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According to Manpower Group, a whopping 75% of organizations globally face challenges filling roles. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg. By 2030, Korn Ferry estimates that the number of unfilled jobs may reach 85.2 million worldwide. This staggering statistic is exacerbated by an increasing employee global attrition rate that has almost doubled between 2013 and 2021.

With these facts in mind, organizations need to do everything possible to attract, retain, and motivate the best talent. Here we share with you the top seven mistakes that organizations make with talent management and how you can avoid them. 

Mistake 1: Hiring with only the beginning in mind

Faced with hiring time crunches and the constant need to deliver results fast, hiring managers and HR professionals often scramble to find the best fit for open organizational vacancies. In an attempt to get results fast, there is no better hire than one with the exact education and experience a manager is looking for, often, preferably, experience in the same industry.

As tempting as this is, beware! Your new hires today are the leaders of tomorrow. You must not hire only for the capabilities the candidates demonstrate for the open roles. You must also weigh in their potential for future managerial and leadership roles in your organization. 

Moreover, experience is only one side of the coin; exposure is another. Ask yourself, would it help if you hire a candidate with relevant experience from a different industry? Would their exposure expand the organizational viewpoint and open a whole new realm of solutions?  

Mistake 2: Bulking experience instead of chunking skills

Organizations often make the mistake of hiring people based on experience, developing individuals based on roles, and promoting talent based on overall performance. As reasonable as this is, there is a catch, past performance is not necessarily an accurate indicator of future performance.

In an increasingly changing world, the experience gained yesterday may prove irrelevant for future roles and organizational demands. Moreover, since it is estimated that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years due to rapid technological change, organizations are better off chunking employees’ and candidates’ capabilities on a skill-by-skill basis, rather than experience. 

Use skills-based or competency-based assessments to assess candidates, employ skills benchmarking to develop individual personalized development plans, and use skills matching to identify possible promotion opportunities for individuals that may on the surface seem far removed from their original area of expertise, but may, in fact, have many skills in common.  

Mistake 3: Training at all the wrong times

Timing is one of the most critical factors of training effectiveness. A common mistake that organizations often make is to provide training to employees based on their current roles, with little training investment in potential future roles these employees could play. This leaves organizations usually playing catch-up in training, rather than promoting employees who are already trained and skill-ready for their new roles.

Another common timing mistake is tied to the misconception of day-long in-class training programs. Although these kinds of training programs are effective, organizations must still account for the timing of when information is needed, the regular pace at which learning needs to be reinforced, and the time employees have available for learning. In fact, in our learning and development in the UAE guide, we discovered that 77% of employees surveyed reported not having the time available for learning, making it the number one challenge facing corporate learning today.

To overcome these timing issues, organizations must consider just-in-time learning by integrating AI into already-used organizational tools and systems. They must also consider self-paced and microlearning options.

Mistake 4: Measuring performance instead of transforming performance

A common mistake organizations make with performance management systems is that they reduce it to simply a ‘system’. This mindset leads organizations to be hooked on setting objectives, filling in appraisal forms, and doing it all over again the following year. This kind of mindset often leaves actual current performance out of the equation and leaves employees feeling disenchanted. 

To overcome this issue, organizations need to approach performance management with a culture-first mindset. Performance management, in its essence, is not about setting annual objectives, but rather about providing a compass to guide everyone in the organization. 

It is also about checking in often daily or weekly about how well we all measure to that compass. Organizations that truly embrace performance management are more in the now, than in the past, and leverage their technologies and systems to keep everyone motivated towards the North Star metric.  

Mistake 5: Really boxing people in the 9-box grid

First introduced by McKinsey in 2008, the 9-box grid scoring people across two dimensions, performance and potential, has quickly become one of the most commonly used talent identification and succession planning tools in organizations worldwide. The tool places employees in one of nine boxes such as rising star, key contributor, adequate performer, etc., and is often used to identify individuals more suitable for promotions and growth opportunities.

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is to actually ‘box’ people based on the grid. Organizations must be aware that all employees deserve growth opportunities, each according to their own growing potential and increasing performance. The key here is that the grid does not tell you where someone ‘can be’ in the future; it only tells you whether they are ‘ready now’. Human potential is ever-expanding and should never be limited. 

Mistake 6: Thinking pay instead of benefits

Some organizations consider higher pay as a means to retain and motivate talent. As significant as pay is, it is still not the only way to retain your organizational talent. Employees look at the overall compensation and benefits packages when making career move decisions. These benefits could include traditionally-known benefits such as medical insurance, social insurance, and incentives. But you can also consider more modern benefits such as work-from-home options, flex hours, daycare in-house, free e-learning platform access, profit share, recognition awards, mentoring and coaching programs, gym access, and even free coffee and snacks. 

Mistake 7: Managing by attendance instead of managing by objectives

Talent management systems often come with a core HR & payroll module. They provide a great edge in automating attendance tracking, leave calculations, and payroll management. Although they enhance HR efficiency helping you focus more on the actual HR work that matters, you must not fall for the temptation of making these systems serve as a measure of employee commitment.

Attendance does not equal productivity. In fact, Stanford University research has found that productivity per hour declines sharply when people work more than 50 hours a week. After 55 hours, productivity drops so much that putting in any more hours is pointless. And, those who work 70 hours a week only get the same amount of work done as those who put in 55 hours. That being said, use these attendance tracking systems to make payroll calculations easier and faster, and measure commitment by objectives achievement instead.

Use a State-of-the-Art Talent Management System to Do It Right

These were the top seven fatal mistakes organizations make with talent management. If you’d like to do talent management right, all while saving time, cost, and effort, explore our state-of-the-art talent management solutions. And, if you’d like to know more about the future of talent management, check out our blog article on the 2023 top talent management trends.

In today’s competitive landscape, organizations face a daunting challenge: filling critical roles with the right talent. In fact, According to a study by Manpower Group, a whopping 75% of employers globally report facing challenges in filling roles. The talent shortage is real, affecting organizations worldwide, regardless of their size.

