Featured Research - Managing Talent in Today’s Project-Focused Organizations
Prospering in a new era of project management
Survey conducted by HR.com in partnership with Deltek
Traditional talent management challenges, such as training and recruitment, now take place in the context of constantly improving HR technology, the growing importance of contingent workers, and a shift towards more project-based work.
HR.com in association with Deltek, conducted a study to learn how modern organizations manage talent in an increasingly project-focused workplace.
Below is a quick overview of some key findings.
- Coping with the availability of good candidates is the top talent acquisition challenge.
- Many firms take two or more months to fill positions. Almost a third of firms reported that it took a painfully long time to fill vacancies.
- Project-based hiring has become key in 40% of organizations.
- Project-focused firms see career advancement training having the highest importance.
- Project-focused firms are also more likely to adopt project-based appraisals.
- Project-focused organizations are much more likely than project-scarce firms to rely heavily on contingent workers.
- Aside from hiring new talent, focusing on training and development is another key to addressing today’s talent shortages.
- Only 16% of organizations give contractors full access to their LMS; another 16% give partial access for the purpose of keeping up to date on required certifications.
- Integrated technology can be part of the answer to better talent acquisition, development and project management, but HR isn’t there yet.
With many organizations growing over the last year, it’s understandable that HR’s biggest challenge is finding and hiring the right talent, followed by the ability to offer competitive compensation. With the shortage of skilled and technical workers and the relatively low unemployment rate, organizations will have to rely on non-conventional hiring practices such as pursuing passive candidates and using social media to attract the best prospects.
Long Time to Fill a Position
Thirty-one percent of responding organizations report that it takes two or more months to fill the average position. Of course, time to fill depends on a variety of factors such as the skill level of the job opening, geographic location, government regulations, quality of hire, and more. Very long time-to-fill hurts organizational effectiveness.
The Top Challenges Facing Human Resources
When we asked about HR’s core challenges, we found that “succession and career development planning” was at the top of the list. Of course, succession challenges tend to be related to shortages of leadership talent, as organizations strive to determine who can fill future leadership positions. Such shortages are driven by a lack of effective career development planning.
With Baby Boomers stepping out of the workforce in ever-growing numbers, well-crafted succession plans provide a foundation for effective leadership transitions. Employees are far more likely to stay when they have a defined path forward and the training they need to succeed in their next positions.
Leveraging Training and Development Practices
Another way that organizations can invest in their talent is by honing the skill sets of current employees. On average, organizations worry more about standard compliance training than providing other L&D options for employees. Respondents chose standard compliance training as the most important area when it comes to their learning initiatives. After compliance training, however, the most important areas of training are career advancement self-service modules and training related to specific projects.
The Rise of the Project-Focused Firm
Our study shows that in three-fifths of responding organizations, just 5% or fewer of new employees were hired specifically for upcoming projects or contracts. On the other hand, the remainder of respondents (40%) noted that 6% or more of their new employees are hired for projects/contracts, and 11% of firms stated that 40% or more of their new employees were hired for projects/contracts.
Project-focused firms will often need to be highly agile in matching talent to projects; hence it’s not a surprise to find that project-focused firms are twice as likely as project-scarce firms to use a skills repository to help source and acquire talent. Also, project-focused firms are most likely to view “employee self-service for career advancement” as having high importance, because employees in project-based organizations need to equip themselves with new skills as new projects and job opportunities come along.
The Emerging Role of Contingent Workers
Contingent workers are sometimes a good fit for firms that are built around delivering projects, so it’s no surprise to see a substantial difference between how much project-focused firms rely on contingent workers relative to project-scarce firms.
About 41% of respondents said their organizations do a good job of managing contingent workers to a high or very high extent.
About a third of all respondents said their organizations will be using project-based appraisals for their performance-management process. The dynamics of performance management can be different in project-based firms because the annual cycle is less important than the project cycle. Probably because of this importance, 42% of firms with a heavy reliance on contingent workers said they will be using project-based appraisals vs. 32% for other firms. Similarly, firms that are good at managing contingents are much more likely to use project-based appraisals than other firms (41% and 29%, respectively).
HR Still Struggles with Technology
HR technology has come a long way, but the integration of systems remains a headache for many firms. Relatively few have integration between their HR applications and their organizations’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This lack of integration is a concern for two reasons. To learn more about the research Managing Talent in Today’s Project-Focused Organizations along with 14 key strategic takeaways, we invite you to download and read the complete report here:
Error: No such template "/CustomCode/topleader/category"!
