According to a recent survey on HR systems, employee turnover and performance are the two human capital management areas that businesses are most likely to measure.

The research demonstrates that talent-driven organisations see 11% higher business outcomes, meaning this focus on retaining and developing talent is no longer just a nice-to-have; it’s mission critical.

Despite this, the research also found that many organisations have yet to adopt specialised talent management technology. In fact, fewer than a quarter of the companies using a general Human Resources Management System (HRMS) feel it is meeting all of their talent management needs.

An ill-fitting approach to talent management

Forward-thinking HR leaders have increasingly recognised the need to replace ineffective and demotivating annual performance reviews with a more valuable continuous process.

A general HRMS is just not built to effectively deal with this continual approach, making it difficult to align an individual employee’s goals with those of the company and update goals and progress regularly throughout the year.

A general HRMS also doesn’t ensure that managers and employees regularly have the crucial conversations around performance-related feedback, career development opportunities and personalised recognition and rewards.

Nor do they help HR understand how individuals and teams are performing as the systems cannot provide the kind of actionable, up-to-date workforce insights that identify talent and highlight skill-gaps in their organisation. It’s no surprise that many organisations don’t feel their current HRMS meets all their talent management needs. 

It’s all about the user experience

The biggest deciding factor for organisations choosing a talent management technology is user experience. A clunky, outdated user experience may have been tolerated when organisations set goals and reviewed performance just once a year, but with a continuous process, it’s important to have an intuitive, seamless system with a social user experience.

In fact, user experience was the top factor influencing talent management selection, according to the survey.

Talent management industry analyst Josh Bersin regularly highlights the importance of HR tech being part of the employee’s “flow of work”. Otherwise it becomes an additional burden that they use reluctantly, instead of seeing it as something valuable to their performance and careers.

When managers and employees aren’t using a talent management tool effectively – or at all – the business won’t see a return on its investment.

In today’s modern workplace, employees expect their technology to match what they use in their personal lives, so mobile is a must-have. More than half of organisations now have some form of mobile HR, with mobile talent and performance apps expected to grow by around 150% over the next year.

Tailoring a continuous performance programme

While every continuous performance programme will share common foundations including goal setting, conversations, feedback, recognition and actionable insights, the process will vary for each organisation depending on size, environment, industry and makeup of its teams.

Their talent management system needs to reflect this by being quick and easy to customise to meet an organisation’s unique structure, context and objectives. As an organisation grows and evolves, the technology needs do likewise to support the evolving process.

This is why the new breed of specialised talent management services are becoming more than just software providers, they are true partners.

More than half of large organisations rely on their HR tech vendors to advise and support their talent strategy and programme roll-out, as well as ongoing configuration and implementation of the platform. The more a business partners with its talent management tech provider, the better business outcomes it reports, especially for user adoption rates.

An integrated HRMS is the perfect fit

While a general HRMS isn’t designed for the continuous performance approach forward-thinking organisations are taking, it remains a powerful backend workhorse for HR.

The rich insights about each employee’s performance, skills and readiness generated by continuous performance data must be integrated with the HRMS. This is why 55% of businesses say that seamless HRMS integration is a key requirement for a specialised talent technology.

The ability to use these learnings in real-time to boost individual and team performance and keep employees engaged and motivated increases HR’s impact within the organisation. With help from specialised easy-to-use talent management services that specialise in continuous performance, and offer support on strategy and implementation, the best HR teams are becoming critical in driving business growth.