India: 5 Ways HR Leaders Are Using Talent Intelligence

​Talent intelligence, which involves analyzing data of current and prospective employees, can help grow employees as well as the organization, said HR experts at the SHRM India Annual Conference & Expo 2022, held Nov. 23-24, 2022, in Delhi.

"Data and insights are any HR professional's best friends," said Reeti Dubey, director, senior HR business partner in Gurgaon for NatWest Group, a banking and insurance firm. 

Dubey and other leaders shared ways HR professionals are using talent intelligence to achieve their people goals.

Finding Talent that Gels with Organizational Values 

One increasingly common use for talent data and analytics is to sift through a large pool of job candidates and zone in on those who meet specific requirements for a role. 

But today's talent intelligence tools go beyond just finding a match based on educational or technical skills. "It's also a lot about who's interested in your organization, who aligns to the purpose," Dubey said. 

Sanjay Bose, executive vice president and head HR at ITC Hotels in Gurgaon, said they analyzed a group of high-performing employees to understand their personality profiles. "Like, what makes them successful, what gives that stickiness in the organization," Bose said. Based on this study, they came up with certain behavioral and personality metrics that they applied when shortlisting job candidates.

Career Progression and Retention

Talent intelligence can also aid employee growth. 

Technology tools today look at the skills an employee has, the worker's interests and likes, and based on that, can suggest roles in the organization best suited for the employee. These tools can also be used to analyze the career paths of other employees with a similar background and see what roles they have been successful at. 

HR can use this information to guide employees on their next career move. "That responsibility becomes easier for me to administer when I have a tool like this," Bose said.

At Mastercard, a payments and technology company, employees can figure this out by themselves. Priyank Vajpai, vice president, talent acquisition at Mastercard India in Pune, said the company has created a portal where employees can post their resume and keywords, and the system will suggest the next best opportunity available. It will also show the hiring manager the employee's resume, so the internal candidate gets preference over an external one.

"That way, you're able to provide ample opportunities to your own employees," Vajpai said. 

Stemming Exits

For many industries in India, high attrition is a perennial problem, and talent intelligence can help here as well. 

Vajpai suggested looking at the data of both employees coming in and those leaving. 

"Where are you losing people? Why are you losing people? Where are you getting people from, and why are they joining you?" Vajpai asked. 

Answers to those questions can be used to create profiles and tools to predict which employees are going to leave in the next six months and why. 

For instance, he said, looking at a large data set, the tool may find that employees who are ages 26 to 28 in Pune, are likely to leave after eight months with the organization. 

HR can use this data to tell senior management what things need to change to help reduce the exits. "It will take time. It will take at least two cycles for you to change," Vajpai said.

Staying Competitive in the Market

Talent intelligence need not be limited to existing employees but can also be extended to understand prospective employees and competitors, said HR experts. 

Companies can benefit from external data available about other companies, their policies and employee behaviors, said Vivek Bhaskaran, vice president of strategy and transformation at JobsPikr, a talent intelligence platform for workforce planning in Bengaluru. 

"See how your internal data can be benchmarked against the industry," he said. 

This can help HR in designing competitive policies, such as for compensation and benefits. "What's working well for your competitors or what is not working well for your competitors, is a key insight … to retain your talent," Dubey said.

Smooth Mergers and Acquisitions Transitions

When companies are merged or taken over, integrating the staff of different organizations is a big challenge for HR, but here too, talent intelligence can help. 

Often, a key goal of the acquisition is to acquire talent, so HR needs to find an appropriate fit for employees of the company being acquired to ensure they don't leave. 

"Talent intelligence helps you understand [that] X person has been in the organization as a founder for, like, five years. Can you really hire him as a manager in your new organization? Or, can you relabel him as a manager or director?" Vajpai asked.

Data tools can give a picture of what skills are available at the company being acquired, and whether those skills can help fill any existing gaps or if they can help meet future skill needs. Similarly, analytics can help decide the organization's location strategy, Dubey said.

"Where you want to base your talent in the future, where is the talent available, where is the skill available—all of those things can be done with these insights," she said.

Shefali Anand is a New Delhi-based journalist and former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. You can follow her on Twitter.