A survey exploring the value that businesses and HR departments place on talent information and its availability has found that a worrying number of companies do not have access to reliable information on crucial workforce issues.

Although most companies measure time to hire, only 33% have access to reliable data on the quality of hire and just 55% of companies know if they have the skills to execute their business strategy. Furthermore, 56% of businesses have no access to reliable data on the top performing employees that are not on any succession plans. Almost half (49%) of all respondents do not have any insight into the number of new hires that leave the company voluntarily within the first year.

Other highlights of the survey were that 91% of respondents want information on the competency/skills gaps in the workforce but only 55% have access to reliable data in this area. A further 90% say that it is important to have information on how individual’s goals are aligned to business but only 57% have access to reliable information. And the future of business looks bleak with 82% considering data on succession bench strength as important when only a minority (41%) have access to reliable data on it.

Taleo recently held discussions with a number of business leaders in London. VP of international marketing Chris Phillips and his colleague Shail Khiyara, senior VP and CMO, explained how talent needs to be more joined up in the organisation.

“We found that predominantly organisations want talent intelligence. We want to know who these people are and we want to be able to leverage our people assets,” said Shail.

Taleo have found through their research that less than 25% of organisations have that information at present. 67% of companies in the UK haven’t identified a close relation between the type of people they have hired and the type of people who become leaders in the organisation. Essentially, there’s little knowledge or control over the quality of hire.

The research Taleo have undertaken has shown it’s an ongoing frustration that although companies keep extremely good records of their physical assets, property and financial outgoings, they know comparatively little in the way of information about their people. For example, you might know about what an employee has done for you since you’ve had them on the payroll, but do you know exactly who they worked with and what they did before? What about their aspirations for the future?

There is something to be said for all types of organisations to try to achieve greater joined-up thinking, especially, when it comes to recruitment. Recruiters gather a lot of information about candidates, some of whom eventually work for you – and often the information disappears, or certainly isn’t used for the benefit of employer and employee. Essentially, employers want to know about, develop and explore their employees’ hidden talents, and employees want to feel fulfilled as individuals, feel valued and invested in, and if employers can get their business goals and have happy employees, engagement and retention beckon.

There’s a need to be able to correlate your expectation of the person with the performance of the individual inside the organisation. Shail explained: “The majority of CEOs out there are being pressured for growth. They’ve all gone through a cost-cutting curve. They’ve all gone looking through their internal talent profitability and now the challenges they have is how are you going to grow in this market and what type of talent are you going to attract?”

Another question which is coming up again and again for the pair is ‘build versus buy’ – do we hire in or develop internally? There‘s a strong emphasis around developing your talent internally today and for good reason.

Chris said: “It’s expensive to hire people in from outside. It’s higher risk because of the cultural fit: it’s not always as certain as someone who’s already been successful in the business so there’s a lot of organisations talking about the desire to build rather than buy.”

With the recession still being felt in many sectors, Chris added: “It’s all about using your workforce smarter.” Without the data though, you can’t get the best out of what you’ve got or develop it into what you need.

Other questions they have been asking business leaders include: “Do you know where your talent and skills gaps are?” If you have business goals in place, it’s all very well determining what resources you need but you also need to work out whether you need to hire or can find the talent or develop the talent from within your organisation. This is especially important and powerful when it comes to senior leadership – numerous studies have shown that home grown leadership is better accepted, a better cultural fit, and more respected than high-flying execs ‘parachuted’ in to save the day, knowing little about how the company really works.

It doesn’t replace the honest conversations employers need to be having with their employees regarding succession planning and strategic goals but having the access to an easy-to-use interface with features that benefit the employee as well as the employers it can be a tool used by CEO, HR director, managers and staff.

The key, explained Chris, is making the solution stick by making sure everyone has a vested interest in using it in their day to day lives. If you can provide tools for those day to day processes which are really easy to use and are useful in their day jobs and feed into their strategic goals, then that’s a great motivator. If you can trap all that info in one place you can use that in many different ways – managers, CEOs, HRDs and of course employees can and will all use it (as it is self-service based) to map their own career development.

Shail added that he is increasingly seeing the ability to bring in talent and the skills to develop ‘b’ players into ‘a’ players being measured as a KPI for leaders in organisations. Business, it seems, is waking up to the importance of talent development – it used to all be about profitability, but now it’s also about talent.

You can download Taleo’s recent whitepaper: The corporate talent insurance policy, by clicking here