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Should You Create an AI-Powered Talent Marketplace?

After years of upheaval that have redefined society, business and work, we’ve entered a period some call the “Great Reflection.” During this era of mindfulness, employees everywhere are reevaluating what they truly want from their career and their employer. In response, companies are investing more heavily in workforce retention strategies. For instance, the internal talent marketplace concept is rapidly gaining momentum.

Why marketplaces? CIPD research says 30% of employers intend to increase wages in 2023. This is certainly one way to show people you value them. Who wouldn’t appreciate competitive compensation? But many people are looking for deeper reasons to stay onboard. As a result, more companies are focusing on employees’ career development concerns.

According to Gallup, 76% of people are seeking opportunities for professional growth. At the same time, modern businesses know they can’t advance their agenda without a future-ready workforce.

That’s why now is a good time to invest in an internal talent marketplace. This kind of solution offers multiple pathways to develop more skilled, innovative individuals and teams. But how can you accomplish this in a way that is cost-efficient, personalized, and accessible? This is our story…

Inside a Talent Marketplace: One Example

To accelerate internal mobility, Schneider Electric, a global leader in integrated energy solutions, has developed and deployed an Open Talent Market (OTM). This marketplace leverages leading-edge technology to help retain talent and stimulate employee growth.

OTM is an AI-driven career development and internal mobility platform that matches workforce skills and ambitions to opportunities across the organization. First, employees describe their current skills and past experiences, as well as their future aspirations. Then OTM provides information about relevant open positions, part-time projects, and possible mentors.

The platform also offers career planning capabilities. For example, people can explore potential career paths and establish short-term development tracks to address immediate upskilling needs or develop new skills for the future.

How the OTM Process Works

This talent marketplace is open to all connected employees at Schneider Electric, and through pilot programs for shop floor employees who don’t have daily access to a work computer. With artificial intelligence as its backbone, OTM manages the entire experience at speed and at scale.

To get started, employees create a profile in the platform, which can be based on a LinkedIn profile or resume upload. Next, they can edit and expand their profile information, adding appropriate skills, experiences, interests and development areas. The more data an employee includes, the better the AI results will be.

Schneider Electric embraces the “3E” development framework – Experience (70%), Exposure (20%), and Education (10%). And because OTM is so easy to use, employees can independently explore upskilling and development opportunities that align with each of these learning methods.

Talent Marketplace Benefits

In addition to improving talent development and mobility, this solution has formalized the way our organization manages its internal gig economy. Now, by offering part-time projects through OTM, the company can unlock hours from employees who are eager to work on stretch assignments.

But the real beauty of this talent marketplace comes from its underlying AI, which makes it possible for anyone to discover opportunities that might not otherwise have been considered.

Too often in the past, finding a new position or mentor was all about who you knew. Now, it’s about transparency. That means everyone has access to a broader spectrum of opportunities that might not have been visible previously.

At the same time, the AI personalizes the matching process. In other words, it helps employees focus on opportunities that fit their unique skills and interests, instead of requiring them to filter through a sea of options. This levels the playing field and accelerates the talent matching process by identifying the strongest possibilities, regardless of current role or business unit.

Preparing to Support Internal Mobility

An effective talent marketplace depends on a culture that is open to internal mobility. For many organizations, this requires a significant mindset shift before and during the rollout.

At Schneider, the end goal is to retain our employees by placing them in opportunities that are best suited to their skills and help them continue to grow. This is why we strive to foster open dialogue among employees, current managers, and hiring managers about internal mobility and talent development.

To set the stage for OTM, we adjusted several key policies and procedures, and built OTM logic to support our business objectives:

Policy Changes

  • To help employees pursue new opportunities more on their terms, we’ve removed minimum “time in current role” requirements, as well as the need for a manager’s approval when applying for a new position.
  • To encourage actionable communication about opportunities, we ask internal candidates to receive feedback about any application, regardless of its outcome. In the past, this was not occurring consistently.
  • To support continuous learning and development, we request that employees dedicate 10-15% of their time to projects outside of their current role.

System Functionality

  • When using OTM for career planning, employees can see possible career paths based on several criteria, including their desired roles, typical paths that others in their current role have pursued, or whether they’re interested in moving into management. Within those paths, they can see existing open positions, as well as skill development opportunities to help prepare for future roles.
  • In addition, employees can use OTM to build shorter-term career tracks based on skills or experiences they want to gain or a specific position they want to pursue:
    • A track based on skills and experiences lets employees browse available opportunities, as well as courses offered in our learning management system.
    • A track based on positions lets employees select a specific position they’d like to pursue. Then the AI compares market data to find the skills most often applied in that role and identifies which of those skills the employee already has and indicates any gaps. The platform then suggests available projects, mentors and courses in our LMS that could help an employee fill those gaps.
  • Lastly, OTM is not a one-way street. The AI helps employees uncover matched opportunities. But it also lets recruiters and project owners discover candidates with a skill or experience needed for a position or project role. This feature required change management to ensure that our managers perceive it as a tool that enhances internal mobility, rather than “poaching.”

