From Selection to Development: Strategic Talent Management Is for All!

Complex talent assessment initiatives are often associated with large multi-national organizations. Though this is often true, smaller to mid-size organizations can also benefit from the implementation of strategic talent assessment tools and processes.

Organizations with a high volume of employees easily realize the benefits of using assessment tools to evaluate existing employees or screen potential job candidates; however, companies with a lower volume of employees can still gain a significant positive impact.

This becomes especially evident when evaluating the ‘revenue per employee’ shifts into today’s economy. For example – with the evolution of technology and the identification of efficiencies within a business, organizations can do more with fewer employees/people.

In today’s economy, organizations with a relatively low headcount can generate revenue-per-employee ratios over $1 million. For instance, Netflix has less than seven thousand employees, but when examining revenue, the revenue per employee is over $2 million.

Therefore, even smaller operations (from a ‘headcount’ perspective) can miss an opportunity to leverage their talent more effectively when not utilizing best in class pre-hire assessment tools and processes.

Smaller operations can miss an opportunity to leverage their talent more effectively when not utilizing pre-hire assessment tools and processes.

At SHL, we’ve realized the challenges that mid-market companies experience are relatively similar to what larger organizations face. However, there are some nuanced challenges facing smaller to mid-market sized organizations:

1. Employees needed with diverse skillsets.
   Due to scale, larger companies can leverage ‘specialists’ to focus on specific work activities.  However, employees in smaller to mid-size organizations are more likely to work across multiple functions requiring agility and the need to provide value in multiple ways.

2. Cost per employee.
   Though it is expensive to train new hires and cost incurred from turnover is high for both large and small organizations, smaller to mid-size companies can experience an incremental impact due to the relative contribution of each employee. Losing one employee in a 1,000-headcount organization (e.g., .001 % of the workforce) has less of a ripple effect than losing one employee in a workforce of 100 employees (e.g., 1% of the workforce). Remember the revenue per employee data from earlier? These are just two (of many) challenges faced by smaller to mid-sized organizations that illuminate the importance of identifying and hiring exceptional employees. At SHL we have excellent processes and solutions that can alleviate these challenges to support smaller to mid-market sized organizations. Below are two examples of solutions that directly address these challenges from both a pre-hire and post-hire perspective.

Selection: SHL Validated Assessment Catalogue

Conducting an in-depth validation study may not be possible for mid-market companies that lack ample incumbents to build a statistical model that predicts success. However, at SHL, we have industry-leading validated assessment tools that can be leveraged. Via an interview with organizational leaders to gain context, we can recommend assessment solutions that align with predicting success for similar roles and industries from our ample experience working with organizations across the globe.

Development: Occupational Personality Questionnaire

Using our best in class measure of personality, candidates can get detailed feedback on potential preferences or styles that might be helping or hindering their performance at work. This data can be used across the employee’s lifecycle to support them as they navigate their career.

To learn more about SHL’s products and solutions that can support your strategic talent initiatives, contact us today!