8 Key Elements of an Integrated Talent Ecosystem

With the rapid digitization of business, IT has moved to the main stage. No longer just a back-office function, it has assumed a key role as a core driver for transformation. This shift requires IT teams to develop new technology and leadership capabilities and ensure that those skills evolve with the business needs, writes Sandra Loughlin, Managing Principal, Learning Advisory Practice, EPAM Systems, Inc.

Each year, CXOs allocate billions of dollars to develop employee capabilities, and the results are often disappointing. Many companies see no ROI at all. For others, upskillingOpens a new window investments result in temporary gains but, inevitably, IT teams fall back into old patterns, stalling change.

Faced with large-scale transformation imperatives, companies devote scant attention to building the capabilities necessary to achieve—and maintain—the new strategy. In other words, they forget that business success is a three-legged stool: technology, processes, and people.

I take a slightly different view. In my experience, company leaders don’t forget about building critical capabilities; they just approach the challenge in the wrong way. Capability building — or getting employees to behave, think, and work differently — is harder than it seems, and leaders’ instincts often fail them.

Two Common Mistakes Made by Leaders When Developing New Capabilities

Business leaders constantly analyze their industry landscape and, from that vantage point, the need to build new capabilities is obvious. Employees, on the other hand, typically have very different concerns. They are primarily focused on succeeding in their current role or advancing to the next one. Unless capability-building enhances their prospects of success, they are unlikely to invest the time. This is the first major stumbling block for us as leaders: the idea that everyone in our organization is motivated about the stuff that motivates us.

The second common mistake is being too vague about what skills employees need to develop. Consider DevOps. DevOps helps companies move faster, get functions right the first time and drive innovation, so it’s obvious to IT leaders that it should be a core capability. But what does that mean in practice for IT people? What exactly does each person need to know or do differently to realize the company’s DevOps strategy? The capabilities required of a senior manager, team leader or individual developer are very different. In order to build the right organizational capabilities, leaders must connect business strategy to the desired skills in all the job functions and levels, giving employees clear and explicit guidance where they need to grow.

How can leaders motivate and orient employees to build the necessary capabilities? The answer lies in applying Theory OneOpens a new window , a foundational principle in the fields of learning and organizational change: People will do much of what they have the reasonable opportunity and motivation to do. And the best part is that your organization probably has the key components already.

Most companies have two very important groups focused on organizations and systems: Human Resources (HR) and Learning and Development (L&D). HR defines what characteristics a successful employee needs and oversees the mechanisms for rewarding employees for quality work. L&D oversees formal and informal training opportunities, helps employees develop growth plans, and coordinates elements such as job rotations and mentorship that guide and support employee skill development.

HR and L&D work in parallel in almost every organization. But they don’t typically operate together in a meaningful way that ensures each department drives the effectiveness of the other. This is the core problem. Creating a carefully aligned people ecosystem is essential to building new capabilities — for individuals and organizations. The continuous learning culture (driven by L&D) provides the opportunity aspect of Theory One, while the talent management system (led by HR) provides the motivation. I call this the integrated talent ecosystem.

Developing an Integrated Talent Ecosystem

An integrated talent ecosystem has two major functions. The first is orienting an organization toward the skills required for business success. This means deep and ongoing alignment with the business and IT to ensure the capability needs of today and tomorrow are consistently aligned to motivational drivers. Once you know where you’re headed, you need an effective vehicle to bring you there. This is the second function and involves creating the right opportunities and support structures necessary for employees to build the new capabilities.

Source: EPAM Systems, Inc.

There are eight components to an integrated talent ecosystem that should build on one another and work harmoniously together.

1. Competency and Skill Matrices

The first and most important components of an integrated talent system are competency and skill matrices, which clearly outline the skills required for each role in the organization. Matrices make growth goals and promotion criteria transparent, which in turn directs and motivates learners. Unfortunately, however, many companies have not thought deeply about this issue and rely on generic skill matrices they find online. This is a mistake. In order to drive performance, matrices need to be specific to your company and directly tie business strategy to technical, soft, and growth skills required in each job function at each level. Competency and skill matrices need to be dynamic too, evolving along with technology and your business.

