About AMS
AMS, is a global talent solutions business with core areas of service in talent acquisition and orchestration and talent consulting spanning permanent and contingent workforces. AMS stands as a prominent global force in Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), renowned for partnering with FTSE 100 companies worldwide to manage their entire recruitment processes. This encompasses a broad spectrum, from permanent experienced hires and early careers to comprehensive contingency workforce solutions. Our core areas of service: talent acquisition and orchestration and talent consulting are amplified by digital capability and strategic technology partnerships that span permanent and contingent workforces. While RPO constitutes the core of their business, AMS also boasts a substantial consultancy arm, offering expertise in various talent-related domains such as assessment, strategic consulting, brand and attraction, and technology.
With over 8,000 employees globally, AMS has cultivated a truly global footprint, extending from its historical roots in the UK and EMEA to key operations in Manila and, following a recent acquisition, India. Over more than 12 years, AMS has undergone significant transformation, characterised by a shift towards more structured operations, rigorous governance, and a clear future vision. This evolution has solidified its position as a market leader, not only in external recruitment but also in advising clients on broader talent experiences, including the critical areas of internal mobility, upskilling, and reskilling, driven by the increasing recognition of the costs associated with traditional external hiring.
Challenges
As AMS continued its global expansion and transformation, it encountered significant internal challenges in optimising its own talent experience. The organisation aimed to evaluate existing internal skills, identify future skills gaps, reduce recruitment costs, enhance employee engagement, and provide robust opportunities for internal upskilling, reskilling, and diverse career development, moving beyond traditional hierarchical paths.
A primary obstacle was the pervasive lack of visibility into their internal skill sets. This deficit meant that AMS often had to resort to laborious manual processes to determine if internal talent could fulfil the demand. Furthermore, employee feedback consistently highlighted a lack of clear development paths and transparent career progression, contributing to attrition. The existing IT infrastructure and disparate systems hindered efforts to strategically connect talent management, talent acquisition, and business leads. Without comprehensive data and insights, effective workforce planning – both internal and external – became increasingly difficult, posing a challenge to the company's ambition to remain agile and competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
Our primary objective was to cultivate a more dynamic and transparent internal talent landscape, empowering our colleagues with clear pathways for professional development. By offering enhanced opportunities for upskilling, reskilling, and diverse career progression, we aim to significantly boost engagement, foster a culture of continuous learning, and ultimately, retain our invaluable talent within AMS.", Philippa Williams, Global Director, Talent Development at AMS.
Philippa Williams
Global Director, Talent Development at AMS
Why Cornerstone
AMS’s decision to integrate Cornerstone into its internal operations was a strategic move born from a long-standing relationship and a holistic view of talent management.
AMS is not just a customer but also a strategic partner of Cornerstone, leading to multiple internal teams already engaging in various aspects of Cornerstone's offerings. This collaborative environment facilitated an organisation-wide assessment, culminating in a clear objective: to consolidate their talent lifecycle management within a single, unified platform.
The biggest driver for this decision was Cornerstone's ability to offer a comprehensive suite of solutions encompassing performance management, succession planning, continuous check-ins, a rich learning experience platform, career development tools, and a dynamic Talent Marketplace. This integrated approach stood in contrast to fragmented systems, which often meant managing performance in one HRIS, learning in another, and potential talent mobility elsewhere. Bringing these functions together within Cornerstone's Galaxy platform presented a powerful vision for streamlined operations and an enhanced user experience.
Embracing the Talent Marketplace for Internal Growth
At the heart of AMS's solution was the internal deployment of Cornerstone's Talent Marketplace, referred to internally as the "opportunity marketplace”. This was a pivotal step towards practicing what they preach to clients: fostering a skills-based organisation. The Talent Marketplace offers a critical solution to the previous lack of internal skills visibility, enabling AMS to quickly identify and deploy internal talent for client projects, thereby reducing reliance on costly external hiring.
The Talent Marketplace is designed to empower employees by offering transparent career development and growth opportunities. It allows individuals to explore different career paths – both hierarchical and lateral – and to understand the skills required for specific roles.
Supported by AI-generated content, the platform then recommends learning pathways to help employees close identified skill gaps, significantly boosting employee engagement and retention by providing clear avenues for professional advancement. The integration of the Talent Marketplace with their existing Applicant Tracking System, TalentLink, ensured a robust foundation for this "evolution, not a revolution" approach to internal mobility.
Navigating Implementation and Future Alignment
The implementation journey, while strategic, was not without its complexities. AMS consciously migrated its performance management from its existing talent management solution to Cornerstone, a visionary move intended to link skills with performance outcomes, goals, objectives, and ultimately, future reward structures. As early adopters, connecting multiple modules presented challenges, occasionally prolonging timelines due to specific releases or unexpected functionality. However, Cornerstone's accommodating approach to AMS's feedback and requests helped refine and enhance the product.
A significant aspect of the transformation involved change management, particularly in standardising the definition of a "skill" across the organisation, an area where initial consensus was often varied. The programme also highlighted the critical importance of data architecture, connecting disparate data from its HRIS, TalentLink, and Cornerstone to provide comprehensive insights. Cornerstone's open architecture was a key factor in addressing these integration complexities, ensuring seamless data flow and reducing overall IT complexity. The vision for the future includes leveraging AI more extensively within Cornerstone for easier administration, faster and localized content delivery, and more sophisticated identification of skills and skill gaps.
The collaboration with Cornerstone was a natural evolution of a long-standing strategic relationship. We recognised the imperative to unify our talent management ecosystem, moving beyond disparate systems to a single, comprehensive platform. Cornerstone's integrated suite, encompassing performance, learning, and the innovative Talent Marketplace, provided the robust foundation we needed to holistically support our global workforce and achieve our ambitious talent strategy.
Philippa Williams
Global Director, Talent Development at AMS
Results
AMS's journey with Cornerstone is still in its early stages for some modules, but initial feedback and adoption rates are promising, laying a strong foundation for future talent agility.
- Improved Performance Management Experience: The initial feedback on the performance management, goal setting, and employee interaction aspects of the Cornerstone platform has been overwhelmingly positive. End-users found the system "so much more simplistic" and intuitive compared to their previous platform. It offered greater flexibility for adjusting objectives, changing roles, and re-weighting goals throughout the year. As performance management is mandatory, adoption rates are near 100%, with strong positive sentiment during the mid-year review process.
- Early Adoption of Learning Experience Platform and Talent Marketplace: The LXP and Talent Marketplace were fully rolled out to the business in October, making it a very recent implementation. A pilot group launched in July provided initial insights, and while it's too soon for definitive data on hires made through Talent Marketplace, initial adoption has been strong.
- Driving Skills Profile Completion: Workshops and support content have been created to encourage employees to complete quality skills profiles within the platform, a crucial step for leveraging the Talent Marketplace effectively.
- Significant Workforce Engagement: Approximately 75% of AMS's global workforce is currently fully deployed within the Cornerstone platform with plans to enroll 100% by end of 2026.
- Foundation for Future-Ready Workforce: Despite wider business transformation efforts, the implementation has successfully established a unified platform that directly addresses AMS's strategic goals of enhanced internal mobility, reduced external hiring dependency, and improved employee engagement through transparent career development.
