You, me, we — Managing the talent experience

Today’s world is incredibly unpredictable. Think of all the upheavals businesses have had to weather in recent years, from Brexit to COVID-19, the Great Resignation, and more. Even before this, there was the 2008 financial meltdown. All of this impacts the world of work, meaning organizations must always prepare for times of instability.

Talent experience and learning have the potential to act as a strategic agent of change here. Why? Because they can unlock change and future market share. It’s a chain reaction: learning leads to curiosity, creativity, discovery, disruption and innovation. Learning holds the key to allowing businesses to navigate the challenging economic environment we find ourselves in.

Employees know what they want

When it comes to talent experience, there are a number of things that employees want from their employers. They want to feel like all the talent activities that exist are there for a purpose to help nurture their growth and engagement. They want to feel like the experience has been designed and personalized to them and their needs and evolves as they evolve. They also want to know they have a clear pathway for the future. They want goals, check-ins and performance and development plans.

Skills is also an important area. Our 2022 Global Skills Report found that 87% of employers feel confident in developing their people’s skills. However, only 55% of employees feel confident in their company’s ability to develop their skills. Suddenly, we’ve seen skilling go from being something we were going to worry about “later” and “that’s for another day” to become front of mind and with a deep sense of urgency around it.

And it’s not just about identifying development needs. It’s about how organizations pave the path for an individual’s growth. During our 2023 talent mobility study, we found that 73% of workers want to know about career opportunities inside their organization, and employees provided with access to self-service technology for career mobility exploration are half as likely to have plans to quit their jobs.

Failing to get a talent strategy right could be disastrous, leading to the proliferation of trends like ‘quiet quitting’, which can also prevent an organization from developing the agility needed to survive and truly thrive.

Talent experiences must build around providing the learning, skills and career paths that both employees and organizations need.

Putting people at center of talent experience

To balance this, organizations must roll out a talent experience strategy that takes care of the 'you,' the 'me,' and the 'we.' And this is where Cornerstone comes in.

You

This is the corporate strategy. The organization defines its collective talent needs to reach its organizational goals, manages the distribution of required and prescribed knowledge and defines HR processes. Here, Cornerstone provides the talent experience platform to unlock the workforce's potential, streamline talent activities and align everything to the business's goals. Organizations can design more intelligent workflows and predict trends across people, skills and content data through an AI-powered tech fabric.

Me

This is individual empowerment. It's answering individual needs and providing an engaging experience for employees to discover and access knowledge, learning, networks, mentors, projects or gigs and career pathways in a self-directed way. Cornerstone uses AI to create inspiring, personalized, connected experiences across learning, skilling and mobility.

We

This is about collective intelligence. Using a common skills language, there is an essential intersection between employee and company needs and priorities, which augments and accelerates innovation. This, in turn, drives maximum retention, engagement, and, ultimately, productivity.

Creating a strong talent experience, with the employee at the center of everything, is the key to business resilience during challenging times. Cornerstone offers a people growth model for a future-ready workforce, providing a core talent management and an intelligent skills engine powered by 100 million users and over 55,000 verified skills. By empowering organizations to provide their people with meaningful talent experiences, learning and career pathways, Cornerstone is helping unlock the agility, flexibility and creativity required to navigate times of instability.

To find out more about what your organization can gain from our Talent Experience Platform, see here.

Get in touch with one of our experts to explore how we can tailor our solutions to your organization's needs.