Ask line managers what they dislike most about talent assessment programs, and most will say something relating to gathering or filling in missing information. H.R. Departments often put great energy into selecting the ideal talent management systems and/or perfecting Succession and Workforce Planning Processes. But less information is given to the importance of the information needed to make the processes run smoothly. As I mention in my book (The H.R. Predicament: Balancing Functional Excellence and Process Integration...Practical H.R. Strategies), research indicates that the majority of organizations rely at least partially on "paper based" activities to assess talent and make related decisions. Even those with robust HRIS platforms and talant management software often utilize additional data outside of their system to evaluate talent. That's partially because talent assessment typically involves information that pre-dates when an employee joined the organization. Another contributing factor is that, unless you have a highly capable Employee/Manager Self Service system, then maintaining and updating the information between process cycles is not feasible. The GOOD NEWS is that there are places in your organization where missing and updated information may be hidden - and sometimes even in an electronic format !!! Here are a few sources for filling in missing and outdated talent assessment data, without having to rely on employees and/or their managers to provide the information:
Job Applications & Resumes: Information surrounding language skills, external work history, education, certifications and even geographic experience may be readily available in Resume Management Systems and Recruiting Records.
Employee Directories: Companies with online directories or similar intranet applications often contain optional fields within the employee profile (record), such as education level, language, and career goals. This is an excellent means of electronically gaining voluntary information from employees. If your software doesn't currently capture this information, speak to your I.T. department about activating (or adding) these fields to your directory. Most employees are comfortable with publically sharing language and educational information as long as doing so is optional.
Tuition Reimbursement Process: Here is a quick and easy means for updating educational data. While the owner of this process varies by organization (for some the process is done in Accounting, others in Benefits, etc.), chances are the data is not integrated and automatically feeding your talent management system. Extracting and updating this information prior to the talent review cycle can help smooth out the assessment process.
Learning Management Systems: This one may be the most obvious. Tapping in to the training tracking information throughout the learning initiatives in your organization (even if it is only maintained in a spreadsheet) can provide rich nuggets of information.
These are just a few of the potential sources of hidden talent assessment data within an organization. I'd welcome hearing additional ideas and insights from you.
While gathering this information may involve some manual work on the front end of your process cycle, it will almost certainly require less effort than trying to heard a group of employees and their managers through the process of individually filling in (or updating) fields.