However, there’s good news—current technology trends can be powerful allies in the war for talent. Let’s explore these major trends and how they can enhance your recruitment and retention efforts.

Tech to Attract Talent

AI, big data, automation, and full-scale integrations all simplify the hiring process, helping you focus on what matters more, selecting the right talent and becoming an employer of choice. Here are some of the top benefits tech has to offer for attracting talent. 

• Customizable Pipelines: Talent acquisition software now allows you to tailor your recruitment pipeline to match your unique processes. With simple, slick drag-and-drop interfaces, managing recruitment for all your open roles becomes seamless.
• Job Board Posting: Current tech tools enable you to automatically share your job postings on global and local job search platforms, with the click of a button, increasing your job posting outreach.
• Matching recommendations: AI can sift through hundreds of CVs in a matter of seconds and score candidates’ profiles based on job requirements, to automatically evaluate candidates and facilitate your screening process.
• Candidates’ Assessment: Current tech tools can administer a wide variety of tests and automatically grade them, enabling the selection of optimal candidates with no human intervention at all.
• Candidates Profiles Enrichment: AI tools can automatically fetch data from the candidates’ social media profiles to enrich their CVs and help you make a more informed hiring decision.
• Recruitment on the Go: Mobile apps today allow you to post jobs from your mobile and follow up while on the move. They even allow candidates to apply via their mobile phones, which is a great plus, since, surprisingly, more people today apply for jobs through their phones than one would expect.
• Career Pages Easy Setup: Tech tools today enable you to create a career page for your organization with no software development expertise, thus, enhancing your employer branding effortlessly.
• Gamified Hiring Tests: Gamification is now being used to assess candidates’ personal effectiveness skills. This is an excellent way to test candidates’ soft skills as gamification provides a testing environment very close to real-life scenarios.
• Kanban boards: Tech tools provide you with Kanban boards that offer a comprehensive overview of your recruitment progress across all open roles, helping you stay organized and on top of things.

Remember, not only does embracing these tech trends simplify your hiring process, but it also positions you as an employer of choice.

Tech to Retain Talent

Attracting talent is one challenge, but retaining it requires a different playbook. With the average employee tenure at just 4.1 years, organizations must adopt fresh strategies to keep their hard-won talent. Fortunately, technology offers solutions.

• Smooth Candidate Onboarding: Current technologies help you track and manage every new hire through every step of the employment experience, from the offer letter issuance to onboarding and beyond. They also help you keep track of onboarding events such as starting dates, probation periods, or end of employment.
• Personalized Learning & Development: AI-powered learning experience platforms help conduct skills-based assessments and discover employees’ skills gaps relevant to their roles, interests, and career aspirations. Not only that but they also make learning course recommendations based on that analysis making learning easier, more objective-oriented, and more personalized.
• Data-Based Performance Management: Human capital management systems (HCMs) powered with AI and robotic process automation (RPA) automatically cascade organizational objectives from senior leadership to employees. They also can integrate with other tools to automatically aggregate performance-related data for more objective performance reviews.
• Efficient Talent Management: Current tech tools also make talent identification an easier job as they automate the whole process, generating talent maps in a matter of seconds. Empowered with this knowledge, you can spend more time planning and communicating career growth opportunities with employees, instead of spending your time crunching numbers.
• Higher Productivity & Collaboration: Current technologies make it easier for employees to complete their jobs as effectively and efficiently as possible while leveraging the collective intelligence of teams. The rise in productivity and collaboration enabled by technology can reduce work-related stress and increase overall job satisfaction.
• Flexible Working: Millennials value work-life balance. Research shows that 92% of people born between 1980 and 2000 identify flexibility as a top priority when job hunting. Current collaboration and communication tech tools make it easier for you to offer flexible work benefits to help retain millennial and Gen Z talent.
• Increased Engagement: A recent Gallup report found that employees who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity. This is equal to 11% of global GDP. Current tech tools enable you to easily and quickly administer and analyze the results of employee engagement surveys. Current human capital management systems as well can automatically send notifications for managers to conduct regular check-ins to see how employees are doing.
• Smoother Employee Experience: Many HR solutions today include a single self-service portal for instant access to all HR-related information to help employees self-manage day-to-day HR tasks, such as issuing HR letters, viewing pay slips, sending leave requests, etc. This enhances the employee experience and has a positive effect on retaining talent.

Attract & Retain Talent with XpertLearning

These are some of the ways by which state-of-the-art, tech-powered talent management systems can help you attract and retain talent. If you’re interested in learning more about our talent management solutions, click HERE, or contact us at enquiries@xpertlearning.com for a demo.

Since its inception in 1999, e-learning has experienced exponential growth, expanding by a staggering 900% over the past two decades. Today, it’s a cornerstone of organizational training, with a notable 40% of Fortune 500 companies integrating e-learning into their corporate learning and development programs. The allure lies in its potential to reduce costs while simultaneously enhancing learning retention—making e-learning an indispensable component of organizational training.

However, not all e-learning solutions are created equal. Amidst the vast array of options, there exists a transformative approach: custom content. In this article, we delve into the world of custom content, exploring its myriad benefits and the diverse types available. Whether you’re a seasoned learning professional or just embarking on your organizational e-learning journey, understanding custom content is essential for maximizing the impact of your training initiatives.

What is Custom Content?

In the realm of  e-learning, the term “custom content” holds immense significance. It refers to learning programs specifically crafted or customized for your organization. On the other end of the spectrum lies “off-the-shelf content,” which has its own merits. However, custom content offers unique advantages that off-the-shelf solutions cannot match.

Benefits of Custom Content Solutions

Being tailored to your organization, custom content solutions provide you with a unique list of benefits you would not want to miss out on.

• Laser-Focused Learning

Custom content is like a bespoke suit tailored to fit your organization perfectly. Unlike generic off-the-shelf solutions, which may include irrelevant material, custom content zeroes in on your specific learning objectives. It’s designed with precision, ensuring that every piece aligns with your organizational goals. As a result, learners benefit from content that is relevant, concise, objective-focused, time saving, and directly applicable to their roles. 

