Mapping Talent Strategies for the Digital Economy

Global capability centers are transforming businesses across the globe while reshaping the talent landscape. High demand for and availability of talent skilled in advanced and emerging technologies is enabling capability centers to move up the work value chain, and positioning India as an engineering and innovation hub.  Amidst a fast-paced digital revolution, capability centers are rethinking their talent management strategies – evaluating how they attract, grow, and retain talent and build a highly engaged workforce positioned for success.

When creating a strategy for the digital economy organizations need to be in step with the constantly evolving business and talent landscape. A high demand for resources skilled in technologies such as data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning is creating ample avenues to build bigger and diversified competency portfolios. More importantly, firms must transform this pool into a highly motivated workforce that contributes towards the firm’s growth.

Build and Nurture a Diverse Workforce

Recruiting individuals from diverse generations, thoughts, ethnicity is vital. To encourage age diversity and skill-based hiring, instituting programs to bring on board fresh graduates, veterans with specific skills, and women who took a career break for reasons beyond maternity can go a long way.

Diversified hiring coupled with effective growth strategies go a long way in creating value for the organization and key talent. Companies must look to curate a conducive ecosystem where skilled individuals thrive, and tenured and new employees can collaborate to hone skills and learn new methods and strategies for collective success.

At Fiserv, we have the Technology Analyst Program focused on hiring fresh engineering graduates,” Forward For Her” program for women wanting to return to the workforce following a career break and other programs for Veterans and people with disabilities. Such initiatives have enabled us to build a more agile and diverse workforce and cater to the rapidly changing business needs of our clients and their customers.

Fostering a Growth Mindset

Enhancing technical capabilities, developing niche competencies, and upskilling are integral to building a growth mindset, driven by innovation. Key to holistic growth is rooting the culture of innovation deep within the organization. At Fiserv, we instituted the Business Innovation Program, where a select group of innovators undergo facilitated ideation journeys to curate new ideas and craft fresh solutions from our blend of knowledge, technology assets, and capabilities that span the company.

Building such an innovation mindset requires platforms and initiatives that engage employees to collaborate and ideate. Provisioning digital learning tools and platforms along with collaboration with academia goes a long way to encourage employees to upskill and cross skill. In addition, customized learning paths and career advancement in roles and responsibilities add to deep entrenchment.

All these efforts are naturally complimented by incentivizing growth and celebrating the accomplishments of employees and leveraging failures as learning opportunities.

Options of Internal Mobility

With a significant increase in demand for technical skills, the number of available specialized roles for data engineers, data scientists, user design experts, SDETs, and DevOps engineers has bolstered. Along with shrinking opportunities for those with skill gaps or learning curves, organizations face challenges from competing job offers for technologists in core technical roles, leaving enterprises with more dropouts and increased hiring costs.  While it is always good to bring in an external perspective, re-recruitment of internal talent, building and strengthening the talent pool is always mutually rewarding towards individual careers and value for the firm.

Develop an Inclusive Ecosystem 

Inclusivity breeds innovation. A top priority for organizations today is to build a culture where employees can bring their unique perspectives and skills to the table and enhance problem solving capabilities for the organization. Equity driven programs and policies open doors for diverse cognitive abilities to thrive and create a positive work experience. When employees bring their best selves forward and think creatively, unconscious biases can be reduced, building a sense of belonging that leads to stickiness of high-performing talent.  Inclusive leadership across levels has a role to play, aligning behavioral practices and structural initiatives to fit a growth driven mindset. Additionally, employee resource groups that connect people across the organization with similar background and identities are critical. These groups foster the very ecosystems where employees network, receive mentoring, exchange ideas, and advance their professional development. Such opportunities of holistic development create a big impact on employees to aspire for growth and leadership roles.

Any holistic talent strategy rests on an organization’s efforts to build a strong culture where everyone has the opportunity and right levers to grow, receive inspiration and enablement for success. Capability centers today must prioritize agility, innovation, and equity to build a thriving ecosystem.

Authored by – Mamta Sharma, Senior Vice President and Head, Human Resources, Global Services and India, Fiserv

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ET Edge Insights, its management, or its members

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