It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Well, that might be a bit dramatic. But, it does describe the landscape of talent acquisition right now. The workforce is not panicking, but it’s certainly approaching frenetic.

Those companies who know how to recruit quickly, manage service providers, and select an HR Technology stack, will be successful. However, the candidate pools seem to be dwindling. 

After all, unemployment is incredibly low, and in-demand candidates are well…it’s in the name. It feels as though no matter which recruitment or TA strategy you employ, it’s going to be hard to hit hiring goals.

As the business landscape continues to change, one of the top concerns for our new clients seems to be Talent Pipeline Strategy. Everyone has positions to fill, but not many are catching the eye of the top talent in their industry. 

What is a Talent Pipeline?

Talent pipelines are the steps potential employees take to become employed. They include the steps candidates take from leads to employees, for instance. As prospects move through the pipeline, they proceed to the next stage. As with other modern recruiting methods, talent pipelines were influenced by proven marketing and sales concepts. 

A talent pipeline is crucial for organizations looking to hire and retain top talent. Employees who feel that they are contributing to an organization’s talent pipeline are more likely to stay with an organization for a longer period than those who do not. In addition, they are more likely to recommend their company to others.

In every department that generates talent, such as customer service, sales, product, engineering, marketing, accounting, or human resources, talent pipelines should be set up. Then, talent will be available when you need it. 

A good talent pipeline includes people with deep industry experience who can move candidates seamlessly between your organization and your open requisitions. Rather than JUST filling open positions, you’re now focused on candidate relationship management. 

Developing a long-term talent pipeline is beneficial for any company, large or small. Among the many benefits of diversifying your talent pipeline are providing individual candidate experiences, enhancing the employer brand, and diversifying your applicant pool.

Building or optimizing your talent pipeline strategy is a smart way to solve today’s issues and begin building your strategy for whatever comes next. But how? The good news is this: We’re here to help you stop being reactive and start getting predictive. Here is how to build and revitalize your talent pipeline.

How to Create a Talent Pipeline

1. Define talent needs. You cannot manage what you don’t measure. A tired adage? Sure, but not because it’s not true. The talent needs of your organization must be the first step in revitalizing your talent pipeline strategy. Why? Because requirements have changed, and so has the workforce. From your potential new hire’s desire to work in a hybrid environment, to your current team suffering from hidden burnout, it’s crucial to see your workforce and talent pool for what it is right now rather than what it was before.  
2. Source talent aggressively. Just using LinkedIn will no longer cut the mustard. Every sourcing channel at your disposal should be in use. Search your ATS for candidates who “got away”, bring in an on-demand team to fill the pipeline, use alternative social sourcing methods, and network away (safely.) In order to have a healthy pipeline, you need to get the candidates in there, and moving. This will help measure against your current employees to assess culture fit, identify skills gaps and assist with succession planning (a part of healthy talent pipelines.) 
3. Build relationships. If sourcing aggressively and building relationships seem to contradict one another, you’re not the only one. However, building relationships doesn’t have to be at odds with an aggressive sourcing strategy. In fact, once you have built your candidate experience roadmap, you can take every newly sourced candidate through it easily. Haven’t built one yet? Give us a call.  Even if you don’t have a formalized candidate experience journey or process, you can still ensure you are building relationships with every candidate touch (email, phone call, social contact, etc.) 
4. Ensure talent experience is consistent across all stages of the recruitment journey. Speaking of the experience, how DOES talent make its way through your processes? Have you checked them in a while? Going through your own ATS, career site, interview rubric and more can really open your eyes to what candidates experience when they come through the proverbial door. When you see a screw a little loose, tighten it. When you notice a gap, fill it. This could be as simple as training your hiring managers on faster interviewing or implementing a simpler onboarding form.  
5. Make the talent pipeline an integral part of the leadership team’s objectives. If leadership isn’t backing it, it will be extremely hard to continue to focus on talent pipeline strategy. Focus on getting your colleagues to buy into the concept NOW, when the pain is the most acute. Your actions and plans laid now will create a much brighter talent acquisition strategy overall tomorrow.  
6. Optimize talent pipeline over time with talent analytics. When you can easily see your time to hire, cost per hire, velocity to hire, retention per manager, onboarding and training time, and all the talent analytics a good platform offers visibility into, you can more effectively tweak and optimize your talent pipeline over time. If you don’t have these analytics in place, work with a knowledgeable consultant to get them implemented while you focus on recruiting. 
7. Stop thinking about talent like a transactional process and make talent central to company strategy. This is becoming more clear to leadership all the time. Company strategy depends on talent, from the boardroom to delicatessen, and we are all learning that right now. The issue is, many have short memories. Strike while the iron is hot to ensure that even when the candidate market gives us room to breathe, your talent strategy has become so interwoven with company strategy, it’s impossible to untangle them. How do you do this? One key initiative many of our clients are doing is to tie financial data to people data and find the correlations to help them make smarter, more proactive choices.  
8. Make the talent pipeline part of the talent growth strategy. This seems obvious, no? But for many, talent pipelines are a “nice to have” and not a crucial part of the talent growth plan. We believe this is shortsighted and will ultimately backfire. Building a pipeline of talent is always a smart move because while a company’s memories are short, people’s memories are long. They remember how they’re treated and acknowledged during both good and bad times. 
9. Look beyond talent acquisition metrics and build a talent management process. Talent pipeline doesn’t stop at the first-day orientation. It’s a longer play than that. Your current employees are also part of your talent pipeline whether you believe it or not. In fact, many of the Great Resignation numbers being touted in recent months are those who retired early or decided to stay home due to a need to care for a child, parent, or loved one. The recruiter inside me says those folks could be persuaded to make a move back into the workforce. However, if your company has poor talent management processes or drops the ball on engagement or retention, how can you expect them to return (or even entertain a referral conversation?) 
10. Optimize talent pipeline through continuous improvement every day. You knew it was coming. What we do daily becomes a habit. Just like keeping clean data makes your business run more smoothly, so too does keeping your pipeline healthy and flowing. Some TA professionals do this by “batching”, managing all candidate info requests on one day, calling their “almost there” candidates another. Others focus on specific roles at specific times rather than where they are in the funnel. Still more focus on time since the last interaction. Whatever method you land on, just ensure you are keeping the talent flowing through the pipeline, lest they become stagnant. 

