIT Sloan Management Review, Working With Robots in a Post-Pandemic World.

Humans cannot be effectively or completely replaced by automation or robotics.

In fact, this discussion should slant more towards training and educating a future workforce, ensuring that it will be agile and able to adapt in the face of new challenges, rather than focusing  on whether or not people are easily replaced by automation or robotics. People always matter, and this knowledge is helping organizations drive more growth in the aspect of talent management.

Speaking of which , David Epstein, in his book, Range, highlighted Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Books like these have emerged recently to help hiring managers and HR professionals reimagine their talent acquisition and management practices.

Organizations will always need experts with in-depth knowledge of the details of any particular technology. Moreover equal importance must be attributed to hiring great team players that can effectively manage the different teams.

 

Conclusion

COVID-19 is helping to drive growth in talent management. 

Savvy employers are finding opportunities for growth amidst this change. Organizations are now riding the wave to transform talent acquisition, from simply shifting workplace priorities to people and leveraging virtual hiring solutions, among other talent recruiting technologies.

These trends are indicative of the future to come, which to an extent is being accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic.  Here at Grayline Group. alongside reputable organizations like Deloitte and McKinsey, we’re constantly monitoring and pursuing these trends to help businesses and organizations get better insights into the powerful forces shaping the future of work.