Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/330423
[ 40 ] HRO TODAY MAGAZINE | JUNE 2014 Market Insight Eye on 8 A recent study reports these talent strategies are big-time differentiators. By The Editors What gives an organization a competitive advantage? Findings from Cielo's Talent Activation Index (TAI) study may surprise you. The 2014 research study examined eight talent strategies where the difference in approaches between the highest-performing organizations (leaders) and the poorest- performing organizations (laggards) are most extreme. Why? "In today's dynamic and global marketplace, organizations that recognize the increasing importance of talent and proactively push to turn talent strategy into an enabler of corporate vision will win against their competition," reports Cielo's CEO Sue Marks. The eight most-differentiating strategies have the ability to align talent with business strategy for that competitive edge. 1. Embracing workforce work-life balance. While work-life strategies may not be what the survey's leaders do most, they do show the largest difference between the efficacy of high-performers' approaches and everyone else's. Call it enlightened self-interest: If an organization takes good care of top talent, then the top talent takes good care of the organization's interests. Globally, 65 percent of leaders rate themselves as "excellent" for their support of programs such as remote work arrangements, job sharing, flexible scheduling, and convenience services. That compares with 17 percent of mainstreamers and only 4 percent of laggards, producing an overall study average of only 24 percent. The majority of mainstreamers (59 percent) rate themselves as "good" and most laggards rate themselves as "average" (46 percent). "Employees want to be empowered to make their own decisions regarding when, where, and how they work," says Marks. "Leaders need to be comfortable managing their teams based on their outcomes and accomplishments instead of hours spent at a desk." 2. Using data and analytics to create workforce strategies. Aside from having a strong employee value proposition, leaders rated their use of data and analytics to inform workforce strategies that drive the achievement of business objectives as most effective in the study. It appears that rigorous data analysis is key to creating workforce strategies that help organizations achieve their top business priorities. "Leading HR practitioners are driving their organizations to do more than collect data—to truly use that data to inform