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The intersection between HR strategy and HR technology

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Talent Evolution versus Revolution

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If you just bought one of the new 3D TVs that have been on he market for a year or so, i have bad news for you. Its already old technology. Sure, 3D is brand new, and its going to be around for a long time. But wearing glasses will be gone in a year or two. The current set of 3D TVs out on the market utilize the simplest and most obvious form of creating a 3D image – it presents different images to each eye, simulating the different angles that the eyes wold usually visualize depth with. Whether this is done with glasses that shutter the image at high speeds, or glasses that filter images bed on horizontal and vertical filtering, it does not matter, you are basically presented with a different image to each eye. As I said, is obvious.

Now, say you could trick the brain instead of the eyes. Your eyes perceive depth based on different viewing angles that the brain then interprets into three dimensions. But the brain can also read depth based on the amount of time that it takes for multiple slices of depth to be received into the eyes. For example, when you look at someone’s face, the light rays from their nose are received before the light from their ears. While this amount of time is completely imperceptible, if you can create a an image of someone’s face that is received over multiple, almost instantaneous moments, you can trick the brain without having to trick the eyes. ((this is indeed one of the methods being used in new, glassesless 3D technologies such as television. Unfortunately the cost of production is incredibly high, uses up to eight cameras, as opposed to the two cameras necessary for traditional glasses 3D viewing.))

The point is that while 3D is the new wave of television viewing, and while the 3D concept does not change between current and future technologies, the actual technology is a huge leap of revolution, not evolution. We are using a completely different concept to simulate a three dimensional image, even though the end result is the same. But now we can do it in the foreseeable future without tools like glasses between ourselves and the image.

The same goes for talent management. The first round of talent management was pointed in the right direction. We knew that the end result we were going after was to acquire higher quality talent, develop them with more rigor, and retain the high quality talent for a longer period of time. Whether this was actually effective or just an automation of the process is debatable, but the end vision was clear.

Today’s vision of talent management end state has not really changed from what I described above, but the means are no longer process based. Instead, we realize that each of the individual processes must integrate with each other to create meaningful programs that we had not thought about years ago. Our cohesive talent programs are not based in technology or simple process flows, but the integration of multiple programs and the data they each individually provide tho the broader talent strategy.

We can view people all we want for performance purposes, but a performance view does not provide abundant talent insight to a pharmaceutical that needs to focus on senior scientists, or a services organization that needs to move high quality talent around the organization to grow the next generation of leaders. Simple talent management techniques and processes are good in what they do, but they don’t vision the specific end state of each organization without the input of many other areas.

Today’s talent management is not a simple evolution from where it was several years ago when the vendors led our thinking around what talent management should be. Todays talent management has finally focused on what we as organizations need to individually accomplish out of it, we have surpassed what the vendors could have provided as a generic basis, and leapt to new applications that are inwardly and uniquely focused on ourselves. We will continue to depend on our technologies to aide us in data, process and integration, but application of end state will come from within ourselves and our organizations, not from vendors. For years, the HR industry had depended on HR technologies like applicant tracking, then core HRMS, then talent management for diction. I think we have finally turned the tide, we have finally turned the corner and started creating for our own. That i the revolution.

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2 responses to “Talent Evolution versus Revolution”

  1. […] Now, say you could trick the brain instead of the eyes. Your eyes perceive depth based on different viewing angles that the brain then interprets into three dimensions. But the brain can also read depth based on the amount of time that it takes for multiple slices of depth to be received into the eyes. For example, when you look at someone’s face, the light rays from their nose are received before the light from their ears. While this amount of time is completely imperceptible, if you can create a an image of someone’s face that is received over multiple, almost instantaneous moments, you can trick the brain without having to trick the eyes. 1 […]

  2. Devon Shane Avatar

    “For years, the HR industry had depended on HR technologies like applicant tracking, then core HRMS, then talent management for diction. I think we have finally turned the tide, we have finally turned the corner and started creating for our own.” I think it is great that HR is starting to create their own solutions, but I still think HR vendors can play a significant role in the evolution from automated archaic processes to fluid systems that look holistically at the organization and provide solutions that are really new and innovative. That is what we are trying to do at UpMo, Inc. as we hone our solutions for employee-centric career management that empowers employees, provides truly useful data to HR, and takes a lot of the burden of career development off of HR! We are working closely with seasoned HR executives and thought leaders and piloting the solution at various corporations in a variety of industries to ensure that we are creating something evolved that meets the real needs of HR today…