Insight...not just Info

 

I just came off a busy week with a public-run WSQ talent management module as well as a corporate team building at Resorts World last Saturday for the Singapore office of a global legal firm.

The opening comments from the sponsor of the team building session really brought home for me about how important it is for organisations to be able to make sense of the data on their people so that they can make the right human capital decisions as part of their talent management (TM).

He said that in looking at the office, he and HR realised that this group, the secretarial/admin group, was the "single largest group" (job classification in TM speak) doing the same function. The lawyers obviously a large group but were in silos according to their specialisations like banking & finance, litigation, M&A (mergers & acquisitions) etc.

This is info (information) that organisations can glean from gathering data / statistics on their workforce. But so what?

He goes on to say that as a result, this group has the "largest impact on the tone of the office" i.e. the culture, how things get done, the feel at the work place, hence the need for investment into them and  this full day team-building program. This to enhance team work, promote collaboration, establish a culture of collegiality so as to achieve better organisational effectiveness and business performance.

Insight.

There are many tools associated with talent managment - job profiling, competency matrix, performance management, job classifications, bench strength ratios, talent mapping, lag measures, lead measures etc

Organisations sometimes get too caught up in collecting "data" on their workforce - attrition rates, MC rates, profile of departing employees, tenure, qualifications, age etc that they become indundated with so much info that they can't see the forest from the trees.

They would do well to understand this simple philosophy of info versus insight.

Are they gaining insight into their workforce to make appropriate human capital or talent management initiatives, or are they drowning in a sea of data and cannot ascertain the right steps or even where to start?

Which describes your current organisational situation today?