Talent Management's Perfect Storm

The organizational sea on which talent management sails has been rising for the past few years. As we enter 2013, the waves are peaking, the water froths, and the boats bouncing on it creak and groan as they buckle under the strain.

Talent management, especially in large multinationals, is being challenged from every direction. Long-established processes are straining under the pressure as the modern workplace prepares their redundancy notices. Proprietary systems, ad hoc software and yesterday’s HR practitioners stare blankly into the New Year and prepare to raise their white flags. ERP, technology and talent management vendors willingly leap into the churning waters and emerge as consolidated entities as another wave of mergers and acquisitions sweeps across the choppy surface. Even research houses and industry media are jumping in.

It has been building for the past few years and will most likely herald its full arrival in 2013: a perfect storm of out-dated organizational practices, new mindsets about what really adds value to business performance and the maturation of social, mobile and cloud technologies that enable the transformation. The last nails are being hammered into the coffin of yesterday’s approach to talent management.

Revolution

The consistent evolution of talent management technology we have witnessed in the past five years has reached its tipping point. We have automated, aggregated and transitioned to online systems. That has laid the foundation that now prepares organizations for the revolution: the convergence of business and HR to finally create competitive edge through people. Predictions. Forecasts. Business needs matched with human capital. HR analytics has been overrun by the possibilities inherent in big data, even before it has matured. Bersin by Deloitte point to the technology trends that are enabling a new generation of HR professionals: the commoditization of talent management systems, innovation spawned by industry consolidation, mobile, social, big data analytics and workforce planning.

Disruption

A revolution is by definition disruptive. In talent management’s perfect storm, dark angry clouds hang over HR practices that have for years been at best tolerated and at worst ignored or undermined. Anticipate major disruption in how HR is structured, what HR practitioners do, and how they go about it. The HR function of the future will morph into a human capital advisory service – small in headcount, big in strategic output. Intelligent, integrated systems will cut through all operational processes, entire layers of HR could disappear as their functions are absorbed by better informed and empowered line managers. Outsourced services such as recruitment, payroll, career and transition services, HR support, industrial relations and compliance will make a resurgence as they reinvent themselves to produce compelling offerings based on business models that don’t exist today. It is the beginning of the end of the old and the beginning of the beginning of the new.

Freedom

Something went horribly wrong with HR. Despite the intent to add business value, it grew into a possessive beast trying to shackle unsuspecting managers and employees with over-engineered processes and procedures till they almost gave up. When the perfect storm subsides and calm returns, the focus will shift from controlling people (via rigid and mechanical processes) to liberating them (and allowing them to contribute to their full potential). OK, so that may not happen in 2013, but the social, mobile, cloud phenomenon has brought us a long way in a short time. With momentum now established, it may not be as distant as we think.

As you read through the various predictions and trends for human capital and talent management in 2013, the common themes will be revolution, disruption and freedom. We should embrace them all – they represent real progress toward more clever enterprises that can stimulate and harness innovation. The storm is perfect because we are ready for it.

Forbes.com