The Talent Life Cycle

In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham talk about the Talent Life Cycle with Cloud Delivery Lead Nigel Wiltshire. They discuss how organizations can nurture their employees' skills, help them set goals that align with business objectives, support their desired progression, and promote a happy work-life balance.   Oracle MyLearn: mylearn.oracle.com Oracle University Learning Community: education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: twitter.com/Oracle_Edu   Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started. 00:26 Lois: Hey there! Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I’m Lois Houston, Director of Product Innovation and Go to Market Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Niki: Hi everyone! Last week, we spoke about the Reward Life Cycle, which is the fourth life cycle in the overall HCM Business Process, with our Cloud Delivery Lead Nigel Wiltshire. Nigel is back with us today to talk about the last life cycle, Talent. 00:55 Lois: We’re wrapping up this discussion on HCM life cycles today so if you’ve just joined us, be sure to check out the prior episodes this season as you’ll want to get the full picture of the entire HCM business process flow. Hi Nigel! Thanks for agreeing to pop in one last time (this season that is!) to take us through these HCM business process life cycles. 01:16 Nigel: Thank you for having me again. Lois: So, let’s get right down to business here. What is the Talent Life Cycle? Nigel: The Talent Life Cycle contains all the processes that serve to manage and promote an employee’s career growth. Niki: And what are the processes that make up this life cycle? 01:30 Nigel: Well, Niki, there are four business processes that make up the Talent Life Cycle: Goal Setting to Performance, Talent Review to Succession, Career Planning to Development, and Employee Insight to Work Life Balance. The Goal Setting to Performance process covers the two main aspects of Talent Management:  Performance Goals and Performance Reviews. 01:50 Nigel: The second process, Talent Review to Succession, allows for managers to review the overall performance and potential of each of their employees. This is to ascertain how the employees are progressing through their career and whether there are any steps that need to be taken to address any challenges that the employee may be having with their performance and/or potential. And on the flip side of that, whether there are any actions or recommendations for career progression for their higher performing employees. 02:15 Nigel: Now the Career Planning to Development process centers around the career progression and opportunities for the employee, and there are a couple of main activities that support this venture.  The first is the Career Plan or Path, which is where the employee seeks out the roles that they are interested in pursuing, whether that is in the same field of work, a sideways move, or something completely different. To support this, the employee would create a Development Plan, with goals to support their desired progression. These goals can be designed to support their existing role, to help them pursue another role, or could simply be something personal, such as learning a new language, which is not necessarily related to their employment. 02:53 Nigel: The fourth and final process is Employee Insights to Work Life Balance. Happy employees are productive employees, in the same way that a happy workplace is one that employees are happy to get out of bed for in the morning. To promote this, organizations can invoke activities that support a happy work life balance. These activities could be Wellness Programs, Fun Competitions, Volunteering Projects, and Recognition Awards. 03:16 Lois: Circling back to the first of those processes, what relationship do performance goals have with performance reviews? Nigel: Although goals and performance reviews can be seen and operated independently, they are intrinsically linked. If you think about what an employee’s performance review is designed to address, which is to evaluate the employee over a set period (usually a year), we have to consider what it is we are evaluating. In most organizations, this comes in the form of two elements: the employee’s competencies and their goals. So, for each of the goals that are assigned to the employee, we have to consider whether they have achieved them to the satisfaction of the organization. 03:53 Niki: Now, where do these goals originate from? Nigel: They are often assigned to the employee through their management hierarchy, which ensures that the goals that the employee has to complete are in line with and support business objectives. Having said that, a lot of organizations allow employees to add their own goals, and as I mentioned previously, these goals could support their current role, a role they wish to pursue in the future, or indeed personal goals for their own growth. It’s a combination of these that are subsequently evaluated alongside their competencies. 04:22 Lois: Ok, then. Nigel, you mentioned that another aspect of the employee’s evaluation is their competencies. Can you please tell us a little bit more about these?  How are they different from the employee’s goals? Nigel: Absolutely. While a goal is there to support the growth of the business, employee competencies are designed to ensure the employee themselves are up to scratch, in terms of their job. So it will test for such things as their qualifications (e.g. Do they have an up-to-date qualification and/or license to do the job they do – such as a heavy goods vehicle licence for hauliers or maybe a level of language, whether it’s spoken or written to support a translator role). However, that is only one side of the story. Competencies are also designed to ensure that the employee adheres to company standards, such as Communication Skills, Ability to Adapt, and Follows Company Values.  