 

What if you already have a talent pipeline? Here are 4 steps to get your pipeline revitalized and ready to take on 2022:

Talent Pipeline Boost #1: Refresh Your Employer Brand 

It might be time to brush up on your marketing skills. Often the first step in building a strong talent pipeline is to rethink your company’s branding approach. High-quality candidates will come to you because of your reputation as an employer. Especially in a market that’s beset by a pandemic and is in need of greater racial diversity. Creating a brand that reflects the values, culture, and vision of your organization is essential.

As the world moves towards a post-covid future, it will become even more crucial. Candidates can observe how organizations responded to the crisis. Ultimately, what matters is what we do, not what we say.

In difficult economic times, some of the “employers of choice” were among the first to announce furloughs and layoffs. As a result, awards and titles mean very little in the real world to candidates who suspect they may not be totally true.

Creating a great employer brand might seem like something you do when talent is a little easier to find. Why now, when you have enough on your plate? Well, employer brand is one of those things that can be tough to get off the ground but pays dividends well into the future. If you are reading up on talent pipeline strategies, you’re likely already familiar with employer branding and may even have a very well-established one.

Employer brand also takes a hit when companies cast large recruiting nets and then barely speak to candidates. Be tactful in how you nurture those relationships so when you approach a candidate, who has likely already heard from six other recruiters today, they feel recognized as a person and an asset instead of just a body in the building. 

That said, the market has changed so drastically, that many of the tactics used by successful “best places to work”  just a couple of years ago are now either outdated or just not currently useful. For example, UGC (user-generated content) as a cornerstone of your employer branding strategy may not work right now, because many of your employees are too busy to contribute. 

 

READ NOW: The World of Work Has Evolved—and So Should Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

 

On the other hand, working with an expert to revamp your candidate experience, assess and improve your Glassdoor rating, or taking the time to build a better showcase for your benefits or DEI programs might be just the ticket. Focus on what matters to candidates now, like meaningful work, companies who support causes they care about, benefits that impact their lives every day, and flexibility to learn and grow. 

The net takeaway here? Employer brand is more than just what’s on the glossy surface. Employers must dig deeper to understand what makes candidates come to the party and what specifically makes employees stay. 

Talent Pipeline Boost #2: Identify High Priority Roles

Generally speaking, there are usually openings within a company that are more immediate than others or existing roles with higher turnover rates. Identify which roles take precedence and base your search on candidates whose skills fit those roles well. You may even consider internal candidates in more stable departments interested in moving to a more in-demand role. In order to identify these roles, try asking yourself and your team these questions: 

• What are your short- and long-term business goals?
• What skills do you currently have?
• What traits do you need in your future employees to navigate the next crisis?
• What skills do your current employees have that may be transferable?
• What trends can you see in your industry?
• What skills will you need in the future?
• Which jobs may become redundant due to automation?

