Boosting organisational health by leveraging your talent

Leaders must future-proof their businesses by embedding resiliency into their core strategy to unlock competitive advantage. In today’s volatile market, it’s becoming clear that stakeholder capitalism will be a defining factor in resilient companies of the future – and talent is key part of this community.

We’ve seen employees leaving their jobs en masse as a direct result of pandemic uncertainty in the ‘Great Resignation’. And while an impending global financial crisis may slow this pace of movement, we are nonetheless facing a long-term talent shortage. In response to this increasingly critical challenge, tomorrow’s empowered enterprise sees their people as one of their greatest levers for growth and innovation – and prioritises them accordingly.

Where is the talent opportunity?

Most organisations spend significant time and cost in recruiting the best talent to grow their business and to fill existing vacancies. But with the economic headwinds creating a perfect financial storm, our clients are starting to place a laser focus on retaining and reskilling existing talent to enrich their organisational skills network – requiring a new look at talent management.

Effective talent management helps organisations leverage their human capital to achieve a transient competitive advantage. We’ve supported top CHROs in resolving their acute skills shortages with a democratic, employee-led, and AI-driven open resourcing concept – linking internal talent to business demand. This involves mobilising workers to deliver their unique skills and capabilities across departments and wherever it is most needed within the firm. It also requires consistent reassessment of career pathways to provide long-lasting fulfilling opportunities for existing and new talent.

Recognise ‘moments that matter’

Keeping employees motivated and inspired is critical to ensuring long-term corporate prosperity. This requires a human-centric approach that recognises the ‘moments that matter’ for employees. For instance, during the pandemic, enterprises that prioritised employee voice were able to leverage feedback to gauge how their people were feeling, what wellbeing support was required, and how to shape future decisions such as hybrid working policies. Disruptive technologies like natural language processing (NLP) take a step further, helping our clients identify employees at risk, evaluate engagement levels, and finding patterns across the organisation.

Now, as market-altering dynamics continue to dominate the news and people’s lives – from escalating energy costs, inflation, to interest rate hikes – employee voice will continue to be a strategic priority for the C-Suite to engage talent and produce actionable insights on sentiment, trust, and brand perception.

Operate on a clear purpose

Today’s employees are increasingly looking to their employer as the most trusted, competent, and ethical source of information, and a great organisation can be characterised by its ability to create value and operate on a clear purpose as well as inspire trust and engage with its people. Gen Z employees and all future hires will make their next job decisions around firms that are genuinely committed to delivering on their promises.

But given the cynicism often surrounding corporate values, purpose must be authentic. In my experience, purpose-driven organisations revolve around purpose-driven leaders. CEOs should actively connect their own personal values with the company culture that they are shaping to enable their purpose to come to life. And visible commitment to corporate purpose from internal and external leaders can play a significant role in the success of a company’s efforts.

Value exceptional and diverse talent

Organisations are facing urgent calls to leverage the voices of all their people. Creating a diverse and multifaceted team offers businesses the opportunity to unlock new market opportunities, tap into innovative thinking, and improve financial performance metrics. It is also becoming increasingly essential when recruiting prospective talent; a recent ‘Future of Work’ survey revealed that nearly two-thirds of employees would turn down a job offer if it came from an organisation with a culture that didn’t support diversity. But building a diverse team is more than just gender, race, and sexuality; it also requires the consideration of mental and physical health conditions, socio-economic background, religion, and caring responsibilities.

Additionally, the root causes of inequality in the workplace are often systemic and cultural, and thus not easy to fix quickly. Visible commitment to diversity from internal and external leaders is critical for the success of a company’s diversity efforts. For board members, this means asking senior management difficult questions about change outcomes and the impact on employees. Leaders should also equip their employees with the tools they need to have difficult conversations – from conflict resolution to problem solving, empathy, and active listening.

Human capital is typically the most important asset of any organisation. As stakeholder capitalism becomes a critical component of resilient businesses, companies who prioritise relationships with their employees will be the ones that develop a healthy organisation fit for the future. With an engaged and satisfied workforce, shareholders will reap the benefits of improved company outcomes.