WHAT IS TALENT OPTIMIZATION?
Talent Optimization is a new discipline that provides the know-how and the tools to align your business strategy with your people strategy for achieving and maximizing your business results. In other words, what stands between strategy and great results are people. Talent Optimization offers the framework and the tools to design the culture, roles, and teams that the business strategy demands.
With Talent Optimization, you can map people to your strategy, and have a science-based approach to design your teams, hire and promote purposely, and inspire your people effectively. You can optimize the talent by measuring the makeup of your team and candidates’ profiles, diagnosing engagement, and taking actions to optimize their productivity to drive better results.
Talent Optimization explained in 2 Minutes. Check the video below:
TALENT OPTIMIZATION FRAMEWORK
Talent optimization is a four-part discipline that details what is required for aligning your business strategy and your talent strategy so you can achieve your desired business results.
At the core of Talent Optimization is the collection, analysis, and application of people data. Talent optimization uses data and analytics to help you define job requirements, identify ideal internal and external candidates, align teams to accomplish business goals, and effectively inspire employees for optimal results.
Most businesses regularly monitor key business results whether they be sales figures, customer satisfaction ratings, or profits and losses. These play an important role in talent optimization as they’re a critical part of your business context. Here, you’ll complement those business metrics with important people data such as behavioral styles, cognitive abilities, organizational and team culture, employee engagement, team dynamics, and job performance.
Is your business strategy connected to your people strategy?
You have prepared the perfect business plan, and have ensured all resources are available, you are investing a lot of time, energy, and effort and you are still far from the desired results?
The root of most business problems comes down to people problems.
We can support you in identifying improvement areas in your organization and assist you in your talent optimization efforts by applying scientifically validated tools to measure what matters, analyse the evidence, and create an action plan to solve your business challenges on an ongoing basis.
THE FOUR PHASES OF TALENT OPTIMIZATION:
(1) DESIGN
Designing the organization’s approach to leadership, culture, structure, and team dynamics.
When teams and leaders are designed ad hoc, results suffer. But when the design of the organization, its leadership, its team dynamics, and its culture are approached deliberately – supported by people data – companies have a much better chance of achieving their desired business objectives.
In this phase you will strategically and intentionally select the organizational structure of your organization, evaluate the leadership team fit, understand senior and operational team/s dynamics, and establish your company culture, that is, designing your people strategy and aligning it with your business strategy.
Find out more about the Team Discovery tool in PI DESIGN here: DESIGN
Your people strategy will continually evolve as the needs of your organization change.
(2) HIRE
Hiring smart by defining the roles and matching the right person to the organization’s needs.
Hiring is a critical activity in any organization regardless of its size, industry, or state of maturity. The ability to hire well sets the stage for future organizational success. Putting the right person in the right role also contributes to others’ confidence in the organization’s overall effectiveness. By contrast, a mishire can have devastating consequences not just on the organization’s business results but also on the engagement and welfare of other employees.
Follow these steps for optimizing your recruitment process and building high-performing teams:
- Start with defining and communicating job requirements;
- Evaluate the behavioral and cognitive characteristics of your candidates;
- Train and equip your leaders to land top talent;
- Predict new team dynamics and determine your candidates’ cultural fit.
Objective hiring is smart hiring!
Find out more about HIRE and how to achieve predictability and reliability in your hiring process here: HIRE
(3) INSPIRE
Inspiring leadership and employees by gaining an understanding of what drives them and those around them. It optimizes communication, reduces conflicts, and boosts performance levels.
Work doesn’t stop at hiring. Understanding what drives your own behavior and that of the people around you can help inspire your team, build a strong corporate culture, and foster effective communication.
When you have objective and reliable people data, it equips your leadership team with invaluable tools for employee development, coaching, and providing constructive feedback.
Inspire includes important employee-oriented activities ranging from career pathing to maintaining organizational culture. Inspire also includes enhancing the critical relationship between an employee and their direct manager.
Find out more about INSPIRE and how to DEVELOP your people and teams here: INSPIRE
(4) DIAGNOSE
Diagnosing the root cause of an organization’s people issues provides insights for taking action and optimizing the people strategy. Smart organizations identify potential problems proactively by diagnosing them preventatively.
This is where you’ll measure critical people data, analyze that data in the context of your business, and prescribe remedies as needed.
Find out more about DIAGNOSE and the PI Employee Experience Survey here: DIAGNOSE
Talent optimization is the secret weapon of successful leaders to understand their people, build better managers, enable high-performing teams and company culture, and continually to inspire and engage their employees.
THE FOUR ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF TALENT OPTIMIZATION:
1. Talent Optimization exists within the business context.
Talent optimization doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s informed by business strategy and exists within a business context. Your business strategy is at the heart of your talent optimization efforts. It informs your people strategy and is the meter you’ll measure your actions and decisions against.
Talent optimization isn’t about changing your business strategy. It’s a way of taking your organization’s thoughtful, well-designed strategy and using it to guide the way you hire people, build teams, and design your culture, among other actions.
2. Talent Optimization is driven by people data.
People data empowers business leaders to make objective decisions, rather than relying on gut feeling when it comes to executing a talent strategy. There are a number of tools and techniques leaders can leverage to collect and measure people data. While no one tool can accurately tell you everything about an individual, that doesn’t mean you can’t leverage data to predict performance. In fact, it’s possible to predict how people will behave and interact in organizations when using the right tools.
3. Everyone in the organization must embrace Talent Optimization.
As powerful as Talent Optimization is, it won’t be effective if it’s only used by HR or the C-Suite. It must be rolled out to and adopted by every employee across the organization. When you grant people access to people data, you’re giving them the gift of self-awareness and a healthier workplace.
4. Talent Optimization protects against the four forces of disengagement.
When people are engaged, they are putting in “a discretionary effort” and going above and beyond the minimum requirements. When people are disengaged and this discretionary effort is missing, business results suffer – whether that’s from poor productivity, absenteeism, safety issues, poor client service, or toxic workplace culture.
There are four key causes of disengagement:
Misalignment with the Job: Employees lack the behavioral traits or cognitive ability needed for on-the-job success.
Misalignment with the Manager: Managers lack critical skills or tools to effectively coach and develop employees.
Misalignment with the Team: Teams can’t communicate or collaborate – poor communication and discord between varying personalities take a toll on productivity and innovation.
Misalignment with the Organization: Employees feel misaligned with the organization’s values and culture or are distrustful of its leadership, and productivity and performance suffer.
Companies that optimize their talent always consider these four factors when making any decisions that involve people and use Behavioral and Cognitive Assessments and Team Analytics as part of the hiring process to ensure candidate job fit.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT TALENT OPTIMIZATION IN YOUR ORGANIZATION?
We are implementing Talent Optimization with scientifically validated methodology and tools.
We do not sell a product. We transfer our knowledge via world-class Management Training, Certification Workshops, and regular support. It is one of our core beliefs that clients benefit most when they develop their own internal subject matter experts who can continue to leverage the power of Talent Optimization for sustainable, repeatable business results.
Learn more about the Talent Optimization scientifically validated solutions, tools, and workshops from our partner Realising Potential Ltd (RPX2) – Certified Partner of The Predictive Index by choosing the buttons below:
People drive your business. Learn what drives your people.
PRIMA Advice is specialized in Talent Optimization and successfully assists companies and teams to achieve their goals since 2007.
We support you in finding solutions that bring results to your organization and we work together with you through every stage on your path to excellence.