HR – a profession in transition

Talent management as we know it today is a process that emerged in the 1990s and continues to be adopted as organizations operating in a knowledge economy come to realize their employees’ skills and talents are core to driving business success. The main purpose of talent management is to develop specific and deliberate plans and processes to track and manage employee talent across the organization to effectively recruit, develop and deploy the organization’s “human capital” to meet existing and emerging business needs.

Like any emerging discipline, talent management is approached in different ways by different organizations. To some it is about focusing on high-worth individuals or roles in the organization while for others it is about how talent is managed generally – i.e. on the assumption that all people have talent which should be identified and maximized within the organization.

However, regardless of the approach the individual organization takes towards managing its talent, a consistent theme has emerged; HR seems unable to make a definitive move up the corporate ladder – in prestige or influence to drive talent management initiatives.

Without question, the HR profession has evolved from "personnel department" of the 80s and 90s, yet in some ways it’s as if corporate leaders have made a collective, unconscious decision that talent management is too important to be left to HR.

Echoing through many boardrooms is a sentiment that talent management is one of the most difficult, least understood and most important things for the organization to master. This is precisely why the most successful organizations have made talent management a priority for every leader, manager, and supervisor (not just HR) while reinventing HR to allow for a more strategic focus.

To allow HR to address the strategic demands of talent management, organizations are turning to technology to provide greater efficiency, and reduce the overhead associated with dozens of people management processes. The notion of a “talent management suite” of software has captured the attention of many organizations looking for a single platform to provide ease-of-use, consistency, and data integration that can stitch together the disparate pieces of employee management across the enterprise and provide insight via metrics and data analysis.

What would have traditionally been an overwhelming software implementation project for many large organizations, has become feasible with the introduction of web-based, on-demand solutions. The idea of replacing multiple systems (recruitment, compensation, performance management, etc.) would have been unthinkable and even impossible for many organizations prior to the on-demand delivery model. This new era of technology is transforming HR and the organization by providing everyday tools that can help foster a culture of managing talent.

One company leading the on-demand talent management suite space is US-based Vurv Technology, headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. Vurv’s web-based software and services address the number one business challenge today – the ability to find, hire, engage and retain the right talent to build a successful company and drive top performance.

Vurv’s on-demand talent management suite provides companies of all sizes with the applications and services they need to address all of the key steps in the employment lifecycle in order to engage talent and drive top performance. Vurv’s talent management suit includes:

• Vurv Recruit – Attract, hire and onboard the right talent, while reducing costs

• Vurv Perform – Develop, motivate and retain the right talent through performance management and effective succession planning

• Vurv Compensate – Automate complex compensation planning strategies to reward performance and drive desired business outcomes

• Vurv Optimize – Automation, decision support and compliance for workforce integration, restructuring events and off-boarding

Vurv’s 2,000+ customers comprise over 4.4 million individual users at some of the most successful and renowned brands in the world, including BusinessWeek's Best Place to Start a Career and FORTUNE's Best Place to Work and Most Admired Companies in 8 distinct industries.
Examples of organizations that use Vurv solutions to manage their talent include:  

• Porsche: Porsche was able to engage its workforce by using Vurv to inspire employees to take an active role in their career development by participating in the performance review process. “The review process for employees is no longer something that happens to them, but something they participate in,” says J. Heath Henson at Porsche.

• Wynn Resorts: Wynn Resorts used Vurv’s software to interview 97,000 applicants and hire more than 9,000 high-caliber employees in about 90 days. To deal with this flood of candidates, the company created an Internet Café recruitment center, complete with 48 computers and 40 interview pods. Roughly 94% of the candidates applied online and Wynn Resorts received 97,000 applications in 3 months.

With a sound global infrastructure, designed to serve the needs of today’s global enterprises, Vurv operates five regional data centers located in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific to provide local hosting capabilities for global customers and to simplify compliance with regional data privacy requirements.

Vurv products are currently available in over 20 languages and more than 150 locals with personnel in each region to offer localized sales, support and implementation services.

Vurv’s complete talent management suite is built to be fast, flexible and easy-to-use, bringing the entire organization into the talent management process, from executives to prospective employees. Organizations that use Vurv have reported benefits to both the individual users and the company’s bottom line, including:

User benefits

• Fast, flexible and easy-to-use – On-demand web applications are fast, flexible and easy-to-use, reducing the time required to use them, while increasing frequency of use

• Comprehensive suite – A complete set of applications to address all key components of the employment lifecycle

• Global support – Local datacenters and support worldwide support a global customer base, including North America, EMEA and APAC

Business benefits

• Drive revenue and productivity – Helping organizations to get the most out of the 70% of total costs spent on people by engaging the right talent and aligning them with business objectives

• Reduce costs and risk – Reduce time and costs spent on recruiting, on-boarding, training, bad hires, turnover and compliance

• Builds an employer brand to attract the right talent – Today’s prospective employees are looking for a company that projects a strong brand, and delivers it in the workplace

The Economist recently reported, in a survey of global companies, that workforce risk is now seen as the most significant threat to companies and leads to billions of dollars in losses annually. 70% of the average company’s operating spend is on its people, yet a majority of companies still manage their employees with little more than bi-weekly payroll.

The costs of this mismanagement can be significant. According to a recent report by Aberdeen Group, most new hires decide to stay or leave in the first 6 months and it is estimated that disengaged employees can cost companies upwards of $350 billion each year. A National Institute of Business Management study claims that employers will have to replace 60% of their staff over the next 3 years, an equally costly prospect.
Add to that, a new generation entering the workforce, baby boomers moving rapidly towards retirement and growing fears of a recession, both employers and employees face significant and daunting challenges ahead.

No matter what the business, people are the key to its performance and no matter what the approach to talent management, HR remains in the people business. As companies get “back in the huddle” to plan business strategy moving forward, they need tools to strategically manage talent, from recruiting to retirement, and make sure that those efforts are driving toward business goals.

This is where an organization like Vurv can have a dramatic impact on the future of HR in the organization. No longer is the vendor an afterthought, or simply a supplier of technology to enable process improvement. Today, organizations live Vurv engage with their customers long before the software implementation, and continue to work with customers through multi-year, multi-product rollouts.

Vurv offers clients access to best-practice methods from around the globe, the latest research on talent management, and a host of services designed to educate and inform HR practitioners on how to successfully implement technology and drive a culture of talent management.

And not to be overshadowed is Vurv’s approach to connecting its customers to one another. “Our customers make up some of the worlds most innovative and creative talent management brands,” says Kevin Marasco, Vurv’s SVP of Marketing. “We found that connecting HR leaders from organizations that have successfully implemented talent management technology with those who now facing this new challenge has given HR the ammunition it needs to present a compelling business case to senior management.”

As HR technology continues to evolve, HR practitioners must evolve along with it. HR leaders must be well versed in the language of technology, business and people to remain relevant moving forward. Vurv offers HR a unique opportunity to participate in shaping the future of the profession and the technology that will empower it. Whether the organization is currently looking to implement new technology or not, a visit to Vurv’s corporate website on a regular basis can provide valuable insight into the evolution of HR and talent management.

Visit Vurv at www.vurv.com for white papers, case studies, research and more – and be relevant.