Emerging Global Trends in Talent Management and the Future of Work for GBS

Introduction

O2C leaders are focusing on talent management more than ever before and trying to understand the Future of Work and adapt to it in the best possible way. Read on to find out the top priorities for GBS organizations and the best strategies that can work in their favor.

Increased customer expectations, the evolution of technologies, and distributed/remote working models are continuing to put pressure on businesses. Today, GBS organizations are looking for solutions to not only cope but thrive under the challenges of new normal. From re-evaluating their operating models to introducing new technologies, GBS leaders are rethinking and reimagining their strategies to offer excellence. Here are a few key areas for GBS leaders, which will not only help them sustain but also be successful in the present, and the near future.

Defining an effective process strategy

Global Business Services need an effective process strategy to thrive in any disruptive environment.  GPOs can achieve it through:

• Digitization

The SSON Analytics survey pointed out that half of their respondents look at digitization as their top challenge. Demand for digital E2E processes and tools using AI/ML is increasing rapidly. Companies are overflowing with data. It’s important to make use of growing technology to digitize redundant tasks and analyze the available data to make critical business decisions.

• End-to-End Process Management

According to SSON, end-to-end is the big theme this year. It can help GBS decrease overall cost along with increasing quality and speed of execution. It can further help faster go-to-market, drive process excellence, provide great customer service, establish a consistent brand experience, and more.

• Continuous improvement via KPIs

KPI reporting enables clear communication about and progress towards the organizations’ business goals. As KPIs are quantifiable, they provide actionable insights, which in turn allows GPOs to set targets and make strategies to achieve these targets on time.

• Center of Expertise(CoE)

Center of Expertise (CoE) supports the organization through training resources, providing technology infrastructure, and governance. The SSON Analytics survey highlighted that 68% of Shared Services Organizations globally are already leveraging the Center of Expertise, which is largely driven by the demand to offer enhanced services and talent management.

Enabling excellent service delivery

Enabling effective service management is key to any GBS organization. Digitizations and end-to-end process ownership emerged as the top priorities to accelerate service excellence. Here are a few best practices that can be adopted by GBS leaders for excellent service delivery: 

• Creating value by setting up a Global Process Owner (GPO):

The role of GPOs is highly crucial in GBS, especially for enhancing services through end-to-end process management. They are solely responsible for strategic operational management, standardization, coordination, and continuous improvement of processes. Being a  focal point within the organization for the implementation of change, GPOs help in bringing agility, better decision-making, and increased customer satisfaction.

• Including higher-value functions and adopting automation:

It is important to move up to higher-value services like forecasting and budgeting to ensure optimum utilization of GBS. Automation can be implemented to eliminate redundant and manual tasks allowing employees to invest more time in high-value operations.

• Having a customer-focused approach:

A strong focus on customers allows a GBS organization to set the strategic context for the work and to develop shared goals with business leaders. It can be done by adopting digitization and providing services online. GBS leaders need to ensure that their customer support is top-notch and customer feedback should be taken into consideration.

Future-proofing the Workforce

“Retaining and retraining for higher level and value-added skills is the number one factor for GBS organizations planning to adapt the workforce to the experience they’ve had over the past 15 months,” – Barbara Hodge, Head of Digital Content, SSON.

The evolution of GBS as a value-add partner and increasing technology adoption is concerning organizations to find the right talent that can fit into these next-generation positions. It has become imperative to have robust workforce management for their organization, which can be achieved through:

• Retaining and retraining existing talent with skills that will help in not only adapting to the current rapid digitalization but also hone value-added skills for the future.
• Adopting process automation for freeing up the workforce to focus on value-add tasks, rather than spending productive hours on repetitive, manual tasks.
• Building competency for cognitive technologies like AI, Machine Learning (ML), and Data Analytics to build an advanced, agile workforce.

The Future of Work

“We found out that many business services startups focus around talent, intelligence, and AI-driven knowledge base technologies. They use AI to sort through and build out extensive profiles within the organization. And, I think these types of technologies are going to become important for upskilling, and the future of the workforce is going to depend more on the skills and become less about the titles.” – Naomi Secor, Global Managing Director, SSON

GBS organizations are future-proofing their business by moving away from traditional methods of operations and adopting an integrated, standardized approach with significant investment in technology. The top priorities for organizations to future-proof their workforce include:

• Building business resiliency through significant investments in technology to manage workflow and processes.
• Utilizing advanced analytics to improve business decisions, and analyze patterns to drive services aligned with customer requirements.
• Embedding skills and technologies for the new normal workforce to improve team collaboration, transparency, and process management.

The future of work will be all about delivering higher value add by adopting the above-mentioned practices through emerging technologies.

Learn more about building effective process strategy, service delivery, and talent management by industry experts, Naomi Secor, Global Managing Director, SSON, and Barbara Hodge, Head of Digital Content, SSON.