• Organization-Specific Relevance

Imagine attending a training session where the examples and case studies are drawn from your own workplace. That’s the power of custom content. Unlike off-the-shelf solutions, which offer generic scenarios, custom content allows you to incorporate real-life situations from your organization. Whether it’s industry-specific processes, company culture, or unique challenges, learners engage more deeply when they see familiar contexts. This relevance boosts attention, retention, and ultimately drives behavioural change on the job.

• Addressing Specific Use Cases

Custom content shines brightest in specific scenarios where organization-specific knowledge is needed. While off-the-shelf learning materials can upskill employees, they fall short when it comes to conveying your company’s core values or fostering awareness of organizational culture. These are precisely the situations where custom content excels. Whether it’s introducing new policies, explaining intricate processes, or reinforcing ethical guidelines, custom content ensures that your message resonates authentically with your organization.

To In-House or To Out-Source?

As organizations embrace e-learning, a pivotal question arises: Should we build an in-house team of custom content developers or entrust the task to external experts? The decision carries significant implications, and understanding the key factors is essential.

1. Workload Considerations

• In-House Developers: If your content demands are substantial—multiple programs per year, intricate modules, and frequent updates—an in-house developer may be the right choice. Their dedicated focus ensures alignment with your organization’s unique needs.
• Outsourcing: For sporadic content requirements or uncertain workloads, outsourcing offers flexibility. Start small, gauge demand, and scale accordingly. Consider external providers when the workload doesn’t warrant a full-time hire.

2. Cost Analysis

• Outsourced Development Cost: Crafting tailored content involves expenses, from design to implementation. Compare this against the cost of the full-time hire alternative.
• Full-Time Employee Cost: Weigh the cost of hiring an in-house developer against outsourcing. Consider factors like salaries, benefits, and overhead. It all depends on the estimated workload.

3. Time Efficiency

• In-House Advantage: Having an exclusive in-house developer seems efficient, but it doesn’t always translate to faster turnarounds. Complex projects may still take time.
• Outsourcing Team Advantage: Outsourcing grants access to a diverse team. Multiple developers can collaborate simultaneously, accelerating project completion.

4. Expertise Dilemma

• Outsourced Expertise: External developers often bring specialized skills and broader industry exposure. Their fresh perspectives enhance content quality.
• In-House Insight: Your internal team knows your organization intimately—its culture, processes, and unique challenges. This context helps especially with programs that require insights into the organization’s unique knowledge and culture.

There is no right answer to the in-house vs. outsourcing question. The decision hinges on your organization’s specific context. Prioritize factors like workload, cost, time, and expertise, and make the decision that aligns best with your learning programs’ goals.

Types of Custom Content

As you navigate the decision between in-house development and outsourcing for custom content, understanding the diverse types of content becomes crucial. Each type serves specific learning needs, ensuring a tailored approach to your organization’s training programs.

• Whiteboard Explainer Videos

Whiteboard explainer videos are videos that mimic the experience of a teacher explaining on a whiteboard but in a video format. These videos are ideal for explaining concepts especially ones that include branching and mind mapping.

• Animated Videos

These are videos that create stories by presenting characters and scenes. They leverage storytelling as a learning technique and represent audio-visual content in a concise and compelling manner. They are ideal for conveying concepts in action, real-life scenarios, and case studies. Most importantly, they are an excellent format for learning that sticks!

• Infographic Animated Videos

Infographic videos are motion graphic videos that are highly packed with facts, data, numbers, charts, and all other kinds of statistics. They are an ideal choice if you are aiming to explain, educate, or inform your learners of concepts that rely heavily on information.

• Kinetic Typography Videos

These are videos that feature words but with a touch of typography art, exquisite use of colour and movement, and a coupling of proper music and voiceover. These videos are ideal for conveying value-related behaviours, principles, or any set of rules or procedures you would like to disseminate.

• Page Turners

Page-turners are simple self-paced online programs that feature a linear sequence of slides the learner can go back and forth through. They are ideal for basic information transfer and for communicating simple and straightforward concepts. Page turners are commonly used for organization-wide mandatory programs.

• Rapidly Authored Programs

This is a super-quick solution for your immediate training needs. If you already have an impressive library of training programs in slide format, with rapid authoring, you can transform your conventional but informative slides into digital programs that help you make the transition to e-learning fast. They are ideal if you want to build on what you already have and want quick results.

Get Custom Content Solutions for Your Organization

Custom content isn’t just about creating learning materials; it’s about crafting experiences. By tailoring content to your organization’s unique context, you empower learners to thrive. If you’re interested in learning more about how custom content can help your organization or are interested in viewing a live demo, you can visit our custom content page.

Since the inception of the tech industry, the industry’s growth has been on the rise. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report shows that over 85% of organizations surveyed believe that increased adoption of new and frontier technologies will most likely drive transformation in their organizations in the next five years. The same report states that more than 75% of companies are seeking to adopt technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and AI in the next five years. 

But do organizations’ talent forces have the necessary skills to capitalize on these technologies? To overcome this hurdle, organizations are investing in upskilling their workforce’s digital and tech skills.  However, the vast array of available tech competencies can be overwhelming. This article aims to demystify the tech skills landscape, empowering you to make informed decisions for your team’s and organization’s success. 

The Tech Skills Landscape

In today’s tech-driven world, an abundance of tech certifications exists, showcasing the vast spectrum of skills individuals can acquire. However, amidst this plethora of options, it’s crucial to recognize that each skill serves a distinct purpose. Therefore, the key lies in understanding what these skills empower you to achieve. Here, we explore the top broad categories of tech skills:

1). Mobile App Development: 

Mobile app development skills encompass a range of abilities that enable you to create, enhance, and maintain mobile applications that can be downloaded from any mobile phone’s app store. 

