By Liz DeVito, Associate Director, Management Consulting Research
As the analyst behind ALM's research on talent and leadership consulting, I am always on the lookout for signs of market consolidation, new approaches to service delivery, and other such developments. The crop of consultancies that I follow never disappoint. No matter how often I think things really can't change that much from one year to the next, a whole new picture emerges from my conversations with consultants and their clients that proves me wrong. This is a very dynamic market and I see two forces transforming the competency.
The first is a fundamental change in the nature of talent management. What was once an annual planning exercise supporting the upward movement of people through an organization is now a continuous cycle of experimentation focused on calibrating the employee experience. This is made more complex by the fact that many organizations are designed around different types of operating models, each influencing the employee experience differently. There's no one-size-fits-all employee experience for companies providing a mix of products and services to consumers, businesses, and sometimes both.
The second force for change reflects a broader market shift from thinking about the future of work to taking action. Anxiety about the talent implications of Industry 4.0 had been building for years, compounded by media hype and a rapidly changing ecosystem of new technologies whose very acronyms defied an intuitive understanding of their purpose. AI, RPA, NLP, VR. Say what?
I credit consultants with helping business leaders understand how these technologies enable new ways of working that amplify, rather than replace the human value of labor. Their efforts at developing 'future of work' perspectives, scenario planning workshops, design thinking-led ideation sessions, and innovation laboratories succeeded at stimulating clients' imaginations. Incorporating big data and predictive analytics provided a type of grounding that directed these sessions towards mapping action plans, quantifying strategies, and more. At last, clients felt they had a process that afforded some control.
The combined effect of a more sophisticated clientele focused on actively future-proofing their organization through talent management and leadership development is changing what it takes for consultants to help their clients. The demand is for nothing less than total transformation of the talent management function.
At nearly 15 years old, talent management is a relatively young discipline that has nonetheless evolved into a fragmented collection of overly complicated processes designed for top-down control. Hand-offs across talent functions such as recruiting and onboarding are often inefficient, let alone hand-offs across the corporate functions that feed the employee experience.
Consulting providers bring a whole-systems perspective to transforming talent management strategies, operations, and digital infrastructures. They advise on the impact of HR operating model design on talent operations, build chatbots to augment and accelerate the delivery of talent services, and offer integrated platforms of digital tools and data. They deliver point solutions capable of maturing as the client progresses from a siloed to integrated talent system, often in sync with preconfigured HR cloud platforms.
Nothing justifies a transformation approach to talent management more than the merging of talent management with workforce management in the past few years and their alignment to corporate strategy. Both functions require a broad and deep knowledge of employees' skills, experience, and credentials beyond their current job role for multiple purposes, such as learning development programs aimed at workforce reskilling.
The leading providers are helping clients strengthen this connection in several ways. They are going to market with holistic frameworks that clarify how workforce and talent strategies are mutually reinforcing; building integrated technology- and data-enabled platforms that bridge strategic workforce planning with talent processes; and shifting the focus of global mobility programs from managing rewards and relocation services towards the employee experience and leadership development.
For more or to obtain the full version of The ALM Vanguard: Talent and Leadership Consulting 2019, visit: http://crp.consulting.almintel.com/#/allreport
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