Business strategy becomes more valuable when it corresponds with talent strategy. Aligning the two helps achieve goals, boost engagement and employee experience, and foster a more productive company culture.
“In my work, I have found that a brilliant talent strategy around an average business strategy will always outperform an average talent strategy around a brilliant business strategy,” said Ron Price. “People will always make the difference.”
Fortunately, with a bit of planning and forethought, it’s easy to align these two strategies in a way that benefits employees and produces results. Here are four steps to consider:
Clarify Goals
Defining your business’s short-term and long-term goals clearly will guide your search for talent; you need to know what to look for! After you’ve achieved business clarity, the next step is understanding your current workforce. What does your team look like right now? Are you over or understaffed? What skills are you missing?
"The problem is not that we have [staffing] blind spots,” said Juan Kingsbury. “The problem is when we know we have them, and we don't embrace them." Find the needs on your team and turn them into opportunities with strategic talent recruitment to strengthen your organization.
Assessing your team and generating a Team Report is a great place to start, creating a visual representation of your team’s current behaviors and drivers. These maps show where the current team is at and where they need support. Here are some questions to consider when evaluating your team:
- What behavioral profiles are present on your team?
- What skills are missing on the team?
- Is someone ready to move through the talent pipeline and change roles?
Embrace Collaborative Planning
Connecting business and talent strategy requires thoughtful integration throughout every level of the organization. When creating an organizational plan, involve your HR and hiring teams to ensure that talent considerations are included in business strategy discussions.
Another great resource is your current team. Consider their needs and audit their skills and capacity before setting a hiring plan. That information will inform your recruitment efforts as well.
Developing business goals and strategies that explicitly consider the availability and development of the necessary talent to achieve them will pave the way for success.
Allocate Adequate Resources
Throughout the strategy creation process for both business and talent acquisition, ensure that resources are distributed correctly.
If a team is understaffed, pull back on their workload to avoid burnout while you search for the right candidate. Make sure that you have set aside the time needed for the job benchmarking process, and make it a priority instead of simply an obligation. These types of investments will pay off in the long run.
This is where a professional can make a difference. Investing in a trusted consultant to help guide both your talent and business strategies will help your organization create a repeatable, effective hiring process while finding top talent to join the team and achieve business goals. An advisor can often see opportunities and misalignment that you may have missed.
Use the Right Tools
Coordinating business and talent strategies can be complicated, but using the right tools will make all the difference.
Behavioral assessments will give your hiring team data-driven insights to better understand candidates. That information can help identify the right individuals for specific roles that are crucial to achieving strategic goals.
For example, the 12 Driving Forces assessment reveals an individual’s motivation, which can then be compiled in a Team Report. If that team’s motivations align, it can explain why they work well together. If their motivations are wildly different, it can help get to the root of potential conflict. Then, when considering a new hire, you can decide if bringing in someone with similar motivations will best mesh with the current team or if a differently motivated individual will push the team in a new, better direction.
Using a multi-science approach expands those possibilities. By harnessing the intersecting power of different assessments, you can build the right team, align business goals, and increase your employees’ engagement. The strategic use of behavioral assessments fosters a more agile, responsive, and productive organization that is well-equipped to meet its long-term business goals.
Make Talent Strategy and Business Strategy Work for You
Aligning your strategies to improve both business goals and the talent acquisition process is a worthy goal of any company that wants to establish success.
“Great business strategy points us in a direction where we create value for others that is unique and impactful,” said Price. “Though ideas are important, it is the implementation of these ideas by empowered and unique individuals that bring the greatest benefits. This is talent strategy—to understand how to organize unique individuals with specific talents and skills to achieve something no one else can replicate.”
By clarifying goals, embracing collaboration, allocating resources the right way, and using the right tools, organizations can find the right talent, advance their position, and create a more engaging and healthy company culture.
If you’re interested in harnessing the power of assessments, TTI can help. Contact us to get started.