This strategy is two-fold because your current talent is at risk of leaving if they don’t see a future with your company. Allowing opportunities for advancement while filling your own high-demand positions is a win-win. 

DEEP DIVE: Learn more about Internal Mobility with our in-depth look!

Develop Your Existing Workforce

Speaking of your current talent, it’s a great strategy to start developing their skillset now. Ensuring your current workforce is equipped with the skills and knowledge to succeed is a great way to build a pipeline of talent you already know and trust. The next time an opportunity comes available, you’ll have the perfect candidate ready and waiting.

Talent Pipeline Boost #3: Simplify the Candidate Journey

Future applicants will thank you for streamlining the process. Real talk? Candidates are in incredibly high demand at the moment, and unemployment and inflation are poised to stick around for the foreseeable. The market WILL cool down, but until it does, no one is going to:

• Send a resume and cover letter after they’ve been cold-sourced for a job
• Dig around on your site looking for the careers section
• Fill in an application that asks for the same information as is on their resume
• Go through a multi-screen application and assessment that doesn’t save 
• Apply for roles that aren’t upfront about compensation
• Schedule several interviews during the workday
• Spend more than 15 minutes on an application for a job they’re qualified for
• Waste time on a company that never responds back

Imagine someone is actively looking for a job and starts poking around. Your resume parser takes ten minutes to fill out while the next company’s application process takes an hour. You could have an interview scheduled with this applicant before they even finish applying for the next job. Throw in automated scheduling, chatbots to answer questions about salary and benefits, quick start dates, and gamified assessments, and you’ve made an arduous task almost enjoyable. 

 

CLOSER LOOK: Talent Attraction: The Rules Have Changed, Are Your Recruiters Keeping Up?

 

Simplifying your candidate journey makes it easier for passive candidates to easily apply. If they’re gainfully employed, a mild curiosity may not be enough for them to complete that hour-long application, but it may be enough for ten minutes of their time. 

 

Revitalize your Pipeline Step #4: Partner with a Pro

You’ve likely tapped your network, and in this climate, you’re not alone. When you team up with a recruiting agency, you acquire their network as well. You receive professional, round-the-clock help in your efforts to fill your pipeline and your next open role. Managing a business is hard, but building a strong workforce is even harder. PREDICTIVEHR can help you gain access to candidates that you might otherwise never know existed.

It boils down to how you plan, strategize, and use technology to support long-term business needs. Get ahead of the curve to hire better talent since the demand for the best candidates is only going to increase.

Recruiters ought to take advantage of this opportunity. The job market today is vastly different from years ago. Managing a business is hard, but building a strong workforce is even harder. PREDICTIVEHR can help you gain access to candidates that you might otherwise never know existed.

 

Contact Us to build your pipeline with the best in the industry.

As companies everywhere continue seeking top talent for post-pandemic recovery and to build for the future, they’re smart to first understand what they already have within their own workforces. They need to decide who can be upskilled, reskilled and deployed, versus immediately shopping for talent outside the organization. 

7 Common Missteps with Internal Mobility

Not understanding why people leave their jobs. Most employees leave their jobs because of opportunities elsewhere. If your company can show employees a clear career roadmap and growth opportunities down the road, they may feel compelled to stay.

Not realizing your top talent is in high demand. With the new work-from-anywhere reality, recruiters are now scanning the entire nation (and even the world) to find the best talent. That means your company’s top talent is a target. Actively focusing on internal mobility is the best way to keep them in place. 

Taking too narrow a view of functional roles. When employees leave a company, a large percentage (about 30-40%) go into totally different roles. For example, a marketing person may jump into sales. Or an HR person may transition to finance. It’s smart to realize that many employees are open to cross-functional moves—so don’t write off these possibilities.

Avoiding employee check-ins. The best way to stay up-to-date with employees is to keep your finger on the pulse. By doing engagement surveys, periodic pulse checks, open development conversations and 360-degree feedback sessions, you can tap into your employees’ perceptions and aspirations for career growth pathways, which can encourage internal mobility.

Failure to post jobs internally (or providing ample time to apply). Sometimes companies post jobs externally without ever posting internally, which precludes internal applications and causes frustration from would-be applicants. Other companies post jobs internally, but don’t give ample time to accept applications. By the time the job posts on LinkedIn or Indeed, it’s often too late for employees.  

Not encouraging employee referrals. Generally, hires from employee referrals improve the quality of candidates who apply, reduce hiring time and costs, and increase retention rates. According to Jobvite, 47% of referral hires have greater satisfaction and stay longer with companies. 

