What a difference a year makes: Applying what we learned in 2022 to accelerate impact in 2023

2022 was a critical year in the transition from the COVID-era to the current business environment.   Now, business and HR leaders are at an inflection point. Global markets continue to shift and reshape along with supply chains. The half-life of skills continues to drop and the need for new skills is abundantly clear—the flurry of news and activity around ChatGPT and advances in AI are only part of this dramatic story.

Changing business dynamics require new talent strategies that focus on workforce agility and dynamic reskilling. In 2022, as the VP of Insights and Impact at Gloat, I got to see firsthand how leading companies are deploying talent marketplaces for dramatic business outcomes and employee experience impacts. We’re seeing organizations unlock game-changing results on accelerated timelines by embracing workforce agility platforms.

Within just one year, our talent marketplace and workforce intelligence platforms are being adopted and implemented to deliver measurable outcomes that touch both business objectives and employee experience goals. The stories and results of Gloat customers including Seagate, MeLlife, Mastercard, and Novartis were on display at Gloat Live 2022. The best practices that these companies exemplify are lessons that every leader can take with them to chart their course for 2023 and set their direction for 2030.

Turning lessons from 2022 into strategic advantages in 2023

Leading organizations are demonstrating how dynamic approaches to work can reshape careers and unlock skills, interests, and employee potential. While many businesses are still clinging to traditional operating models based on functional hierarchies and legacy HCM technologies, innovative companies are shifting their focus forward.

As we reflect on what we learned in 2022 and launch strategies, initiatives, and investments for the uncertain economic environment of 2023 and beyond, it is instructive to learn from the trailblazing organizations that have already stepped into the new world of work headfirst. These pioneers are harnessing an understanding of changing employee expectations, marketplace dynamics, data, and AI to drive a new approach to work that empowers people to achieve their full potential.

These companies have one thing in common: they made the bold decision to launch a talent marketplace. While this technology may have been considered experimental even a few years ago, it’s quickly becoming a business necessity—just ask leading HR industry analyst Josh Bersin. In his words, “I’ve interviewed more than 50 companies using these systems and it’s clear to me that this is one of the most successful innovations in HR. Every company that adopts this kind of solution sees almost immediate positive results, and over time this platform is becoming one of the most popular systems in the company.”

Rather than responding slowly as the world around us rapidly shifts, leaders must proactively move with changes that are equally bold. If you need proof that big steps forward pay off, look no further than the trailblazing companies that began deploying a talent marketplace in recent years and the results they reported in 2022.  The success that these enterprises have achieved—often within months—makes a clear business case for why the platforms should top every organization’s priority list for 2023.

Highlights from 2022’s talent marketplace success stories

2022 was a pivotal and impactful year for many companies that implemented agile ways of working through talent marketplaces. Here are the highlights from the stories of a handful of enterprises whose success underscores the game-changing impact that talent marketplaces can help organizations achieve in just one year.

Seagate

When COVID-19 hit, Seagate turned the pandemic into an opportunity for business transformation. Rather than looking to external hires to support shifting priorities, Seagate embarked on a large-scale redeployment underpinned by their talent marketplace.

Within the first four months of launch, the data storage leader estimated that their platform saved them $1.4 million—and that was just the beginning. Building on their success, Seagate’s Global Head of Talent Marketplace and Talent Acquisition Transformation Divkiran Kathuria shares that today, “… we have over 58,000 hours that have been unlocked and over 50% of [our talent marketplace} projects are cross-entity. We have a productivity savings of about $1.6 million. And in terms of diversity and inclusion, we found that 1.4X more women apply to these opportunities compared to men and 1.7X more is their chance to get converted to an assignment compared to men.”

In addition to achieving a total cost saving that is more than 20X greater than their investment, Seagate’s talent marketplace safeguarded the organization from the challenge that was arguably last year’s biggest threat: The Great Resignation. As their Chief Human Resources Officer, Patricia Frost, explains, “We haven’t seen the Great Resignation at Seagate. The game-changer for us is this journey we’ve been on with Gloat. Employees have their careers in their hands and they can see vertical and lateral possibilities.”