Although mobile app developers possess the same skills as backend developers such as framework design, database management, API integration, etc., there are some additional skills they must have to be able to create user-intuitive functioning applications. These skills are:

• Mobile Platform Knowledge: While web developers primarily focus on web browsers, mobile developers must understand the intricacies of iOS (for Apple devices) and Android (for Google devices). 
• User Interface (UI) Design for Small Screens: Mobile developers need to have the skills necessary to create interfaces optimized for smaller screens. Such skills include considerations of touch gestures, screen resolutions, and responsiveness.
• App Store Guidelines and Submission Process: Mobile developers must know the guidelines for preparing their apps for submission on the App Store (Apple) and Google Play Store (Android).
• Offline Functionality: Mobile apps often need to function offline. Mobile developers need the skills to implement local storage, caching, and synchronization mechanisms.
• Hardware Integration: Mobile apps utilize device features like GPS, camera, accelerometer, and gyroscope. Developers must understand how to access and use these features.
• Performance Optimization: Mobile apps run on resource-constrained devices. Developers optimize memory usage, minimize battery drain, and ensure smooth performance.
• App Security: Mobile developers must have the skills to address security concerns specific to mobile platforms to protect user data, handle authentication, and prevent vulnerabilities.
• Cross-Platform Development: If you would like to build apps for both iOS and Android simultaneously, you may need to learn the use of cross-platform tools like React Native or Flutter.

2). Data Science and Analytics: 

These skills enable you to generate valuable insights from big amounts of data faster and with higher accuracy. They are useful in business analysis, scientific studies, and AI solutions. Many skills can help you excel in this specialization such as:

• Programming Languages: These languages such as Python and R are used for data manipulation, analysis, and modeling. 
• Statistics and Probability: Understanding statistical concepts like linear regression, hypothesis testing, and probability distributions helps you build accurate models and draw meaningful conclusions.
• Data Wrangling and Database Management: You will need these skills to clean, organize, extract, transform, and load data into suitable formats for analysis.
• Machine Learning and Deep Learning: Applying machine learning algorithms helps you predict outcomes, classify data, and uncover patterns.
• Data Visualization: Mastery of tools such as Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Tableau helps you communicate the data more clearly.
• Big Data Technologies: Familiarity with tools like Hadoop, Spark, and NoSQL databases helps you handle large-scale data.

3). Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence:

Machine learning skills enable you to program systems to use the insights attained from data analysis to make predictions; artificial intelligence, on the other hand, involves programming these systems to take actions according to these predictions. To succeed in this field, you need a mix of mathematical and technical skills, such as:

• Probability and Statistics: These form the foundation for many ML algorithms.
• Linear Algebra: It will help you understand transformations and operations on data.
• Graph Theory: It is relevant for certain AI applications.
• Programming Languages: The most widely used in AI are Python, Java, C++, Julia, and R.
• Neural Network Architecture: You will need to understand different architectures and their applications.
• Deep Learning: You should familiarize yourself with deep neural networks and techniques like backpropagation.
• Big Data and Distributed Computing: These will help you handle large datasets efficiently.

4). Cloud Computing:

Cloud computing enables you to deploy applications, databases, and services on cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Whether you need more storage, computing power, or bandwidth, these cloud platforms enable you to scale your server usage up or down on demand. With these platforms, you rent server space instead of owning it, which enables flexible scaling with less cost and more efficiency. 

Here is a list of the top skills you need to succeed in cloud computing:

• Programming Languages: Python, JavaScript, and R are foundational for cloud software development. Proficiency in these languages allows you to build and manage applications effectively.
• Cloud Service Platforms: You need to understand the differences between the major platforms to advise on the best platform for any application. The major platforms are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. 
• Database Management: You need to master cloud databases such as NoSQL, relational databases, and data warehousing to manipulate data efficiently.
• Linux: Coding on Linux, an open-source operating system, helps you work with cloud infrastructure.
• Security Focus: Understanding encryption, access controls, and secure practices is essential so that you can protect organizational data.
• Networking and Infrastructure: Learning about virtual networks, subnets, and load balancers is vital for cloud architecture.
• Automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Using tools like Terraform or CloudFormation helps you automate infrastructure provisioning.

5). Cybersecurity:

Considering that 66% of organizations reported being targeted by ransomware in 2023 alone, cybersecurity skills are essential for safeguarding digital systems and data and protecting them from threats. There are many technical competencies that cybersecurity professionals need to have. Here are some of the key skills:

• Scripting: Scripting with Python and PowerShell allows you to efficiently analyze data and respond to security incidents.
• Controls and Frameworks: It will help you to have an awareness of the common cybersecurity frameworks like NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), ISO (International Organization for Standardization), CIS (Center for Information Security), and SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2).
• Intrusion Detection: Tools such as SIEM (Security Information and Event Management), IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems), and IPS (Intrusion Prevention Systems) help you monitor network activity. 
• Incident Response: You must know how to handle security incidents promptly, covering investigation, containment, and recovery.
• Cloud Security: You need to learn how to secure cloud environments to protect data, manage access controls, and address cloud-specific threats.
• Networking and System Administration: Understanding network protocols, firewalls, and system configurations helps you secure infrastructure.
• Malware Prevention and Analysis: You need to know how to recognize the different types of malware, analyze their behavior, and implement preventive measures.
• Risk Management: You need to know how to assess risks, prioritize vulnerabilities, and develop mitigation strategies.
• Encryption and Cryptography: You must know encryption algorithms, digital signatures, and secure communication protocols.

6). Networking:

Computer networking skills are essential for designing, implementing, and maintaining efficient communication systems between different devices. Here are some of the technical competencies that network engineers need to possess: 

• Linux: As a network engineer, you will use Linux in installing and configuring servers to provide email and internet access, supporting system administration for Linux servers, and implementing Linux and Windows solutions for business applications.
• Network Troubleshooting: This skill enables you to identify and resolve issues with computer networks. 
• Ethernet: Understanding ethernet protocols, cable types, and network topologies helps you in configuring and troubleshooting local area networks (LANs).
• TCP/IP: You need to grasp the layers, addressing, and routing of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
• Switches and Routers: Network engineers must know how switches and routers function.
• Network Devices: Knowledge of firewalls, load balancers, access points, and other network hardware.
• Network Infrastructure: You must have a grasp of network architecture, protocols, and components, including WANs (wide area networks) and VLANs (virtual LANs).

