Human Resource is a combination of Talent Management and Workforce Planning. That said, it is a rather difficult task to differentiate these two areas of human resources.

Today’s businesses are futuristic; Talent management and strategic workforce dominate the future workforce. Although both the areas are working towards the same goal, the way they execute and perform their tasks is their distinction.

Workforce planning is an approach towards building a seamless team whereas talent management’s primary role is to keep up a reasonable retention rate.

Approaches to build, retain, and engage their staff is the main motto. However, the difference is:

Talent Management

HR leaders explain that Talent Management is a process within the HR realm that works to retain talent. The primary task for the team is to keep their expertise engaged and enable them to perform optimally. This includes the following:

• A streamlined and inclusive on-boarding process for the newcomers
• Explaining and instructing the new employees about their roles and responsibilities
• It is essential to make all the employees, new and current, feel motivated, valued, and in control of their carrier paths and growth structures
• The talent management workforce has to make the employees feel that their carriers are supported.
• Providing employees with all the tools within the company to achieve their goals

Today, the number of HR leaders who are making a measurable impact with talent management strategy is 83%

The topmost priority of the talent management team is to source the best fit candidate. Filling the skill gap by identifying the right talent is a never-ending task for talent management.

With the right talent, the organization can reap additional benefits. When the employee passes through each step of the talent management process, it helps the human resources team in generating an excellent ROI for the organization.

Workforce Planning

Business leaders and HR teams agree that a competent workforce planning strategy is pivotal for meeting business goals. Strategic workforce planning comes into the picture when taking care of the industry trends, workforce management, and analytics. Their responsibilities include:

• Plan ahead for any requirements of new hiring.
• Run analytics to emphasize on the sustaining employees currently.
• Predict and evaluate any changes within the workforce.
• Help the employees develop skills for future growth.
• Stay ahead in the competition within the industry and economy.

Six phases within the workforce planning process help the team to build a workforce for a high-performing organization. More organizations are investing in strategic workforce planning to enable a data-driven planning system for better decision making and to better forecast changes. It also supports demand planning, action planning, supply analytics, and gap analysis.

With Workforce planning, human resources will be better equipped to make smart decisions, carry out excellent recruitment, maintain retention rates, development, transitions, etc. Business leaders will be better at monitoring the workforce of the organization and have a great view of the future business goals and outcomes.

Are They Different? Or Do They Co-Exist?

When it comes to strategic workforce planning, it is all about the approach towards building a seamless team. While working with the given analytics and trends, the focus of the HR team is to hire the most qualified people for the job. They also make sure that the talent is capable of competing against all the current and future business requirements.

Although one of the tasks for the workforce planning team is to retain good employees, their primary goal is to build a great team. They also make sure that the current and future needs of the organization meet.

On the other hand, talent management in HR roles is to keep up a reasonable retention rate. And for that, it has to make sure the employees of the organization are happy, satisfied, motivated, engaged and make sure that they continue to perform better and improve their skill sets to benefit themselves and the workplace.

Management of workforce planning is essential for smooth HR functioning. The teams of talent management and workforce planning contribute individually for the same tasks together. They offer a productive workforce that can be sustainable towards the goals of the organization, as well as the individual.

Once you get an understanding of your workforce and business strategy, it is time to sync your HR plans with your talent management and workforce planning teams. Using people analytics, you can achieve long term plans to develop organizational strengths, improve the competency model, and create a goal for the workforce.

There is a lot of debate on the multi-faceted processes of talent management and workforce planning. However, with both the methods, an organization can reinforce its workforce management and ultimately aim at developing a high-performing, streamlined, and engaged workforce. It is working in tandem that benefits both the employees and the organization in growing.

Data is more of a compulsion than an option these days for any organization looking to leave a footprint in today’s competitive market. It is the oil that every business needs to unlock its full potential. It empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions and deliver personalized experiences to customers.

What do you mean by Data-Driven Organization?

Data-driven organizations depend on vast volumes of data and smart data analytics tools to quicken their business decision-making processes. They capture data and give context to it by describing who has the access, where it’s from, and how it is used. Data-Driven organizations use predictive analytics and smart data reporting tools to gain better insights.

What are the data-driven business strategies?

Data Analytics and Big Data are at the pinnacle of any corporate agenda. They have transformed the way performance is delivered, and the way organizations do business. When we combine data-driven business strategy with data analytics, together, they become an essential competitive difference.

The key to form a data-driven business strategy is the combination of four supporting capabilities:

1. A data-driven business strategy should be driven by the business and not by technology. Understand what your business needs before defining the tactical elements.
2. The organization must be able to identify, combine, and manage multiple sources of data. It is imperative to determine and ensure that the data is secure, timely, and accurate. Inaccurate data leads to wrong insights and ultimately, bad business decisions. Consider data from all the sources, when combined with your data.
3. They need advanced data management and data reporting tools to predict and optimize outcomes. Until an organization is ready to leverage all the features of a sophisticated IT system, it should avoid using them. Attention should be paid to data reporting tools, communication tools, and visualization tools.
4. A data-driven organization must possess the power to induce a data-driven culture. The culture should focus on educating the organization to acknowledge the insights generated by data. Such a culture then becomes a mindset of continuous improvement, testing, prioritizing, and sharing data with other employees. Data and analytics can then be used to inform and influence others in the market.

Let us now look at the benefits of data-driven business strategy:

1. Increase sales and loyalty

With each trace that a customer leaves behind, he also leaves a treasure of information which gives insights into his/her preferences, beliefs, etc. Using SplashBI, this data can then be used to tailor products and services, in the way the customer wants. With excellent customer experience come high sales and greater customer loyalty.

2. Cut Costs

With such a wealth of information at their fingertips, businesses can easily predict the future and reduce the potential financial impact. Using a data reporting tool like SplashBI can help companies to identify patterns in product and servicing pricing, which help them take appropriate steps and reduce costs.

3. Increase productivity and efficiency

Business Analytics Software like SplashBI help in identifying revenue-generating opportunities, boosting operational efficiencies, and increasing and optimizing production. Businesses can use this tool to forecast needs of the inventory and increase the efficiency of production.

4. Compete with big businesses

Today, most companies have access to an enormous amount of data, but only a few uses it effectively. Businesses which use SplashBI for their reporting needs gain a significant competitive advantage as they build better services and products using insights offered by SplashBI.

5. Process more data

With the rise of AI and IoT, businesses have started collecting more data, and this has made the processing of data difficult. However, companies which use SplashBI can process data faster as it uses AI and machine learning. Processing more data means getting more insights.

6. Understanding what customers want

Most businesses have a fair understanding of who their typical, and ideal customers are; however, SplashBI gives them a whole new level of customer insights. It offers businesses with an in-depth understanding of their potential customers and the kind of products they like. Knowing customers, and the variety of products they want, help enterprises in tailoring future offerings.

7. Reduce risk significantly

Data Analytics tool like SplashBI helps businesses in reducing potential risks. They help giving companies vital insights into the success of new products while keeping in mind their customer base. SplashBI allows businesses to predict early and reduce the risk of asset failure and downtime.

To Sum it up!

The increase in digitization has created patterns, which have pushed organizations to become data-driven. Although technology is essential to organizations, businesses should be driven by a data-driven strategy. To leverage data and analytics, it is imperative that companies have strong leadership, organizational transformation, effective data management, and continuous improvement. Evolving to become a data-driven organization promises competitive differentiation, but requires a disciplined approach.

Try SplashBI’s business analytics solution and explore how the power of reporting and analytics. We help you blend your data and reveal sophisticated insights across various data sources at half the price.