New research offers four steps to realign your HR function to the needs of the business.
By Angela Hills
We all know meeting an organization’s fundamental hiring needs is becoming more challenging by the day. It should not be shocking to hear that many of us are stuck in an endless cycle of source-hire-onboard-repeat, and struggle to act proactively and strategically.
To remedy this, some HR teams have turned to automating processes and adopting new recruiting technologies. Unfortunately, in doing so, many have lost sight of the true recruiting acumen that drives hiring outcomes: The ability of recruiters to engage with candidates.
C-level executives and business unit leaders have noticed, and they are not pleased. Cielo’s latest research, Talent Acquisition 360, uncovers a significant disconnect between the importance of recruitment activities to business stakeholders and the performance of these tasks by recruiters. The bottom line: The signal between talent acquisition and the rest of the business appears to be broken.
There is no doubt that ineffective recruitment impedes an organization’s ability to compete, grow, and succeed. In Cielo’s survey of stakeholders from nearly 700 organizations around the world, a significant portion voiced their displeasure with talent acquisition’s performance at every level, from strategic to core.
To solve this problem and reconnect with stakeholders, organizations must work to understand the needs of business partners, deliver on core recruitment activities, and provide strategic insights. Automation will not achieve this, but there are four action steps that will put HR on the right path.
Four Ways to Reconnect
There are four approaches to help realign the HR function with the needs of the business in mind in order to dramatically improve overall effectiveness:
Don’t forget the core. Whether it is through additional training, partnering with expert providers, hiring experienced new team members, or a combination of these things, the talent acquisition function must get back to basics in order to eliminate disconnects with stakeholders in core recruitment competencies. Creating a rock-solid foundation of recruitment capabilities should be a top priority.
Get in sync with leaders. Develop a deeper understanding of the needs of the business, the expectations of business unit leaders, and the importance of implementing standards of service for hiring managers. This can only be accomplished by communicating with stakeholders in an effective way, and delivering on the core and strategic elements of talent acquisition. Collaboration is a two-way street, so both parties must work together to ensure success.
Consistent quality is vital. Take a critical look at selection, assessment, and screening processes and close the communication loop with hiring managers to ensure that the talent acquisition process consistently delivers quality.
Step into strategy. Talent acquisition has the ability and responsibility to provide strategic thinking to shape business decisions. Setting KPIs and benchmarking helps drive results in the right direction and ensures that the strategic needs of the business are being met.
One Step Further: RPO
Transformation
The Talent Acquisition 360 also shows that organizations that partner with recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) providers are more than twice as likely to rate their talent acquisition performance as effective when compared to non-RPO users. These same organizations are also more likely to rank their teams as effective on every one of the 12 dimensions of talent acquisition that high-performing organizations demonstrate. These 12 dimensions are broken down into two categories:
• Strategic: capabilities that affect business performance as well as high-level talent acquisition outcomes
• Core: operational and process elements that support talent acquisition performance.
Each dimension has a role to play in a high-performing recruitment function, and together they drive lasting business results.
Survey respondents report that RPO is a practical and effective way to source top talent, improve the effectiveness of recruitment, and ultimately, help an organization maintain its competitive advantage and success. It provides a significant signal boost between the talent acquisition function and the rest of the business.
Though many challenges were uncovered in this report, the vast majority of C-level executives surveyed (89 percent) believe that talent is a core competitive advantage. That means talent is getting the executive support it deserves, so now is the time to build the talent acquisition function your organization deserves.