Level Up the Tech Skills of Your Organization

This was a high-level dissection of the tech skills landscape. The tech environment is in constant evolution. If you’re interested in keeping your talent force abreast of all the latest tech updates, upskill them now. To learn more, Click Here.

Although getting your first promotion into a managerial role is something every high-performing individual looks towards, the challenges that come with this change make it an almost dreadful experience. Often, first-time managers get into the role with minimal training or no training at all, so much so that the odds become stacked against them in a way that makes the role a roller coaster ride without the safety belts.

In fact, research from CEB Global shows that a staggering 60% of new managers fail within their first 24 months. A recent survey also shows that 43% of managers who have been in their role for less than a year say they’ve had no training, further contributing to the high failure rate.

So, how do you overcome this trap? We have compiled for you a list of the top mistakes to avoid to make your first-time manager role a much more fulfilling experience.

Mistake 1: Doing It All Yourself

First-time managers often are excellent individual contributors who have been promoted into managerial roles. As fair and motivating as this is, often first-time managers overlook the fact that what got them to be excellent professionals is not what will get them to be excellent managers.

Your role as a manager is not to get the work done yourself but to lead your team to get the job done. With that in mind, a managerial role requires an entirely different skillset than what made you an excellent individual contributor. So, next time you feel the urge to jump in, roll your sleeves up, and do it yourself, remember to relax, step back, and delegate.

Mistake 2: Shying Away from Difficult Conversations

First-time managers often shy away from difficult conversations. That is motivated by an innate human desire to be ‘liked’. But remember that your goal, as a manager, is not to be liked as much as it is to be a good leader. And although your team may like a nice manager, they will not like a manager who leads the team to underperformance, layoffs, and stagnation.

Therefore, there is no escape from the necessity of being able to take tough conversations head-on. If a team member is underperforming or there is a conflict in the team, as the leader, you must prioritize talking about it to ensure feedback is given, roadblocks are removed, and conflicts are resolved.

Tough conversations also go both ways. Your team may find it difficult to give you feedback on your management style and practices. And, as a first-time manager, this is the time when you need it the most. So, encourage your team to give you direct feedback by scheduling one-on-one check-ins with them on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, or sharing a survey with them regularly, and simply directly asking, ‘How can I be a better manager for you?’.

Mistake 3: Managing Down Only

As an individual contributor, you may have had an easy time only managing yourself and perhaps, occasionally, managing your relationships with your peers. However, as a first-time manager, you will be making a grave mistake if you miss out on how multi-stakeholder the role is.

Your role as a first-time manager often includes making commitments to your team, middle management, and other leaders in the organization at your managerial level. With such a multi-constituency, you’ll likely have a hard time if you manage by authority alone. You will need to develop influencing skills to be able to influence middle management to make decisions that help your team, to influence your peers to cooperate with your team, and even to influence your team members to give their best.

Mistake 4: Changing Too Much Too Fast

It is common political science wisdom never to attempt to change too much too fast, even if one is a great leader. People like constancy and a sense of certainty. As impossible as this is to achieve in the modern world, still it is sensible for a leader to try to approach change with more empathy towards this human tendency.

Moreover, there may be good reasons why things are the way they are. Instead of attempting to make drastic changes from day one to bring about the dawn of a new day, start with keeping the status quo, learning the ropes, developing a deeper understanding of why things work the way they do, deciding on what could need a change, and, only then, attempting to make the right changes at the right time. This will ensure you get your team’s appropriate buy-in and support and proof-checks your decisions.

Mistake 5: Not Giving Credit

As an individual contributor, a lot of your work was likely the result of solo work. However, as a team leader, any results the team achieves are likely the fruit of the work of many team members. You will go a long way if you keep this fact in mind and always remember to give credit when it is due.

Take the time always to say ‘thank you’ to your team members in private and in company meetings. Point out their contributions when you are thanked for their work. And, always use the word ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ when talking about the team’s achievements. When it comes to team leadership, you can never overuse the word ‘we.

Mistake 6: Using One Brain

One of the biggest misconceptions a newbie manager may have is believing that they are the ‘brain’ of the team or that it is their responsibility to ‘think’ and ‘make decisions’ while the team is responsible to ‘do’ and ‘implement the decisions’. When approaching matters with this mindset, you make the grave mistake of alienating the entire team, depriving yourself and your company of the value of the great calibers you have, and, more importantly, risking solely owning a solution without the buy-in of your team.

Instead, make efforts to leverage the collective intelligence of your team. Start by making the time to see the unique value and perspective everyone brings. Use effective brainstorming and design thinking methods to arrive together at the best solutions and use group voting systems to make the best decisions.

Enhance your Leadership Skills

So these were the top six mistakes that every newbie manager must avoid. If you’re interested in developing your leadership or managerial skills, check out our wide array of leadership courses here, personalized to your needs and powered by our partner, Skillsoft.

According to a survey conducted by McKinsey Global Institute, the adoption of AI has more than doubled since 2017, with 50% of respondents reporting adopting AI in at least one business area. Additionally, 60% of respondents in another research said their organizations already currently use AI to manage talent.

By now, it is already clear that AI has a significant impact on every aspect of talent management. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how AI can transform talent management, and we’ll take a quick look into how one of the world’s leading talent experience platforms, Cornerstone OnDemand, is already incorporating AI into its solution to help you manage your talent more efficiently and effectively.

The Impact of AI on Acquiring Talent

It all starts with acquiring the right talent, and AI has the potential to transform talent acquisition in several ways. According to a report by Morgan McKinley, AI can automate repetitive tasks, improve candidate matching, enhance the candidate experience, and promote diversity and inclusion. Here are some of the ways AI is streamlining talent acquisition today.

