As many leading business people and financiers will tell you the most important thing in business is cash flow. If you have not got positive cash flow you have not got a business. The same can be said for your talent. If you do not have a strong pool of people, fresh ideas and approaches to feed your staffing requirements, your business can go stale very quickly.
I am not saying that companies need to change their entire staff on a regular basis, but for companies, organisations or even educational institutions to move forward, there is always a need fresh talent. The challenge is where to find it and how best to manage that process.
There are two distinct solutions that companies can implement. Either use the traditional recruitment agency or headhunter support model, or manage the process in-house. I don’t want to repeat the obvious, but it baffles me why companies both large and small, multi-national and not for profit don’t manage and invest properly in their own talent banks.
Whilst companies are investing significant sums into talent development and training, internal processes and complex trading or business intelligence systems, they still don’t put the same emphasis on finding the right talent to meet their needs. And this usually means that they struggle to find the right people and often end up paying the price for it.
There are however, some companies who are looking forward to future proof their business by building their own talent banks. In short, they manage their own recruitment through a fully branded portal that allows the company or organisation to post jobs and build a relationship with a potential workforce.
By managing their talent bank portal businesses will not only be able to engage with their potential staff directly but also build up a database of people who not only want to work for that company but also have specific skills. This talent bank or database can then be used to help proactively identify potential staff who have already registered and also enhance the overall brand experience.
If you, as a business, get the right technology partner the talent bank can screen out and help identify the people that you should meet. These cloud-based recruitment tools allow for unlimited postings, applicant screening and tracking and employer branding – an area that companies are starting to think about and invest in.
There is still an investment that each company needs to make into a talent bank, apart from the financial investment, the talent bank still needs to be managed and populated and this is where your in-house team earn their stripes. They need to ensure the site is up-to-date at all times, that there are regular new postings and, most importantly, regular – but not intrusive – communication to all those that have registered through the Talent bank.
This is the main investment that the business needs to make and it is tangible deliver a long term ROI.
As the economy slowly starts to pick up, the success of companies will mirror that growth. If companies don’t find the right talent to sustain that growth, they will not survive. Companies who invest in their finding and engaging with their talent properly will reap the rewards, but, like a traditional bank, the more funds it has, the more it can offer its customers. Talent banks are becoming increasingly important and seen as a way to protect your business from stagnation and a brain drain. Don’t miss this opportunity because your future talent isn’t valued as much as as it should be.
Tony is CTO at Keystone Employment Group responsible for delivering online Talent Banks in the higher education sector. With over 10 years expertise in online recruitment and resourcing platforms, Tony has designed and delivered the technical and operational infrastructure that provides the core framework for DirectTemping - a white label talent bank solution for organisations non-permanent staff. Tony's involvement with the software industry goes back many years, having worked with government employment initiatives, IT specialists such as Computacenter and Netscalibur, as well as with Diageo, where he was Corporate IT Manager.
