What is Total Talent Management?

Mar 26, 2020 | Talent Management

If you’re involved in staffing or recruiting, you might have encountered this term before. It represents a new, holistic way of sourcing talent for global businesses.  In this article, we describe what Total Talent Management (TTM) is, and go in depth about the technology ecosystem that drives it.

In the current business climate, organizations are having to keep up with market changes. Total Talent Management has emerged as a solution to fragmented IT systems, governance, and budgetary models that inhibit organizations from creating an on-demand workforce model through an inability to leverage the various resourcing mechanisms.

What is Total Talent Management?

Total Talent Management is a human capital management strategy designed to satisfy enterprise workforce demands by embracing both permanent (RPO) and contingent (MSP) talent solutions. The main contractual constructs found in TTM strategies include:
  • Full-time Employment (FTE) Contracts
  • Contractor Procurement – Normally procured through indirect procurements via staffing agencies.
  • Project Outsourcing Purchase Orders – also referred to simply as ‘Outsourcing’.
  • Statement of Work (SOW) contracts – The contractor is paid based on achieving set milestones stipulated in their SOW contract.
  • Micro-Task contracts – The fulfilment of tasks by gig workers, typically via an online gig portal.

The Total Talent Management approach

A Total Talent Management strategy is seen by many as the pivotal philosophical change needed to implement an on-demand workforce model, helping organizations leverage the potential of the gig economy.
Unlike traditional models of talent management oriented around the maintenance of a full-time employees, a TTM strategy embraces:
  • Recruitment via direct and indirect channels
  • Both full-time and contingent/freelance working, applying equal weight of importance to all approaches
  • A practise of establishing contracts that can be fulfilled by the micro-task, SOW, project, or role
  • Both a human and AI workforce

What is the appeal of Total Talent Management?

The rampant pace of change in the digitally enabled markets is causing management teams to revisit their business models more often.  A pressure for agility and adaptability in recruitment, technology, and data processes is leading to a push towards an on-demand talent sourcing approach.
Business leaders find themselves facing continuous re-org demands to accommodate changes in talent demand.  To remedy this talent shortfall, TTM is gaining in popularity within leadership teams.

The challenges of transitioning to a TTM approach

In the last decade, the accountability and responsibility of talent sourcing strategies has been split between departmental heads, HR, and procurement chiefs.  Decisions on sourcing approaches and recruitment mechanisms used to be fragmented by departmental priorities, systems and decisions

TTM initiatives aim to create a joined-up requirements gathering, sourcing, and management approach to ‘get work done’ irrespective of the resources used or the contractual construct adopted. However, projects to normalize and standardize current operational approaches are suffering as the result of:

 

  • A lack of clarity on responsibility
  • Fragmented decision making and budgets
  • The insufficiency of recruitment software tools used to perform functions of recruiting, but failing to deliver a unifying digital ecosystem that can service the needs of all stakeholders in the staffing and work contracting process.

Technology supporting the gig economy

Changing attitudes and behaviors can be ‘enabled’ by an effective TTM ecosystem. This normally takes the form of an integrated portal that equips recruitment teams to work with procurement and IT colleagues to adopt the best approach to getting work done.

Total Talent Management portals like Simplify TTM have a major role to play in equipping organizations with the ecosystem they need to reach all of the desirable work sourcing resources to fulfil tasks in the most cost effective way on-demand. In addition, we help organizations to adapt their attitudes, behaviors, and processes to embrace new organizational designs and smarter ways of getting work done.

Want to learn more about Total Talent Management?

Discover why SimplifyPortal is rated as the best-fit technology ecosystem for TTM initiatives.  Request a demo.