Talent management can be more complex than it sounds. So, HR departments are considering performance visualisation to make complex performance data more interpretable.
Around 79% of organisations want to purchase technology that can eliminate bias from applicant and candidate-screening processes. Interest in investing in technology for employee recruitment and retention is expressed by 72% of the business leaders.
Keep reading to know more about the role of visualisation technologies in improving talent management practices.
What is Talent Management?
Talent management is a tactical way used by organisations for attracting, developing, retaining, and optimizing employees. Talent management helps organisations ensure that the right people are brought in and further built for the right roles. The practice ensures that the workforce is resilient, engaged, and retained. This contributes to long-term business growth.
Did you know that employees who are highly engaged are 18% more productive? Such employees also lead to 23% greater profitability. Strong talent management practices take hiring needs, skills development, and growth opportunities into consideration. Succession planning and employee satisfaction are also considered in talent management.
Now, let’s understand what performance visualisation is.
What Is Performance
Performance visualisation is the practice of using graphs and charts to highlight the performance of employees. Interactive dashboards are created to visualize trends, patterns, and outliers in the performance data. Most HR software for performance management includes visualisation features.
Employee performance visualisation can improve talent management practices. The visualisations make it easy to understand the strengths and weaknesses of employees. The visualisations also often reveal employee potential.
Visualisations make information about employee performance clear and concise. This allows making data-driven decisions about hiring, developing, and retaining talent.
Visualisations also help analyze the expertise and skills objectively. So, bias is reduced when making talent management plans. Bias is also reduced during candidate selection and employee promotion processes.
The Benefits of Performance Visualisation in Talent Management
Let’s break down the key benefits of performance visualisation in talent management in detail.
Identifying Strengths & Weaknesses
You can visualize the summary of employee performances. It will reveal the capabilities and shortcomings of the overall workforce. Hence, visualisation of overall workforce performance can help you understand the skill development requirements across the organisation.
You can also visualize the performance of individual employees or specific teams. This can help you identify the top and bottom performers. Visualisations can also make it easy to understand if an employee has been underperforming consistently.
Visualisations like the HR 9 box grid can help group employees based on performance and potential.
Real-Time Decision Making
Visualisations can make the process of decision-making faster. You don’t need to wrap your head around raw data and cluttered tables to understand what’s going on. Visualisations are clear and concise. Real-time dashboards make it easy to track the team’s progress towards targets.
Visualisations also update with new data generated in real-time. So it means that you can also make informed decisions instantly. This is important in talent management. Clear performance information is needed for decisions related to employee development, dismissal, promotion, and succession.
Data-Driven Employee Development
Visualisations can support data-driven employee development. Identification of trends and outliers in performance data will help you create targeted training programs.
For example, suppose the bar representing an employee on a bar chart remains shorter than others almost every month. It will be a sign that the particular employee is consistently failing to meet performance targets. You can focus more on the development of such employees.
Alternatively, you can prioritize further developing the top performers. As suggested by McKinsey & Company, organisations must place focus on the 5% of employees who create 95% of the value.
Imagine a chart showing that the overall workforce is underperforming in certain areas every month. This will inform you that an organisation-wide employee development plan is needed. It will reveal the need for focusing on the development of specific skills in everyone.
Integrating Performance Visualisation into a Talent Management Plan
Let’s see how performance visualisation can be integrated into talent management practices.
Define Objectives & KPIs
First, you need to set clear objectives and performance targets. This must be done for each role in every department. Then you must establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These KPIs will be used as metrics for measuring performance in different aspects of work.
There should be KPIs for productivity, like core tasks completed per hour. There should also be communication KPIs, like the time taken to respond to work messages. There should be KPIs for all major performance categories.
Collect & Analyze The Right Data
Second, you need to start collecting performance data. An HR software for performance management can automate this data collection and consolidation process for you. These systems can track performance automatically and present it against the defined KPIs.
You must make sure that all the system integrations are in place. For example, CRP and ERP systems must support integration with each other. Next, make sure that your system is collecting the right data. You want to collect data that reveals employee performance in the dimensions that matter the most.
Use Visual Tools & Dashboards
Third, you must create visualisations and interactive dashboards. Most HR software for performance management comes with visualisation features. Data will be automatically collected from different data points or sources throughout the organisation.
You can use the HR software to create plots, graphs, heat maps, or charts with the aggregate data. You can also retrieve the data and analyze it using dedicated visualisation tools like Tableau and Power BI.
Best Practices for Implementing Performance Visualisation
Let’s check out the best practices of implementing performance visualisation for talent management.
Starting With Clear Data Collection Methods
The data collection approach should be clear. High-quality data must be collected. HR software for performance management can automate most of the data collection tasks. You just need to make sure the performance objectives are clearly defined.
You may also collect data through regular feedback surveys and performance reviews. However, manual data collection can be a lengthy process. Data will also be at risk of human error.
Regularly Updating & Interpreting Data
Simply collecting and consolidating data is not enough. It is also important that the performance data is constantly updated. Past data would not give a picture of the current scenario. So, consistently updating performance data is important.
HR software for performance management is already capable of automatically collecting data. Such software keeps updating databases with new information in real-time. You can also keep performance information updated with weekly or monthly reports.
Using Visuals to Facilitate Communication
Once you have generated an insightful visual, it is time to share the information with others. Interactive dashboards and visual reports can be presented to others. Sharing employee progress visuals with other stakeholders will maximize the transparency of processes.
Present visuals like bar charts and heat maps in team meetings. You may also report in more detail using matrix-style visualisations like the HR 9 box grid.
Challenges of Performance Visualisation in Talent Management
If you have got the idea of how visualisations can be used in talent management practices, it’s time to learn the challenges as well. Overcoming these challenges can help you make the most effective performance visualisations.
Data Overload
Not all visualisations are impactful. Insights are only gained when relevant data is presented as organized and meaningful information. So, recognizing relevant and irrelevant data is important to create the right visualisations.
Excessive data on charts or dashboards can overwhelm the decision-makers. The visualisation might also start appearing cluttered. This is why you need to consider the KPIs defining your business goals. Visualisations must be created only with the data that explains the KPIs.
Subjectivity in Data Interpretation
Performance data might be interpreted differently by different managers. This is why you should focus on objective and measurable data. The metrics must be clear. It is important to establish a common understanding of the KPIs.
The visualisation itself may be interpreted by people in different ways. So, establishing standardized criteria for creating performance visualisations is also important.
Privacy Concerns
Managing privacy is also a challenge with performance visualisations. The entire point of certain visualisations is to reveal the best-performing employees. But privacy concern comes from the visualisation tools collecting the performance data.
Choose an HR software for performance management that is transparent about its data collection policies. Ensure that the performance data of employees is used ethically within the organisation.
Organisational policies must ensure that performance data is used for identifying developmental needs. Use of the data for unfair dismissal will be unethical as well as non-compliant.
Implement Performance Visualisation to Manage Your Workforce
Visualisations help understand information concisely and clearly. So, they are better at facilitating quick decision-making. HR software for performance management today is also making performance visualisation easy and accurate. These tools are automatically consolidating information from different departments, making the data available for you to visualize.
