Talent Acquisition

August 2011

Dear clients,

LeMaSa has just piloted a Collaborative Development Assessment Centre for Training Professionals. It took us some time to develop the Centre as we first had to do a thorough job analysis to identify the relevant competencies and then to select the simulations. Once we developed the simulations, we pre-piloted them to iron out any problems. The client worked with us in refining the simulations and to guide us in highlighting what they wanted to achieve with the Centre. I am glad to say that the pilot went well and that our client wil be able to use the centre to enhance their trainers’ competencies for the future.

LeMaSa is also exited about our plans to launch a technology platform for Assessment Centres. We are partnering with an international company and will invite all of you soon to a session where the platform will be show-cased. Virtual assessments with a personal touch will create the time and speed efficiencies that we all need.

In this edition we look at talent acquisition and the

factors driving its effectiveness, with a special emphasis

on the Employment Value Proposition. As the windy months

draw to a close, I wish you a happy and energising spring!

Kind regards

Sandra Schlebusch

Talent Acquisition
Talent Acquisition

Talent Acquisition involves the identification, attraction, sourcing and on-boarding of talent. A competitive talent acquisition programme is crucial to attract and retain skilled workers.

Organisations are experiencing several challenges with regards to the acquisition of talent, for example:

o The lack of workforce planning makes it difficult to do pro-active talent acquisition

o The quality of the available labour pools does not always meet the requirements

o The inability to reach (or connect with) ideal candidates

o The time that it takes to fill job vacancies

o A lack of required/competent HR resources

o Inadequate applicant tracking processes

o Confusion on how to find so-called passive applicants

o A disconnect on how younger workers need to be courted

o Lack of programmes that cater for the flexible work needs of workers that prefer part-time employment

o Organisational policies and procedures that enforce vacancy-based talent acquisition

o Labour legislation that reinforce vacancy-based talent acquisition processes

o Line managers not understanding strategic talent acquisition

o A lack of understanding with regards to social media and new technology in talent acquisition

A review of several studies shows that companies who perform well with regards to talent acquisition, implement some of the following best practices:

· Deliberately enhancing the organisation’s employer brand and reputation in the recruitment market

· Proactively searching for and communicating with potential candidates

· Marketing through new means (e.g. social networking sites, virtual worlds)

· Ensuring collaboration between hiring managers and recruiters on what skills, attributes and attitudes are desired in a candidate

· More aggressive in communicating job openings and job role needs with current staff

· Improve understanding of which applicant sources provide the best quality candidates

· Emphasising strategic workforce planning

· Improving candidate pre-screening

· Assessing candidates not only for job fit, but also company culture fit

· Being pro-active about passive candidates

· Line managers are involved in follow-through with candidates

· Beginning onboarding efforts earlier

· Soliciting new hire feedback

· Using the corporate website as a tool for showcasing the company’s culture and opportunities

· Ensuring a compelling EVP (Employment Value Proposition)

· Creating or improving a data repository of desirable active and passive job candidates in talent acquisition

· Recruiting by relationship to fill the candidate pipeline

Leveraging the Employment Value Proposition (EVP)
One of the best practices used in talent acquisition is to leverage the EVP. The EVP is the holistic sum of everything people experience and receive while they are part of a company. It can also be defined as the set of attributes that the labour market and employees perceive as the value they gain through employment with a company (Corporate Leadership Council, 2006). Creating a winning EVP means tailoring a company’s “brand” and “products” – the jobs it has to offer – to appeal to the specific people it wants to find and keep. A strong EVP excites people so that they recommit daily to giving their best. Research by the Corporate Leadership Council (2006) shows that a stronger EVP not only increases the depth of the labour market from which the organisation can source, but also ensures that new hires have much greater commitment to the organisation. These higher levels of commitment in turn lead to increased effort, performance, and retention. In fact, excellent delivery on the EVP can yield a workforce where 38% of new hires display the highest levels of commitment. Organisations with poor delivery of the EVP typically have less than one in ten employees who are highly committed to the organisation after one month of employment. EVP delivery has lasting impact on new hires. After 12 months of employment, 31% of new hires will have the highest levels of commitment at organisations with strong EVP delivery. That number is remarkably lower at organisations with poor EVP delivery, 3%. Given the substantial investments made in recruiting employees in to the organisation it becomes all the more imperative to ensure their commitment—and therefore performance and retention— through strong delivery of the EVP (Corporate Leadership Council, 2006). The Corporate Leadership Council (2006) clustered the value that an organisation could be perceived as providing into the following categories: Many companies do not succeed in managing their EVP’s effectively and consequently do not reap the benefits of a strong EVP to attract and retain staff. The Corporate Leadership Council (2006) identified the four most common reasons why companies do not build a strong EVP: · Problem 1: Misalignment with employee preferences. In this case the organisation EVP overemphasises unimportant characteristics and underemphasises critical attributes, e.g. HR often underestimates the importance of work and opportunity and overemphasises the importance of people. · Problem 2: Lack of segmentation across employee groups. Here the organisation does not alter its EVP to account for different preferences across employee segments, e.g. it offers the same EVP to a bank teller and a private banker. · Problem 3: Poor differentiation of the EVP. In this instance an organisation struggles to differentiate its EVPs in the labour market, e.g. Bank 1’s EVP is exactly the same as its nearest competitor’s EVP. · Problem 4: Failure to deliver on the attributes of the EVP. Here the organisation has failed to deliver the benefits it promises to its candidates during the recruitment process, e.g. promising exciting work and then the person is bogged down by administration The EVP information is used throughout the acquisition process and is very important when planning your employer branding communication in the marketplace to attract potential candidates and when you advertise vacancies.
talent
Acquisition