1. Sourcing and engaging candidates: AI helps recruiters find potential candidates faster and more accurately by automating resume screening, ranking candidates based on criteria such as job experience, skills, and qualifications, and performing sentiment analysis on candidates’ CVs.
2. Assessing applicants: AI helps recruiters assess job suitability and identify the best candidates by using data-driven insights to measure performance.
3. Onboarding and engaging employees: AI helps organizations personalize the candidate experience and guide job seekers to the role that best matches their capabilities.
4. Reducing bias: AI helps organizations promote diversity and inclusion by reducing bias in recruitment processes.

The Impact of AI on Developing Talent

The impact of AI goes well beyond simply helping you to acquire the right talent. It also helps you maximize the outcome and potential of your talent force by enhancing your performance management, succession planning, and learning and development processes. Here are some ways by which AI does that.

1. Complete, AI-generated performance analysis: AI can help organizations automate performance reviews and measure performance by considering far more factors than a simple rating or score.
2. Quick, agile, and continuous performance feedback: It analyzes past performance data and provides predictive analysis for succession planning.
3. Linking areas of development with learning: By using AI, you can better identify areas where an employee might need improvement and uncover strengths they might not even realize they have. These areas of strength or improvement can be automatically linked to learning resources.
4. Enhanced succession planning: By providing data-driven insights into employee performance, AI can help more accurately and speedily identify potential successors.
5. Personalized learning: AI can help organizations personalize the learning experiences for their employees by analyzing their learning needs, styles, preferences, and performance data.
6. AI-powered digital coaches: AI-powered digital coaches can provide personalized feedback and guidance to learners.
7. Real-time assessment and feedback: AI can provide real-time feedback on learner performance, enabling organizations to identify areas for improvement and adjust their learning programs accordingly.
8. Global learning: AI can help organizations create global learning programs that are tailored to the needs of learners in different regions with features such as automated translation, voice-over, and subtitling.

The Impact of AI on Rewarding Talent

It does not stop here. AI helps you retain your best talent and keep them motivated by streamlining and optimizing rewards processes. After all, AI can recognize patterns, predict performance, and understand drivers and influencers leading to the optimization of compensation models and programs. Here are some of the ways AI is transforming employee rewards:

1. Optimizing compensation models: AI can help organizations optimize their compensation models by analyzing data on employee performance, market trends, and other factors.
2. Improving employee retention: AI can help organizations identify employees who are at risk of leaving and take proactive steps to retain them.
3. Reducing bias: AI can help organizations reduce bias in compensation decisions by analyzing data on employee performance, skills, and qualifications and ensuring employees are rewarded fairly and equitably.

Cornerstone OnDemand Leading the Way

If this all seems to you like a futuristic far away dream, you’re mistaken. According to a recent survey conducted by SHRM, 88% of companies globally already use AI in some way for HR, with 100% of Chinese firms and 83% of U.S. employers relying on some form of artificial intelligence.

This is why it is unsurprising to discover that one of the world’s leading talent experience platforms, Cornerstone OnDemand, already has AI incorporated into its solution, offering us Cornerstone AI.

What can Cornerstone AI do for you?

There are many things that Cornerstone AI can do for you, but here are the highlights.

1. Connect your employees with opportunities in the organization to accelerate their growth

With Cornerstone Opportunity Marketplace, your employees can set their career aspirations and receive automated recommendations about the jobs or projects open in the organization that align with their goals. Cornerstone AI can, further, help them identify what skills they have and what skills they need to develop to get where they want.

2. Identify areas for skill development to achieve career goals 

From its comprehensive repository of over 50,000 unique skills, Cornerstone Skills Graph uses AI and machine learning to automatically detect skills and recommend development opportunities and learning content to your employees. This helps create personalized learning experiences for your employees, empowers them to own their growth and development, and increases internal talent mobility in your organization. Cornerstone Skills Graph also gives you a complete picture of your workforce skills at any time to help you identify and address your organizational overall skills gap.

3. Curate more personalized learning experiences and do it better and faster

By connecting learning content to your employees’ skills and career aspirations, Cornerstone AI ensures all the content your people see is relevant to their goals, interests, needs, and preferences because it understands what topics, skills, modalities, and even tones each person connects with best. Not only that but also by leveraging deep content intelligence and AI, you can more easily and quickly curate and deliver the right learning content to the right people in a way that moves your organization forward.

Upgrade Your Talent Management System Today

It is undeniable that AI can hugely transform the impact of your talent management. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can enhance your talent management efforts with Cornerstone AI or are interested in viewing a live demo, you can contact us at enquiries@xpertlearning.com.

Talent management is the art and science of strategically identifying, acquiring, developing, and retaining the right talent to drive your organization’s success. It’s not just about filling positions; it’s about cultivating a culture that values and nurtures individual abilities and potential. It is a deliberate and strategic endeavor that aligns your organization’s objectives with the skills and aspirations of your employees, creating a harmonious synergy that propels both your organization and your employees forward.

Managing your organizational talent plays a great role in enhancing employee engagement, increasing productivity, reducing turnover rates, and ensuring you have the right people at the right place at all times. Companies that excel in talent management produce nearly 50% higher revenue per employee than those that don’t. And the results get even better when you employ a talent management system.

So, what is a Talent Management System?

A talent management system is a suite of tools, usually composed of modules, together designed to streamline and automate various aspects of talent management. These modules enable you to streamline your HR processes, increase efficiency, and make data-driven talent decisions. By doing less of what does not matter, talent management systems help you focus more on strategic initiatives and putting the human touch to human resources.

Components of a Talent Management System

Talent management systems are composed of several modules, each usually responsible for one stage in the employee experience journey. You can always choose to opt for a single module, all modules, or anything in between.

Here are the main modules you would usually find in a talent management system:

1. Recruitment:

The recruitment module in a talent management system usually offers features such as applicant tracking, candidate sourcing, and collaborative hiring. These tools simplify the recruitment workflow, making it easier for you to manage job postings, track applicants, and evaluate candidates more efficiently by providing tools for resume screening, skills assessments, and interview scheduling. Not only do recruitment modules help organizations attract top talent by simplifying the recruitment process, but they also provide candidates with a better candidate experience. They provide them with a centralized platform to apply for jobs, submit their resumes, and track their application status, thus, reducing communication gaps between candidates and recruiters.

