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The digital age has complicated talent management. It is challenging due to millennial workers’ changing expectations, global economic disruptions, hybrid work culture, and other macro and micro-economic factors too complex to cover in this article.
We will restrict our analysis to challenges HR teams face regarding talent management in the post-Covid work reality.
Not everything is the same as before in the talent market. Employee expectations have undergone a fundamental shift from a preference for hybrid work models to an increasing focus on niche benefits like pet insurance, fertility support, and more.
This has left talent management teams scrambling to retain top-performing talent.
While we might not be able to solve all issues in one fell swoop, it helps if we take a step back and identify the problems plaguing talent management in 2023.
Let’s look at the seven common talent management challenges today.
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Talent Retention
Millennials have very different priorities for their career and life, making talent acquisition quite challenging. Along with meaning in their work, they want flexibility, feedback, and appreciation.
As companies compete to hire skilled workers in today’s hyper-digital and fast-paced world, HR teams must offer meaningful employee experiences beyond competitive salaries and benefits.
Globalization and hybrid work cultures have given more job options than ever. However, people still quit at record rates during the pandemic.
Even today, despite a turbulent labor market, employees are not hesitant to quit their job if their work is not aligned with their broader aspirations.
In a competitive post-COVID talent market, HR must do everything possible to retain current employees.
Talent management leaders can address turnover by understanding why people leave. Exit interviews, employee surveys, and feedback sessions can reveal the reasons.
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Change Management
Talent management teams today struggle to adapt to VUCA (P) times, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. (P) stand for pandemic times. It refers to chaotic business conditions that make it hard for organizations to cope.
People are returning to work, but employees expect remote and flexible work. Social media conversations have made employee experience vital to brand image, and HR needs to account for change and agility in the long term.
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Employee Engagement
Only 33% of US workers report being ‘fully engaged’ at work. As millennials tend to be more distracted and disengaged, employee engagement is becoming more important.
Creating a positive employee experience is the key to increasing engagement and improving employee performance.
Talent management teams can improve communication, flexibility, and work-life balance to pivot towards a people-first culture that keeps employee engagement at the center.
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Hybrid Work Model Management
Hybrid work models were rare before COVID-19. Due to productivity, communication, and collaboration concerns, many companies discouraged remote working.
Post-Covid, talent management teams are more than happy with hybrid work engagement strategies thanks to collaboration and communication tools.
Hybrid work is a great benefit to bring new talent in through the door.
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Leadership Development
Leadership is crucial to ensure team success; they help teams perform, improve, and learn skills. But many workers quit due to bad relationships with their leaders.
It is important to develop talented and inspiring leaders. But it will be challenging when potential leaders leave after a few years. The problem intensifies in a remote workforce.
Talent management must motivate leaders to stay and perform with regular training that aligns with their career progression path.
When you actively invest in their growth, it shows you value them and their leadership potential.
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Learning Culture Development
Reskilling and upskilling must become standard in the new economy as work evolves faster than ever. Talent management must bring in a continuous learning and development culture.
It must consider rapidly changing technical skills and long-term transferable skills. AI-driven reskilling platforms can help identify skills gaps and help employees develop in-demand skills.
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Diversity and Employee Wellness Management
Diversity is known to boost employee engagement, and inclusive workplaces are known to generate more ideas, encouraging innovation, productivity, and engagement.
Many organizations struggle to integrate DEI goals into their strategic plan, inviting workplace discrimination and impacting engagement and brand image.
- Assess your company’s DEI.
- Survey employees on fairness and equality.
- Set diversity and inclusion objectives.
- Remove barriers to ensure equal workplace participation and opportunity.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many physical and mental health issues. Stress, risky work, and isolation have lowered employee morale and productivity.
Companies offer childcare, mental health, and other benefits to address these issues, avoid employee burnout, and add more flexibility and balanced workloads.
Talent management experts must maintain regular employee contact and provide an open-door policy to discuss issues.
Final Thoughts
Talent management and HR leaders can lead digital transformation with a growth mindset to overcome its challenges with new-age technology platforms.
They must leverage talent intelligence to assist talent management activities, including hiring, training, and engaging employees.
Draup is a talent intelligence platform that can eliminate talent management challenges and help them hire better, train faster, and develop their workforce for the future.
Its Reskill Simulator can help them visualize the end-to-end reskilling process for over 4,500 job roles from a single dashboard.
Additionally, its analytics identifies and closes workforce gaps through D&I inspections and assists in making more intelligent business decisions.
