Technology is now playing a very important role in aiding HR decision making. Transformation of raw data into meaningful analytics from various processes aiding talent management initiative has been one of the core objectives of HR. There has been a significant shift towards a transformational role from that of a transactional one.

Data analytics capitalizes on the available data to identify trends in different fields like recruitment, hiring, training, etc. From a technology point of view, HR relies a lot on automation in terms of processes. There are a range of HR management systems and processes and every organization having 500 employees and above has necessarily setup a HRMS. With the use of tools available, HR is now able to pull out meaningful information on a periodical basis, right from the quality of people entering the organization to their periodical performance.

Pearson Assessment, one of the pioneers in education, and the world’s leading talent assessment and consulting company, has a revolutionary product called Versant, which is one of the world’s largest selling fully automated assessment of spoken and written communication skills. It gives you 95-97 percent reliability in terms of the outcome measuring facility of ’spoken and written’ skills in English. The test itself is taken over the phone or a computer developed application with no human intervention whatsoever. Once the test is completed, the result is available in real time, wherein a detailed report is printed, which talks about one’s proficiencies on various parameters of spoken and written skills of English mapped on to international globally accepted standards. Every year at least 1.9 lakh tests are conducted in the Indian subcontinent alone. While this is what the tool does at a micro level, Pearson has invested heavily in the knowledge resource in terms of R&D at the backend, which does a series of analysis from the data gathered via testing and is able to present excellent reports on trends, which not just throws valuable insights or interpretation of skills across various markets/geographies, but also helps talent management professionals streamline and make better decisions about their quality hiring and training As per one of the published reports, we found out that the average spoken communication skills in Philippines is higher than that of India while Japan, Korea and China trail far behind when compared to India. No wonder, the next hot destination for voice based BPOs is Philippines and allied markets.

Similarly, technology and analytics are playing critical roles in almost all paradigms of talent management processes from talent acquisition to engagement to development and finally retention or supporting attrition management.

When choosing a vendor or rather a technology partner, some of the crucial things that companies look out for are credibility in the quality of services being offered, long-term after sales engagement, analytics and continuous support. At Pearson, we believe in investing as much time as possible to help create a credible integration of our services, which means investing in sufficient duration of time and effort in the sensitization of the product within a simulated environment at client location, conducting joint pilot analysis, benchmark creation and sharing recommendation with the management. The objective is that instead of rushing up into any uncertainty, we make the management feel confident about the solution and its success in meeting desired objectives. Only when the solution is approved, we get into other transactional details like contracting and implementation.