Identifying talent for an uncertain future

Busi­ness­es are fac­ing unprece­dent­ed change as cus­tomers demand more dig­i­tal­ly enabled prod­ucts and a user expe­ri­ence as attrac­tive and seam­less as they enjoy on their social media apps and stream­ing ser­vices. Entire indus­tries are being dis­rupt­ed and long-stand­ing mar­ket lead­ers are being usurped by young upstarts.

All this is hav­ing an enor­mous impact on the tal­ent land­scape. Last year, the Nation­al Office for Sta­tis­tics said 1.5 mil­lion work­ers in the UK are at risk of los­ing their jobs to automa­tion and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI). Com­pa­nies are under pres­sure to build a work­force that will be able to deal with future chal­lenges that they can’t yet fore­see.

This is a tremen­dous­ly chal­leng­ing under­tak­ing, exac­er­bat­ed by a dig­i­tal skills gap that could cause the UK to miss out on as much as £141.5 bil­lion in GDP growth up to 2028, Accen­ture says. If organ­i­sa­tions can’t find the right tal­ent in the job mar­ket, then it’s cru­cial they focus their atten­tions on upskilling and reskilling cur­rent employ­ees. How­ev­er, three out of five com­pa­nies admit to not know­ing how to spot dig­i­tal poten­tial, accord­ing to a dig­i­tal readi­ness study by Aon’s Assess­ment Solu­tions.

To build a work­force for the future, human resources and recruit­ment depart­ments need to under­stand which employ­ees are able to learn and adapt to change

An accoun­tant whose man­u­al report­ing is per­haps not need­ed now that the finance depart­ment is automat­ing many of its process­es, for exam­ple, could have the skills, mind­set and behav­iour­al com­pe­ten­cies to become a suc­cess­ful data sci­en­tist, a role the com­pa­ny may be strug­gling to fill. Organ­i­sa­tions that are able to iden­ti­fy employ­ees who can make this kind of tran­si­tion will be in the best posi­tion.

“To build a work­force for the future, human resources and recruit­ment depart­ments need to under­stand which employ­ees are able to learn and adapt to change,” says Andreas Lohff, chief exec­u­tive at Aon’s Assess­ment Solu­tions. “Are they moti­vat­ed to do that and engaged enough to grow with the com­pa­ny? Com­pa­nies need employ­ees who can learn and devel­op over time, no mat­ter what is thrown at them. This also means reward sys­tems, career poli­cies and devel­op­ment sys­tems need to be suit­able to sup­port that.”

Tal­ent assess­ments are cen­tral to sourc­ing the flex­i­ble and agile tal­ent required to lead com­pa­nies for­ward in the dig­i­tal age, yet only 11 per cent of organ­i­sa­tions cur­rent­ly incor­po­rate assess­ments for dig­i­tal com­pe­ten­cies, accord­ing to Aon’s research.

Aon’s Assess­ment Solu­tions lever­ages video tech­nolo­gies and AI algo­rithms to iden­ti­fy peo­ple with the right behav­iours need­ed to adapt to future changes. The assess­ments are able to mea­sure tal­ent accord­ing to their learn­abil­i­ty, agili­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty, and then pro­vide vital data so com­pa­nies can make smarter hir­ing deci­sions. Aon’s assess­ment tools, meth­ods and plat­forms are up to date, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced, designed and enabled as mobile first, avail­able 24/7 on the web, adapt­able to client needs and attrac­tive in terms of user expe­ri­ence for both can­di­dates and HR pro­fes­sion­als.

Blockchain is also set to play a more sig­nif­i­cant role in con­nect­ing com­pa­nies with tal­ent. Most indi­vid­u­als and organ­i­sa­tions still rely on cost­ly, self-report­ed and unver­i­fied meth­ods to exchange data about pre­vi­ous employ­ment, pro­fes­sion­al achieve­ments and edu­ca­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. To counter this, Aon’s Assess­ment Solu­tions is dri­ving the devel­op­ment of the Veloc­i­ty Net­work, lever­ag­ing blockchain to build an “inter­net of careers”, a glob­al net­work for ver­i­fied and trust­ed career cre­den­tials in the dig­i­tal age.

“The Veloc­i­ty Net­work is a com­mon lan­guage for all involved in hir­ing,” says Lohff. “Can­di­dates can store all their rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion in one place, includ­ing CV and assess­ment results. And as the data sub­ject, they own that infor­ma­tion and can entire­ly con­trol who access­es it. They can pro­vide access and take it away again. It puts the pow­er back in their hands and ensures a process that is both secure and effi­cient.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it assessment.aon.com/digital-transformation