One of the questions we’re asked most often is:
“Where should we begin?”
Most Talent Acquisition leaders recognise the need to evolve beyond simply recruiting people. They understand that Build, Buy, Borrow and Bot are becoming increasingly important workforce options.
The challenge is that very few organisations can transform every hiring conversation overnight.
So where do you start?
The answer is not every role, every business unit or every hiring manager.
Start where Talent Advisory is most likely to create measurable business value.
Every organisation has different priorities, but Talent Advisory is most likely to gain traction when it helps solve genuine business problems.
Typical business drivers include:
- Reducing workforce costs to improve profitability while maintaining or improving service levels.
- Delivering critical projects faster to meet customer commitments, strategic initiatives or regulatory deadlines.
- Responding to AI, automation and changing technology to improve how work is performed and remain competitive.
- Improving workforce productivity by simplifying work, reducing duplication and ensuring capability is applied where it creates the greatest value.
- Building future workforce capability to support business growth, new products and changing customer expectations.
- Strengthening competitive advantage by accessing, developing and deploying workforce capability more effectively than competitors.
Business drivers tell us why Talent Advisory is needed. The following criteria help identify where it is most likely to deliver value.
Where should you start?
Our experience suggests organisations often achieve the greatest impact where one or more of the following conditions exist.
Strong Business Partnership
The Talent Partner has developed sufficient trust with the business to explore alternatives rather than simply accepting a hiring request. Strong relationships create the confidence to discuss Build, Buy, Borrow and Bot options rather than defaulting to recruitment.
Changing Work
Whether the skills needed to perform the work can or will be automated is becoming an increasingly important consideration. A combination of market intelligence, business knowledge and the smart use of AI can provide valuable clues about which elements of the work may be redesigned, augmented or automated over time.
Market Intelligence
Understanding the external demand and supply of talent, competitor activity and where your organisation’s Employer Value Proposition sits in the market is essential. Market intelligence helps determine whether buying capability externally is realistic, whether alternative workforce options should be explored, and how competitive your organisation is likely to be.
Time Pressure
The speed at which the work needs to be delivered can significantly influence the workforce solution. Where the work is genuinely critical and needs to commence immediately, contingent capability or a hybrid approach may provide a better outcome than waiting for a permanent hire.
Internal Capability
Understanding the availability and visibility of existing capability within the organisation is becoming increasingly important. Remember, the solution may not be one employee—it may involve several people with adjacent skills and available capacity working together to deliver the required outcome.
Commercial Constraints
Budget limitations, headcount restrictions or competing investment priorities often influence which workforce options are viable. Increasingly, the question isn’t “Who can we hire?” but rather “How can we best invest the resources available to deliver the required outcome?”
Start with the Work, Not the Role
One of the biggest mindset shifts in Talent Advisory is changing the first question.
Instead of asking: “What role do we need to fill?” start by asking: “What work needs to get done?”
That simple shift opens the door to a much broader workforce discussion.
Recruitment may still prove to be the right answer. But equally, the best solution may involve developing existing capability, using contingent resources, partnering externally, redesigning the work or automating part of the process.
A Practical Starting Point
To support these conversations, we’ve developed a Workforce Configuration Assessment.
Rather than assuming recruitment is the answer, the assessment helps Talent Partners and business leaders:
- Understand the business problem.
- Identify the work that creates the greatest value.
- Explore Build, Buy, Borrow and Bot options.
- Challenge assumptions.
- Recommend the workforce configuration most likely to deliver the required business outcome.
Talent Advisory doesn’t need to begin across your entire organisation. Start where the business drivers are strongest, relationships are trusted, and the opportunity to improve workforce decisions is greatest. Success in one part of the organisation will build credibility far more quickly than trying to transform every hiring conversation overnight. Ultimately, Talent Advisory isn’t about changing recruitment.
It’s about helping organisations make better workforce decisions. And over time, that may evolve into something even bigger.
Workforce Configuration – helping organisations determine the most effective way to get work done and deliver the capability they need.
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