MetLife

As an organization that has made its name by managing risk, MetLife was quick to embrace the mindset shifts and cultural changes that their talent marketplace set into motion. In the words of Chris Smart, MetLife’s Chief Learning Officer, “It’s been refreshing for our employees to see us take on something like this, which is disruptive. The reception has been way beyond what we thought from a risk appetite to do things differently.”

Fortunately, MetLife’s platform launch is proving to be a bold move that pays off. As their Chief Human Resources Officer Susan Podlogar explains, “We have 130,000 hours that have been released into the system. 64% of our projects are outside of somebody’s silos. So employees are getting access to cross-functional, cross-country, and cross-region opportunities, which has opened up who we are as an organization.”

Beyond connecting employees with colleagues across the organization, MetLife’s talent marketplace has ushered in a new era of skills-based work that promises to unlock agility and transform career development. “I hate hierarchies. I want that org chart to just be blown up,” is what Podlogar says regarding rigid career mobility models. “And [the talent marketplace] allows you to do some of that. What we do as HR leaders is ensure our organizations are prepared for the future. If you boil down our job, that’s it. Are we prepared from a skills perspective, from a talent perspective, from a leadership perspective, and from an employee perspective?”.

Mastercard

During the early days of the pandemic, Mastercard began matching employees to high-priority tasks through an internal initiative known as Project Possible. After recognizing the immense value of an employee-led approach to career development, the company decided to launch a talent marketplace to scale up its internal mobility initiative so all employees could participate.

As their Chief Human Resources Officer Michael Fraccaro notes, “We saw the start of this internal talent marketplace where people were willing to utilize some of their time—10%, 20%, or 30%—to actually work on things in adjacent businesses or functions. And that has been a real eye-opener, which is why we are partnering with Gloat, because we see this at a macro level and we see this as part of the future of work as well.”

To date, the global payments technology leader has saved $21 million through their internal mobility initiative and unlocked over 100,000 hours of capacity. Reflecting on the profound changes that their talent marketplace has set into motion, Mastercard’s Vice President of Digital Talent Heather Yurko says, “It’s not only a business solution. We’re trying to meet our customer demands, but it’s also a people solution that allows us to bring our employees together and develop them in very meaningful ways.”

Novartis

After internal surveys revealed that 80% of associates lacked visibility into career opportunities, Novartis decided it was time to make a change. The leading pharmaceutical enterprise launched a talent marketplace to democratize access to career development and learning and put skills at the center of every initiative.

“When you think about the impact, we are super happy,” Novartis’s Global Head of Talent Markus Graf says, reflecting on the eight months since the organization launched its platform globally. “What we have seen so far exceeds all of the expectations that we had. We’ve reached over 800 mentorships, 300 projects assigned, and more than 81,000 hours unlocked.”

In addition to hours and dollars saved, Novartis’s talent marketplace is a key component of the organization’s shift to embracing skills-based strategies. As Novartis’s Head of Strategic Workforce Planning Rene Gessenich explains, “When you think about organizational agility or really think about how to find the right kind of skills for a particular task or project, the talent marketplace is at the heart of matching these two pieces at scale.”

Why 2023 is the year to launch a talent marketplace

Companies like Seagate, Novartis, Mastercard, and Metlife don’t have to be outliers. Organizations in every industry have the potential to unlock hours, break down barriers, maximize productivity and create a compelling employee experience based on internal opportunity and growth. Workforce agility is what differentiates today’s top performers from the companies that are struggling to get by. With a talent marketplace, leaders’ visions for embracing more dynamic ways of working can finally become a reality.

In Bersin’s words, “The talent marketplace is becoming a category. Some of the most conservative companies in the world are now saying ‘we need a talent marketplace. ’” As talent marketplaces and workforce intelligence gain momentum, executives must decide whether their business is ready to join the trailblazing companies that are harnessing workforce agility to reach new milestones.

A major lesson from the company stories highlighted here is that they were able to implement a talent marketplace, gain widespread adoption, and set measurable business and employee experience impacts within one year. This is big news in the world of technology and transformation: what a difference a year makes. It’s the choices that you make today that will determine whether your organization looks back at 2023 as a missed opportunity or a transformational turning point.