The recruitment module in a talent management system also provides you with valuable insights into recruitment metrics such as time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and source of hire. These analytics help you make data-driven decisions to optimize your recruitment strategies and improve overall hiring outcomes.

2. Onboarding:

Including an onboarding module in your talent management system helps you improve new hire engagement and retention. An onboarding module offers features such as digital onboarding checklists, automated workflows, self-service portals, new hire paperwork automation, and compliance training. These features simplify the onboarding workflow, make it easier for you to track the new hires’ progress, ensure your compliance with legal requirements, and provide an overall superior employee experience. Knowing that effective employee onboarding can improve employee retention by 82%, these onboarding journey enhancements cannot be underestimated.

An onboarding module also enables you to evaluate new hires more efficiently by providing tools for skills assessments, performance reviews, and feedback collection. It also provides you with valuable insights into onboarding metrics such as time-to-productivity, engagement levels, and retention rates. These analytics help you design your onboarding journeys more efficiently and effectively.

3. Performance Management:

Performance management is one of the central modules in any talent management system. As the name implies, it helps you improve your overall organizational performance by aligning employee goals with business objectives.

A performance management module provides a singular platform for managing performance, that comes with handy features such as goal setting, performance reviews, feedback tools, skills assessments, 360-degree feedback, and performance analytics. These features simplify the performance management workflow, making it easier for everybody in your organization, managers and employees alike, to manage goals, evaluate performance, and track progress.

Using such a data-based, accessible platform helps maintain a fair and transparent performance management process and provides you with valuable insights into performance metrics such as goal attainment, skill development, and engagement levels.

4. Learning and Development:

Including a learning and development module in your talent management suite is a great plus. L&D modules simplify the learning and development workflow, making it easier for you to manage training programs, track employee progress, and more efficiently develop employees’ skills and knowledge.

It all starts with skills assessments that help you identify skills gaps within your workforce, thus enabling you to design personalized, targeted learning experiences for your employees based on their skills, interests, and career goals. Moreover, many L&D modules come with a wide library of online learning resources, such as e-learning courses, webinars, and virtual classrooms, that help your employees learn at their own pace anytime, anywhere.

5. Compensation Management:

A compensation management module in your talent management suite helps you ensure that your organizational compensation schemes are competitive and transparent. With features such as salary benchmarking, bonus planning, and equity management, compensation modules streamline compensation processes around your organization, thereby ensuring that employees are fairly compensated for their work. By accurately and fairly allocating bonuses, awards, and merit-based compensation, these modules help you retain top talent.

The cherry on top of the cake is that by automating manual compensation processes such as salary calculations, bonus allocations, benefits administration, and report generation, you save time and reduce your administrative costs. Knowing that HR managers lose 14 hours per week on tasks that can be automated, the time-saving benefits of using a compensation module cannot be underestimated.

6. Succession Planning:

Succession planning in a talent management system automates your succession planning process, helping you objectively assess and identify high-potential employees to develop them for future leadership and key position roles. This ensures a smooth transition when key employees leave or retire and improves employee retention as employees enjoy clear growth paths within your organization. Unsurprisingly, some of the features to expect in a succession planning module are career pathing, talent mapping, and leadership development.

Perhaps, the key advantage of succession planning modules is that by providing objective insights into employee performance, potential, and readiness for advancement, they help you base these critical succession decisions on data and evidence, instead of gut feeling and bias.

How to Select the Right Talent Management System for You

Now that you know the value a talent management system can bring to your organization, it is crucial that you select the right one that works for you. We have compiled these steps to help you make this decision wisely:

1. Assess Your Organization’s Needs: When you want to make change, it may seem tempting to try to do a lot at once. However, that would be counterproductive and would deprive you of many lessons learned along the way. Instead, start by evaluating your organization’s talent management requirements, identify the key areas where you need support, and invest in relevant modules first.
2. Define Your Objectives: Clearly define what you want to achieve with the new talent management system to evaluate your options based on clear criteria.
3. Research Available Solutions: Conduct thorough research on available talent management suites. Read reviews and ratings from trusted sources and consider factors such as functionality, ease of use, customization options, integration capabilities, scalability, and vendor reputation. One of the best ways to check for reputation is to ask for references and recommendations from other organizations that have implemented the talent management system you are considering to gain insights into their experience.
4. Evaluate Vendor Expertise: Assess the expertise and experience of potential vendors. You want a vendor with a proven track record in talent management systems development and implementation, relevant industry knowledge, good customer support, and the ability to meet your organization’s unique requirements.
5. Request Demos and Trials: Request demos or trials from shortlisted vendors to get hands-on experience with their systems. Evaluate the user interface, features, and overall user experience. Don’t make this decision alone; involve key stakeholders from other relevant departments in the evaluation process.
6. Consider Integration Capabilities: Ensure that the talent management system you are considering can seamlessly integrate with your current systems, such as HRIS (Human Resources Information System), payroll software, or learning management systems.
7. Check Data Security and Compliance: Verify that the talent management system you are considering complies with data security regulations and industry standards. Consider factors such as data encryption, access controls, backup and recovery mechanisms, and compliance with local or global privacy laws.
8. Evaluate Total Cost of Ownership: Consider the total cost of ownership for the talent management system. Evaluate factors such as licensing fees, implementation costs, ongoing maintenance fees, training expenses, and potential customization or integration costs.
9. Make an Informed Decision: Based on your evaluation and analysis, select the talent management system that best aligns with your organization’s needs and objectives.

Choose the Right Talent Management System for You

Remember that choosing the right talent management system is a critical decision that can impact your organization’s talent management effectiveness. Take your time to evaluate different options and involve key stakeholders in the decision-making process.

At XpertLearning, we’re experts in talent management systems. If you’re interested in knowing more about our talent management solutions or are interested in viewing a live demo, you can visit our talent management solutions page.

