How does Au & NZ’s talent maturity stack up?

In a year marked by layoffs, a shrinking talent pool, mental health concerns and the impact of AI on the workplace, HR professionals are facing more talent challenges than ever before.

Addressing the need for talent development has never been more critical. However, new data has revealed that many global businesses are still in the early stages of talent maturity.

In the latest addition to its annual research, Cornerstone Onedmand has released its Talent Health Index 2023, which takes a deep dive into how different global organisations are approaching talent development. It also measures their maturity level across seven critical dimensions, and reveals how they can overcome some of their most pressing talent challenges.

It surveyed 700 businesses and over 1400 employees worldwide, and categorised regions into four different levels of talent maturity – foundational, administrative, sophisticated and transformative, with the latter being the highest level of maturity.

Australia and New Zealand scored 88.1 out of 112 on the Talent Health Index, placing them into the Administrative level – the second of four levels. This indicates that while talent strategy is evolving fast, there is still plenty of room for growth.

Concerningly, the Talent Health Index also found an almost 30% gap between employee perceptions on skill building – a gap that has remained largely unchanged since 2020. While 90% of employers felt that they were equipped with the resources to develop skills, only 61% of employees agreed.

This gap was substantially lower in Australia and New Zealand, sitting at 17% (81% of employers agreed, vs. 64% of employees). While this outdoes global statistics significantly, it still indicates a gap between what employers believe they are providing, and the results that employees gain.

“This confidence gap has stayed the same over the four years that we’ve done this research, it literally hasn’t moved,” Mike Bollinger, VP, strategic initiatives at Cornerstone Ondemand comments.

“Employees want more content around their skills development, they want more tailored and comprehensive career guidance, and they want coaching and mentoring. Those are all new and unique things that you can attack as part of your potential approach.”

Improving your talent maturity in 2024

According to the Talent Health Index, a solid skills strategy is “the heartbeat of a healthy and mature talent programme.”

To start creating a talent-fit future, organisations should start by examining the seven dimensions used in the Talent Health Index, and assessing how they rank on each of them. The dimensions are culture and technology; skills strategy; learning & development; content strategy; performance management; talent mobility; and talent reporting, data and analytics.

If your organisation is struggling to know where to start, Bollinger suggests looking at High-Performing Organisations and how they go about each of the seven dimensions. He notes that for HPOs, the difference between employer and employee perceptions on skills was only 6% - a telling indicator of a strong and cohesive approach.

“HPO employees trust their organisations, and they see their organisation demonstrating how they can develop,” he explains.

“They see that their employer cares about their growth, and 92% of employees have confidence in the talent development initiatives. There is a very clear alignment there.”

Other tips include connecting learning to career growth, and enabling easy access to formal, personalised learning. With only 40% of organisations in Australia and New Zealand seeing performance management as a two-way process, weaving the performance conversation into skills and learning can also be useful.

The Talent Health Index also highlights the importance of data, reporting and analytics to identify talent gaps, and to develop targeted learning and development programmes.

There’s no doubt that the challenges are significant, and it can be overwhelming and difficult to know where to begin. To help organisations begin diagnosing potential areas of concern, the Talent Health Index has developed a free, comprehensive assessment that will pinpoint your talent programme’s maturity level.

It also provides instant insights into the seven dimensions of talent strategy, and allows you to access resources to help calibrate your talent approach. To see how your talent management program ranks click here.