Talent Marketplace Results

To-date, 80,000 Schneider Electric employees are registered OTM users. And since its launch in May 2020, this solution has helped more than 26,000 employees connect with projects, positions or mentorship assignments.

OTM has been a highly effective way to actively involve employees in managing their careers. It supports people as they develop, grow, and shape their future. And it helps the organization more fully utilize talent, while strengthening engagement and retention. At Schneider, our commitment to a world-class talent marketplace is leading to a brighter future, all around.

 


EDITOR’S NOTE:  In developing this article, Jessica Staggs collaborated with Michele Egan, Open Talent Market Digital Transformation Lead at Schneider Electric

When You Train Employees, Do You Also Boost Retention?

Sponsored by FranklinCovey

If you’re involved in hiring or managing people, no one needs to tell you that competition for top talent is incredibly fierce. And keeping teams engaged and motivated is getting more difficult all the time. That’s why it pays to be especially thoughtful and strategic about how you train employees.

This isn’t just my opinion. It’s the conclusion of organizations like SHRM, which found that employees are 76% more likely to stay onboard when their organization has a dedicated process to support workforce learning and growth. Similarly, Deloitte estimates that retention is 30-50% higher among companies with a strong learning culture.

But this begs the question — exactly how can you build and sustain a learning environment that engages people so they want to stay onboard and advance your agenda? That’s the topic we’re exploring today with a brilliant business leader who is also a recognized expert in learning and development…

Meet Our Guest:  Paul Walker

I’m honored to welcome Paul Walker, President and CEO at FranklinCovey! As the company’s chief strategist and operational leader, Paul is committed to transforming organizations and enabling greatness. He actually started his career at FranklinCovey 22 years ago, and has grown and adapted along with the company. So clearly, he knows first-hand how learning and development can help retain top talent. Please join us as we explore this topic:

Connecting Learning With Retention
Welcome, Paul! Let’s dive right in. How is training tied to workforce retention?

Our work with clients and research from others tell us that training is integral to retention for several reasons:

  1. When you train employees, they feel valued because you’re investing in them. And the more valued people feel, the more likely they are to stay.
  2. It helps people perform better. We all want to do our best work everyday. If we need skills to do that, and our employer is helping us acquire those capabilities, it not only helps us do better today, but may also prepare us for something exciting in the future. Again, we feel valued.

How to Train Employees Effectively
What do people really want from work-related training?

There are probably more factors, but over and over again we see employees focusing on these things:

  1. Is it easy for me to access, so I can get the most out of it?
  2. How well does it fit into the flow of my daily work life?
  3. How relevant is it now, and will it prepare me for where I want to be in the future?
  4. Is it useful? Does it actually help me perform better?
How Can You Train Employees for Retention? Join us for a live #WorkTrends Twitter Chat - Wednesday, March 29th - 1:30-2:00pm ET. Follow @TalentCulture on Twitter for questions - and add the #WorkTrends hashtag to your tweets so others can see your comments and interact with you!

JOIN US ON TWITTER!

Choose Learning Metrics That Matter

Retention is important, but what other KPIs should we consider?

When we want to train employees, we need to be sure we’re not just advocating for retention or other objectives that may feel a bit soft to people who make budgetary and strategic decisions. These leaders don’t necessarily see how learning supports what they want to accomplish.

Instead, we need to focus on how learning improves the quality of the team’s results. That’s crucial to the organization’s performance.

We need to talk in the language Deloitte used in its research that says:

  • 92% of companies with more intentional, sophisticated learning develop more novel products and processes,
  • 56% are often first-to-market with products and services,
  • 52% are measurably more productive, and
  • 17% are more profitable.

Make It a Leadership Priority to Train Employees

Absolutely. There’s value here, and our KPIs should reflect that…

I would also say the best organizations have figured out how to ignite a passion for employee learning in their leaders. In other words, people development is a key leadership expectation, and leaders want to be involved in helping their people grow and develop. It’s not just the responsibility of HR or L&D…


For more insights from Paul about how to train employees for retention, listen to this full podcast episode. And be sure to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

In addition, we invite you to join our live Twitter chat about this topic on Wednesday, March 29th from 1:30-2:00pm ET. Follow us at @TalentCulture for questions and be sure to add the #WorkTrends hashtag to your tweets, so others in the community can easily find your comments and interact with you!

Also, to continue this conversation on social media anytime, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.