Traditionally, organizations tend to see their talent competitors as being the same as their revenue competitors. But we know this is not always the case.
In recent years, especially when it comes to roles in such areas as technology or digital, competition for talent has become more industry agnostic, moving well beyond traditional competitor groups. In a similar way global mobility has meant location flows go beyond local competitors, and move into regional and global organisations.
What is talent flow analysis?
Talent flow analysis is a process that shows which organizations you attract talent from and which ones you lose talent to. Evaluating how people move through your organization is important because it shows both expected and unexpected sources of competition for talent. Talent competition can often be different from revenue competition, a traditional assumption that talent flow analysis challenges.
It's more important for organizations to look at the whole picture when identifying talent competition, not just what can be gleaned from social networks, which is often incomplete and more accurate. In a world where technology is becoming increasingly common, the sources of talent are less important than the skills they have. Where organizations are transforming for the future, there are various skills that will be needed and often in short supply. Identifying these gaps builds future competitive advantage.
How does talent flow analysis help your organization?
Talent flow analysis gives directional guidance on talent movements, which organizations can use as a supplementary data point to challenge existing hypotheses. This allows organizations to think more about what competition for talent means to them, challenging their ideas and tactics on how jobs are organized, what they pay, the benefits available, or career development opportunities.
Our analysis looks at the following:
- Direct talent competition — where you hire talent from and lose talent to
- Talent sources — organizations currently employing the type of talent you need, and how easily they are attracting and retaining it
- Talent demand — organizations most aggressively hiring for that talent
- Best practice — organizations that have a reputation for employing your specific expertise
Key elements of WTW's talent flow analysis
By mining publicly available data sets and analyzing talent movements, we define the most relevant talent market peers and show that you might be competing with a wider range of organizations than you had thought, beyond your traditional peers, and traditional locations.
- This is helpful for your organization's benchmarking group. It can either confirm current peers or find new potential peers based on talent competition
- Expand which organizations you might wish to analyze for best practice approaches to executive compensation or overall rewards
By leveraging this existing peer group or an expanded one, your competitive advantage can be enhanced across several key areas:
- Reward and talent strategies. Develop your people strategy to ensure organizations are competitive, an employer of choice and attract and retain the right talent
- Career frameworks. Attracting and retaining talent can be about understanding how to build more fruitful careers and develop a successful framework for people to thrive. Providing greater transparency on careers supports retention of talent
- Job architecture. Building an effective organizational architecture helps to create pathways that attract and retain talent with clear career trajectories
- Skills strategy and approach. Building the skills of the future and identifying where there are gaps will put your organization in a stronger competitive position
- Compensation and market pay strategies. Challenging existing reward and pay strategies to focus analysis on the true competitors for talent including new peer groups. Which maximises the value of market pay information and pay review process
Next steps
Harness the power of talent flow analysis to transform your organization's approach to talent management. By understanding the dynamics of talent movement, you can strategically position your organization to attract and retain the best in the industry, regardless of traditional hypotheses.
Our experience will help you develop effective reward and talent strategies, attract and retain talent, improve your job and pay structures, make pay plans better and create strong career paths to stay ahead of the competition. Don't let your competitors outpace you; embrace talent flow analysis as your strategic advantage that drives tomorrow's success.