Focusing too heavily on today (and ignoring the future). Many companies are so attuned to their immediate business needs, they fail to consider whether their current workforce can help them achieve tomorrow’s strategic goals.

     Promoting talent from within provides a number of valuable benefits: 

• It drives engagement and retention. Actively recruiting internally sends a powerful message to employees that you care about their professional development. This helps build a culture of trust, which in turn increases engagement and encourages retention.  
• It offers a broader perspective. The ability to look at internal and external talent pools together provides big advantages in understanding how to hire efficiently and cost-effectively.
• Hiring is quicker. Screening calls and executive interviews aren’t always necessary when hiring internally because recruiters and hiring managers can easily find out about an employee’s performance. This minimizes your hiring stages and speeds the recruiting process.
• It shortens onboarding times. Everyone needs time to settle into their new jobs, but current employees have a head start: they are already acquainted with your processes and company culture.
• You’ll save money. Drawing on internal talent, you can avoid the cost of job board fees, sourcing costs or payments to hiring agencies. Some statistics show that external hiring may cost 1.7 times more than internal hiring. 

Considering all the good that can come from hiring internally, why don’t more organizations do it? Or have more success? Oftentimes, it boils down to several common missteps that can result in missed opportunities.

The Bottom Line
If you’re seeking top talent, you’ve likely got more options within your walls than you know. To optimize internal mobility, you need the skills, cutting-edge reporting tools and talent acquisition team that knows how to navigate the process to keep these valuable employees feeling appreciated, engaged and committed to growing with you. 

2020 brought significant change, especially for the US workforce. Telecommuting or remote working had slowly been on the rise prior to this past year, however, with the COVID-19 global pandemic, businesses had to transition from in-office to almost exclusively remote almost overnight.

With a COVID-19 vaccine becoming available, many organizations are asking themselves “when are things going back to normal?”, The short answer is, we likely won’t return to “normal” as we knew it. Despite the angst present with state shutdowns, changing rules, and social distancing, many Americans were able to benefit from the flexibility and convenience of working in totally virtual environment. Additionally, companies have seen benefits as well, such as lower real estate costs, equal or better productivity, and fewer restrictions on where they can look for talent. What was once feared by companies, is now being embraced as a new opportunity to evolve.

A new model companies are moving towards in 2021 is not just remote, it is a work-from-anywhere model. This model requires people and processes to operate seamlessly when people are not co-located and that requires technology to fill the gaps. The key to work-from-anywhere success, therefore, will be securing the right technology stack that is flexible and customizable to fit your organization’s unique needs.

Companies are assessing how best to assist and complement their people and processes with technology and the truth is, there is no playbook. There is a lot of great technology out there, but each company will need to optimize it differently to fit the needs of their business. We are all still trying to achieve the same outcome, to optimize our workforce, but how do you do that in a work-from-anywhere model?

Some key considerations for EVERY organization:

Digital Transformation

The make-up of your office will change, taking into consideration items like remote vs. in-office, salary vs. hourly, full-time vs. contract employees. Many companies will move to a “hoteling” model, where most employees do not have an assigned desk but will identify available desks when they are in the office. This means, on most days, employees will be working from anywhere else there is internet. This may impact your policies and procedures, on boarding, training, and development.

Communication

At any given time, you may have employees in the office, employees at home, or employees in a different time zone. Setting up communication channels and expectations is imperative. You will want to consider how to ensure transfer of knowledge, how you will foster collaboration and innovation, as well as what systems and tools you will deploy to make this happen.

Culture

Company culture remains a hot topic, as many are worried theirs will diminish with more and more employees working full-time out of the office. It might look different, but there are new approaches you can try out to keep the culture alive and employees engaged.

Talent Attraction & Internal Mobility

The way you attract talent will change, with the need to promote a remote workforce with extremely clear career paths. Transparency and the ability to clearly define for employees how they fit within new and changing structures is key.

Productivity

You may determine that the current measures you are using to track productivity will need to change with this evolution. The first step will be to identify the right Key Performance Metrics (KPIs) that make sense for tracking in your organization and how the organization will measure results.

Automation & Outsourcing

In this shift, we have seen a surge in new technologies that allow for automating certain tasks, as well as a desire to outsource historically not transformative tasks. Companies are taking more chances in outsourcing and automation and the ROI is proving to be worth it.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

An inclusive work environment does not just happen, it requires sustained effort. There will be greater opportunities to look across a broader geography to reach your diversity goals. Leaders will have to work harder to ensure that all employees are included and have equal opportunity.

Data Privacy

Data security has always been important, but security in a distributed environment will be even more important. Be sure you have the right system in place to protect you, and your employee’s information.

