Technology puts the right pieces in the puzzle

On the 9th of June 2021, TechWolf organised the second Round Table with three CHROs; Jan Van Acoleyen (Proximus), Inge Diels (Deloitte) and Cathy Geerts (SD Worx). Read about their thoughts on the skills-based workforce in this three-piece blog series.

To increase the retention of your employees, you must - paradoxically - keep them employable. Knowing their aspirations in detail and monitoring them continuously is crucial. This yields a wealth of data. “It is a complex puzzle. Getting the pieces of the puzzle right is the way to better performance.”

Mapping out easily measurable skills alone is insufficient in a people-driven labour market. As an organisation, it is indispensable to know what employees want. The individual diversity is broad: meaningful work, short commuting distances, the type of customer segment or even the colleagues you work with on a project. “The right context helps you to keep talent engaged and in house. Know the energisers. That leads to better performance,” says Inge Diels of Deloitte.

Monitoring data

Jan Van Acoleyen points to the organisational perspective. How do you stay relevant as a company? The challenge of reconciling the needs for future organisational skills with the volatile data of what employees want in each career phase - that requires permanent and qualitative monitoring of data flows.

Artificial intelligence is an efficient technology to collect and analyse all talent-related data. When there is sufficient data awareness in the organisation, this technology can lay a clear and telling puzzle. The transactional tasks of an HR employee are diminishing. The emphasis shifts to, among other things, career coaching to help employees upskill and reskill.

Cathy Geerts of SD Worx: “Artificial intelligence enables the employee to explore areas of interest. The manager takes on a coaching role in this.” Inge Diels adds: “Actively managing staff rotations is possible by developing the right predictions and the corresponding strategy based on data.”

Cold feet

The culture of a company determines the extent to which an employee takes personal responsibility for his employability. “In knowledge-based companies, this probably goes more smoothly than in the industrial sector. Just as there are differences in terms of functions”, notes Jan Van Acoleyen. “The final ambition is that people take ownership themselves within the context in which you offer mobility and competence development so that they remain relevant in the future.”

He poses the question of organising mobility and learning opportunities across verticals. By looking at it from a skills perspective, you can enrich other organisations and vice versa.

Talking about what is needed for a next career step within and especially outside your company: tackling this subject is still tricky and the organisation might get cold feet. Inge Diels: “In a competition for talent, the first reaction is always one of protection. The shortage of talent means that the leadership is still not very open to such a cross-industry or cross-company proposal. We need strong business cases to further promote the idea.”

Read the first part of this blog series here and keep an eye on TechWolf's LinkedIn update next week for the final part!