While employee health and safety programs have been conducted in organizations for as long as one can remember, ‘well-being’ programs are new to the show. By 2016, The Global Wellness Institute reported that 52% of organizations in North America and 23% of organizations in Europe were starting to have well-being programs in place. Today, 87% of employees consider health and wellness offerings when choosing an employer, and even some governments worldwide, such as the UAEian government, are pioneering having national well-being and happiness agendas.

But what exactly is well-being? And how can it be achieved at work?

In this blog post, we’ll explore what well-being is, why it’s important, and what organizations can do to guarantee creating work environments that support employee well-being.

What is Well-Being?

According to Psychology Today, well-being is ‘the experience of health, happiness, and prosperity. It includes having good mental health, high life satisfaction, a sense of meaning or purpose, and the ability to manage stress.’ Well-being is vital because it is a measure of people’s quality of life. People who have high well-being simply enjoy life more.

Since well-being is centered around how people perceive their lives, it is crucial to realize the subjectivity of the experience. In other words, people attribute their well-being or lack thereof to different factors, depending on what they consider of intrinsic value to them. This means that there is no one-sure-way to well-being nor any one-size-fits-all solution.

The Elements of Well-Being

Well-being is the combination of a mix of feeling good and functioning well. This is because it is the composite result of four different aspects of health: physical, mental, emotional, and social health. Traditional organizational health and safety programs were focused on the physical aspect of well-being, to the detriment of the other factors.

Organizations and employees today know better. This can be attributed to many factors such as the mental health awareness resulting from the 2020 pandemic, the demographic shifts of more millennials in executive roles and more Gen Z joining the labor force, and the global focus on sustainable development rather than the myopic focus on economic development.

The Current Status of Well-Being

With this in mind, what is the status of employee well-being in the workplace today? In the Middle East and the world?

Research by Deloitte that covered 2,100 employees and C-level executives across four countries, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia shows disappointing results but increased awareness. According to this research, around one out of three employees and executives struggle with some form of fatigue or poor mental health. On the flip side, however, the tides are changing and increased awareness about the importance of well-being is leading the way. In fact, 68% of employees and 81% of the C-suite say that improving their well-being is more important than advancing their careers.

The results are not significantly different in the Middle East either. Research by McKinsey that covered four Middle Eastern GCC countries— Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Qatar— shows that one in three GCC employees report burnout symptoms.

Why Well-Being Matters?

Organizations may wonder what should make them responsible for protecting and promoting their employees’ well-being. Well, the answer is simple! Employee well-being affects almost every aspect of organizational performance that organizations care about.

1. Increased Employee Retention

Globally, employees reporting high levels of toxic behavior at work are more likely to experience burnout, leading to an increased intention to quit. When organizations focus on creating work environments that promote employee well-being, including their psychological health, they benefit from increased employee loyalty and less talent shortage.

2. Increased Employee Productivity

Research by the International Labor Organization (ILO) shows that there is a considerable link between well-being and productivity. ‘The “happy worker” hypothesis provides evidence that higher levels of job satisfaction promote productivity. On the other hand, if well-being in the workplace or in general is low as a result of high levels of stress, productivity may be negatively affected.’

3. Increased Organizational Competitiveness

Happy employees are not only more productive, but also more engaged, creative, and innovative. When employees are highly engaged, this gives their organizations access to their discretionary efforts, which leads to increased performance, affecting product development, revenue generation, and, ultimately, profitability.

What Organizations Can Do to Promote Well-Being

For organizations to thrive today, they should include well-being programs in their cultural agendas. Here is a list of some best practices that can help.

1. Measure your organizational health

 You cannot manage what you cannot measure. Organizations like McKinsey provide tools like the Organizational Health Index (OHI) Survey to measure your organizational well-being and benchmark it to other organizations. This kind of measurement tells you what your organizational baseline is and what areas of well-being you need to improve on.

2. Start with a few areas of focus

A common mistake that organizations can make is to jump on the well-being wave with unbridled enthusiasm, which may lead to increased disappointment and frustrations when initiatives fail and can stretch your resources too thin. Instead, after identifying your organizational well-being areas of improvement, choose 1-2 areas of focus, succeed there, and then grow into other areas. Cultural changes take time and resistance is not unlikely.

3. Start change at the top

Regardless of what organization-wide internal communication campaigns say, it is the decisions that executives make every day that, ultimately, impact what priorities managers and employees shall have and how work shall be done. If organizations want to prioritize well-being, executives must create well-being agendas, develop well-being learning strategies, and, most importantly, model positive well-being practices themselves.

4. Make change possible from below

 Empower employees by making the organizational conversation around well-being public, encouraging employees to take action against toxic behavior using well-being hotlines, and creating employee well-being resource groups. Moreover, 63% of employees expect you to challenge what is normal by encouraging flexible working hours, introducing 4-day work weeks, and creating no-zoom meeting days, to name a few.

5. Promote transparency around well-being

It has been a tradition for large organizations to announce their annual results to customers, employees, and shareholders. However, for so long, these announcements were limited to financial results, which is commonly known as the single bottom line. Instead, it is better for organizations now to measure and announce their triple bottom line. ‘What is the triple bottom line?’, you may ask. It is a sustainability framework that measures a business’ success in three key areas: profit, people, and the planet. By using the triple bottom line, it would be easier for stakeholders to track if organizations are prioritizing their own employees’ well-being on their path to profitability.

6. Follow a holistic approach to well-being

Remember that well-being is the combination of four aspects of health: physical, mental, emotional, and social health. Therefore, ensure your well-being strategy gives every aspect its due focus. Good hiring and promoting decisions, great teamwork environments, and recognition programs all support the emotional well-being of employees. Investing in health and safety equipment and training protects employees’ physical well-being. Good pay, child care, and healthy leave policies all promote employees’ social health. Flexible work arrangements and opportunities for growth and development support employee mental well-being and help them achieve their full potential. There is no one way of doing things. Well-being is a subjective experience, so it is better to provide a wide variety of programs and give employees the freedom to use what serves their definition of it.

Become a Happier Organization Today

If you’re interested in knowing more about how we can help you with your well-being goals or are interested in viewing a live demo, you can check out our corporate solutions here.