Expense Controls

Are you right-sized from a real estate perspective? Should you invest in physical locations in the future and where is the best country, state, or city to do so? Continuous review of expenses will continue to be critical.

Organizations can, and will, make this shift into a hybrid or work-from-anywhere model provided they have the right technology, tools, reporting insights and processes in place. Follow along with PredictiveHR, as we dive deep into the roadmap for workforce optimization in 2021.

UKG Dimensions (formerly Kronos Workforce Dimensions) has drawn increasing interest over the past year as many Workforce Central users are finally considering to make this leap. No doubt, new challenges brought on by the COVID-19 response these last several months have created a pressure test for businesses across all sectors. Leaders of these businesses are drawn to the idea of implementing adaptable, mobile-friendly workplace solutions for their new working realities. Dimensions fit that bill.

We recommend keeping a few crucial points in mind when considering a migration from Workforce Central to Dimensions.

Data Transfer Is Largely Optimized

That has got to be a huge relief to hear! Even at launch, Dimensions offered impressive compatibility for transferring data directly from Workforce Central. Often, just the thought of transferring the entirety of an enterprise’s data between solutions is a massive inhibitor to making this big leap! UKG has put in the groundwork to minimize manual data migration efforts between Workforce Central and Dimensions. One less reason to be hesitant.

Still Plan for an Adjustment Period

As with any migration between solutions, you and your employees will need some time to understand your new digital environment. Dimensions is designed to be intuitive by drawing on mobile-first best practices, and this should help lend some initial familiarity to features and functions. Still, the change between interfaces, replacement of specific modules, and beefed-up capabilities of others—often made possible by newer automation, machine learning, and AI integrations—will require some getting used to.

Proper preparation before migration and ample training and support post-migration can all help expedite your team’s successful adoption—and keep your adjustment period minimal. This is a large part of what we do to help our partners successfully complete their migrations by working with teams upfront to set important expectations and then bringing them all onboard through platform training once their implementation is complete.

Now Is a Great Time to Adopt Dimensions

As we near the end of 2020, so to draws the end of the Adobe Flash plugin. Dimensions offers a distinct advantage by being engineered from the start without Flash integration, simplifying some of IT’s struggles in trying to phase out these soon-to-be-obsolete features across their entire enterprise—at least as far as their workforce management solution is concerned.

Not only has Dimensions made significant strides since its launch in 2017, but UKG has a roadmap planned for the platform’s future. UKG will share insights into this roadmap next month at the first UKG Works conference (previously KronosWorks). This year’s fully digital format offers free registration for anyone with a UKG solution ID so that you can join the roadmap session, network with solution pros, and more, all from the safety and comfort of your office or home.

Eager for a 1-on-1 conversation about what migrating Dimensions would look like for you? Schedule a consultation with one of The Workforce Consulting Group’s implementation specialists today!

Now that Kronos and Ultimate Software have officially rebranded as Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG),  customers of their separate solutions want to know what this merger means.

If you are a Kronos Workforce Dimensions, Workforce Central, or Ultimate Software UltiPro user, fret not. These trusted offerings are only growing closer as a family of compatible, people-centric business solutions under the banner of UKG.

As long-standing Kronos service partners, we are excited about what UKG UltiPro HCM offers our Kronos Workforce Dimensions and Workforce Central clients. And we are also excited about how Kronos workforce solutions will help UltiPro payroll and HR software customers fortify their workforce management capabilities.

In anticipation of this merger, we knew our Kronos clients would want access to expert guidance on using UltiPro to serve their HCM needs better.

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Tap Into Single-Source UKG Workforce and UltiPro HCM Support

We are primed to help client partners customize and implement their complete set of UKG solutions. Whether you are grandfathered into UKG as an Ultimate Software or Kronos customer or new to these solutions altogether, our seasoned Kronos consultants and UltiPro experts are working together to deliver you the best in combined implementation support.

Our expertise gives us the confidence to ensure we can help businesses squeeze the most out of using UKG HR and workforce management solutions together. As UKG service partners, we deliver the added attention to tailor these solutions to more custom needs — helping users achieve their specific business goals in ways a standard, out-of-the-box implementation otherwise could not.

UKG Support and Implementation Experts

Your search for support ends here, whether you are a Kronos customer seeking to add strong HR, payroll, recruiting, and benefits capabilities with an UltiPro implementation, an UltiPro customer seeking the productivity and workforce management advantages of Workforce Dimensions, or someone newly interested in UKG’s combined offerings. Reach out to speak with one of Predictive HR’s UKG consultants, and we will pull together the best resources available to suit your business’s unique UKG implementation and optimization needs.

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