Utilizing Total Talent Management

Total talent management (TTM) is a management theory that says, when you need a task done, you should consider all the available talent options you have including employees, contractors, software, automated machines and so on. A new guide by ERE Media and Staffing Industry Analysts entitled Total Talent Management: Towards an Integrated Strategy for the Employed and Non-Employed Workforce conducted a wide ranging survey of industry professionals internationally to assess how companies decide on talent to use and how they get the best from them.

The research found that only 10-20% of companies make a significant effort to motivate their contingent workers to be productive. Here we take an overview of TTM and see how existing decision making processes can be improved with the ultimate aim of increasing productivity.

What is TTM?

The guide describes how talent is, yes, about employees, but also it is about non-employed workers which covers contractors, freelancers, volunteers and consultants but also robotic or automated workers.The median usage of non-employed workers is 16% with some industries, like construction, using a much greater proportion of this type of worker.

TTM refers to an employer’s practice of considering all these options when it comes to completing a task. For example, when there is a job to fill, an employer that practices TTM will consider various options such as hiring an employee, using a contingent worker, acquiring a machine, etc. And when thinking about motivating talent, an employer that practices TTM will think about how to motivate all of these elements differently.

Driving the need for TTM in business is continued economic uncertainty and the need for more flexibility. Using all available talent channels can give individual companies an edge over competitors and allow them to react quickest to changes in demand.

The Decision Making Process

The survey looked at who makes the decision on who or what to employ to do a required task. In the majority of circumstances (51%) the direct manager with the resource need was the one to make the decision or they made it using company policies. The lack of support to that manager in assessing the best talent channel to fill the resource need is an issue for companies and can lead to talent being employed which is not best suited to the job. Using a TTM policy company-wide would provide the back-up to that manager helping them to assess what would be best for the company in the long run rather than being reliant on subjective or ‘snap’ decisions.

Improving workforce productivity

The guide suggests nearly half of organizations have a good indication of what the productivity levels of their employees are. This drops to one-third of companies that understand the productivity of contingent workers. If you don’t know their productivity levels you probably can’t increase them so that suggests two-thirds of companies cannot increase the productivity of contingent workers!

The numbers are even more shocking when it comes to understanding these cohorts motivation, here just 17% of companies claim to understand the motivation of contingent workers. There is clearly a need at a management level to engage with these questions and to develop key indicators to measure things like motivation and productivity.

Motivate Talent Pools

While 51% of organizations make a large effort to motivate employees this percentage drops off radically when it comes to contractors (14%), temps (14%) and online freelancers (4%). Only those companies who are either having a really big problem with productivity or who have decided to make a conscious effort to tackle productivity seem to buck this trend. What is interesting is that modern economies are all moving quickly towards a greater percentage of these contingent workers making up their workforce but there seems to be a lag in their understanding of how to manage this new reality. Contingent and remote workers need to be understood in their motivations and they need to be engaged in ways that are easy for them, eg, through online training. Companies who do not appreciate this new reality will struggle to meet the challenges of the coming years.