2. Authentic Assessment

After establishing the essential capabilities for each role in your organization, the next step is creating a mechanism to indicate if an employee possesses them. Because capabilities are a manifestation of behaviors, mindset, and ways of working, simple paper-and-pencil assessments are insufficient. Look for opportunities to assess an individual’s capabilities during authentic, job-related tasks. This can be accomplished by peer or manager observation, portfolio creation using authentic work products, behavioral interviews, and direct assessment tasks.

When done correctly, assessments turbocharge organizational transformation by making performance expectations transparent and aligned with outcomes. However, assessments are also easy to get wrong — wrong content, wrong depth, and wrong design — making them worthless or even harmful to transformational efforts. This is why successful companies partner competency heads and SMEs with learning and measurement experts.

3. Progression Pathway

Progression pathways align skill and competency matrices with authentic assessment to performance evaluation and promotion. In other words, progression pathways require employees to master target capabilities in order to move forward in their careers. This is maybe the biggest and most important tip that I can provide: create motivation for employees to develop the capabilities your organization needs. Progression pathways demystify often opaque promotion activities, help employees feel more control over their careers, and create a virtuous system that results in new capabilities for the individuals and the organization.

4. Talent Sourcing

You need to source the right talent. This is defined in large part by the competency and skill matrices for the job function. Ideally, assessments come into play here, too, as part of interviewing and onboarding activities. To find the best talent, remember to look beyond technical skills. Actively seek out people that will be happy to grow their skills on an ongoing basis, are comfortable with change, and are excited about what’s coming next for your organization and your industry.

5. Dynamic Curriculum

Many organizations have a training catalog, or a collection of all the formal learning resources available to the employees, both internal and through third-party licenses. A training curriculum is a bit different. It is a subset of the organization’s training catalog curated specifically to support skill development by job function. Creating a more granular training curriculum by role focuses employees on key capabilities, saves time, and reduces the risk of employees being overwhelmed when faced with hundreds or thousands of potential training activities. Because competency and skill matrices evolve with the business, the curriculum needs to be dynamic, too.

6. Effective Pedagogy

Teaching effectively is a stumbling block in many organizations. Our society talks about education as a delivery mechanism. It’s often said that people are like sponges, so, if you just pour enough water — or educational content — on them, they’ll absorb it. However, the poor ROI of training programs illustrates that people aren’t nearly as absorbent as advertised. Effective pedagogy means offering employees the right training content, providing opportunities for them to put that information into practice under the guidance of someone more expert than they are, and letting them know when they successfully developed the new capability. There are several ways that you can devise effective pedagogy, but the fundamental components are content, practice, support, and assessment.

7. Social Learning

Humans are social creatures and learn best when they can problem solve, get input, and benefit from the expertise of others. Social learning means blending individual content consumption with small groups where employees discuss topics, share their ideas, and provide each other feedback. When building new skills, it also helps to have mentorship or coaching. Mentors can offer advice and feedback, review deliverables before submission, share critical resources, and give social and emotional support. Mentors benefit too, particularly as they are moving into program or people leadership positions.

8. Growth Plans

The final component of an integrated talent ecosystem is growth plans. A dynamic curriculum and effective pedagogy are key parts of growth, but there are many informal ways to develop new capabilities, too, such as communities of practice, job shadowing, mentoring internal learning programs, and external certifications. Growth plans, which are often individual, combine formal and informal learning opportunities to help employees prepare for the next stage of their careers.

Does an integrated talent ecosystem sound too good to be true? It’s not. Successful IT organizations are moving in that direction and realizing significant value. As you can imagine, though, this shift requires visionary leadership and organizational collaboration. But the payoff is well worth the effort. A fully integrated, dynamic, business-driven talent ecosystem supercharges organizational transformation, creates a culture of continuous learning, and ensures the company develops and maintains the capabilities necessary to be successful tomorrow.