Most people have a pretty good understanding of the relevant skills of those who work closely on their teams. Not all managers, but good managers might even be able to keep track of who on their team is being underutilized and if they are really a good manager at an efficient organization, they might even be willing and able to connect them with the right opportunities to maximize their potential. This is all assuming that these managers have the resources to connect their employees to these internal opportunities. Before one tackles the challenge of actually connecting thousands of global employees to the right opportunities for growth internally, the talent visibility must be gained.
In other words, even with good managers who understand the development and motivational needs of their employees, most large organizations don’t have any sort of process or infrastructure to share, analyze, and therefore gain the bigger picture understanding of the scattered knowledge of these managers.
When employees feel unseen, underutilized, and under-appreciated they use the many resources available to them on their computers and smartphones to find their next opportunity outside of the company. The loser in this recurring scenario is the company that continuously loses talented individuals on a massive scale every year due to this massive talent blindspot.
In the best case scenario, large companies on average have 5-10% visibility on internal talent, competencies, and skills within their own organizations.
The first step is realizing the current level of visibility at your organization in order to identify and eliminate these blind spots. Listen to the data from your company’s exit interviews and use this information as a roadmap. Is a lack of career development up there on the list of reasons why good employees voluntarily leave your organization? It almost certainly is.
Companies don’t seem to actually know their employees’ strengths, weaknesses, ambitions, and interests. These four things are the key to both making them happy and getting the best work and ultimate output from them.
All of this is taking place while the World Economic Forum estimates that more than half (54%) of all employees will require significant reskilling by 2022. The skills gaps are only growing and so urgency looms for companies to strive for full talent visibility right away.