Yes, you could say that these can also be a requirement for certain jobs (e.g. Communication Skills for instructors), but it is also something that would be needed to interact with other members within the organization at various levels, such as a basic level to interact with other employees, but a more advanced level when interacting with the Board of Directors. 05:29 Niki: Nigel, earlier you mentioned that performance reviews are conducted over a set period, and you said that it’s an annual process. Are there any other times when an employee could be evaluated? Nigel: Of course. The annual or focal review is the one that most people recognize. However there are many types of reviews as well as many periods that a review could cover. For instance, some organizations have a half yearly review as well as the annual review, usually referred to as an interim review.  05:57 Nigel: Other review types may come in the form of PIPs or Personal Improvement Plans for poorly performing employees; Check Ins, used mostly for new employees within their first few months, but also for field operations where the employee and managers do not tend to see each other from one month to the next; and then we have Ad Hoc. These, as the name implies, happen as required, for whatever reason, and do not tend to have a specific time frame. They not used often though as most organizations like the review to be more structured. Now, the results from all of these are often taken forward to the main review, and serve as a guide to how the employee has fared over the year. The main advantage of interim reviews is that any development needs are identified early and can be addressed straight away. 06:39 Working towards an Oracle Certification this year? Grab all the help you can get! Attend a cert prep live event in the Oracle University Learning Community. And once you’re certified, don’t forget to visit our exclusive forum for Oracle-certified users. If you are already an Oracle MyLearn user, go to MyLearn to join the community. You will need to log in first. If you have not yet accessed Oracle MyLearn, visit mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to get started.  07:14 Niki: Welcome back! Nigel, what steps do organizations take to ensure they maintain operational integrity when they know key personnel are planning to leave, especially due to retirement? Nigel: Succession Planning is the practice where organizations develop employees to a point where they can move or be promoted to a position that is suddenly left vacant. This is especially critical for those positions that would leave the organization vulnerable and/or less able to operate adequately. 07:42 Nigel: Typically, each employee identified as a potential replacement will be given a ranking based on several factors, such as their Performance Score, their Potential, and Expected Readiness Time Frame. And a combination of these, as well as other factors, will rank the employee in terms of who is most suitable to take over, down to who is least likely to succeed the current incumbent. Of course, things change over time and these succession lists have to be constantly managed and altered accordingly. For instance, maybe one of the employees identified as a potential successor doesn’t want to be considered or maybe one or two of them leave the organization, and as employees gain more experience, they move up or down the list relative to other potential successors. 08:23 Lois: I understand that employee suitability for a job or position can be based on how the managers within the organization perceive the employee’s performance and potential. But that can be subjective, right? An organization could be in hot water if they rely on this approach alone. So, how does a system like Oracle Fusion Cloud help to show objectively, which Jobs and Positions an employee is suitable for, and how does it identify gaps in employee knowledge or experience? 08:52 Nigel: Wow, that’s such a meaty question, Lois. OK, so many systems these days have functionality that allow employers to record what attributes are required by any potential employee, to fulfil a job or position successfully. These attributes include Competencies, Qualifications, Languages, Licences, and many more, and what they do is create Model Profiles, which are the list of attributes needed for the job or position. At the same time, organizations are able to record which attributes the employee already has, and these are called Person Profiles. 09:25 Nigel: By comparing one against the other, it is easy to identify whether an employee (or potential candidate if used with Recruiting) is suitable for a job and which attributes are missing that the employee does not have. Now the upshot of this is that not only can the employer slot the right person into the right job, but it can be used to identify what gaps the employee needs to plug, should they wish to pursue an alternative job type, or move up the chain of command. 09:48 Niki: Well, I think we’ve come to the end of our focus on HCM business process life cycles. Thank you so much, Nigel, for taking the time to be our guide through this journey. Nigel: Thanks for having me. I’ve had a great time with you two. 10:00 Lois: If you missed any of our earlier episodes this season, you should go back and check them out to get a broad view of these business processes. We’ve had one episode on Oracle’s business process training in general and we also had Nigel with us these last few weeks, taking us through each HCM business process life cycle. So it’s a great time for a refresher! We’ll be taking a break from our business process training next week to look at some training that’s just launched in our Cloud Learning Subscriptions. But more on that soon. Until then, this is Lois Houston… Niki: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 10:37 That’s all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We’d also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.