Are you a How today’s

HR professionals

talent leader?
can build an
engaged workforce.
Employee engagement,
when done well, can have
a transformative impact
on your business.
Those that do it best know the importance of
understanding their employees as individuals.
They nurture the potential of their staff, they
empower people to learn and develop, and they
create thriving workplace environments that boost
business productivity.

These talent leaders view their workforce as individuals, rather than just
entries on a spreadsheet. They successfully raise morale and motivation,
whilst giving sense to company decisions so teams are actively engaged with
corporate goals and ambitions. This helps the organisation gain an immediate
competitive advantage, while also providing the assurance of a sustainable
talent strategy for the long term.

ADP is at the forefront of enabling senior HR professionals to become talent

leaders. We provide insight that drives value and success for our clients by
helping them focus less on their processes and more on their people.

In this guide, we describe how

today’s talent leaders are
transforming their operations by
putting employees at the centre of
the HR experience. It is designed
to help you assess how you
compare with the industry leaders
and to provide practical guidance
to help you improve.
Contents
Introduction

What makes
a talent leader?  4

Getting the most
out of your people 6

How do you compare?  8

Technology: the enabler

for employee engagement  10
What makes a
talent leader?

No matter how consistent your processes,

how streamlined your systems or how
structured your training, there will always be
performance differences across teams.
Why? Because employees are people, and people need to be engaged
in their work, and their level of engagement is dependent on how they
are managed.

The best managers understand people’s individual strengths.

They are talent leaders who know how each person best contributes
to the goals of the team. They help people understand what’s
expected of them and – crucially – they keep them engaged in their
activity. Our research shows that if you can improve employee
engagement across the board, it can pay huge dividends in terms of
overall business performance:

Compared to their peers, companies

with engaged employees have:

10% 21% 22%

better higher more
customer ratings productivity profitability1

1 ADP, Are You Driving Employee Engagement

and Performance?, Infographic 4
 What makes a talent leader?

So, with significant value

to be gained from higher
employee engagement,
what characteristics do
your managers need to
make it happen?

Talent Rather
leaders… than…

View HR as core to
A support function
the business

Encourage employee- Adherence to

driven learning corporate programmes

Know the value of bringing Maintaining disparate

data together on unified systems legacy systems

Value data-driven, Following established

analytical decision making processes and untested logic

In the next section, we’ll

look in more detail at these
characteristics by exploring some
specific behaviour that talent
leaders demonstrate.
5
Getting the most
out of your people

The ADP Research Institute

has commissioned a number of
studies to truly understand
how talent leaders operate.
We have condensed the findings
into the following three
key behaviours:
1. Talent leaders develop people

From initial recruitment and onboarding, through training and career plans,
to retirement and transition, talent leaders take holistic responsibility for the
development of their people.

They adopt a wide variety of recruitment innovations, such as raising awareness

via multichannel brand campaigns or using social media to target individual
candidates. And they use targeted communications to allow job seekers to find
their niche interest in the company2.

Following recruitment, leaders provide employees with tailored, accessible and

easily digestible learning, so they can pursue it in their own way and at their own
pace – including bite-sized and on-demand training. This encourages ongoing
development that benefits both the individual and overall business output.

Leaders also regularly review training milestones and provide people with
visibility of their progress, which can help them take the next step in their
career. They schedule appropriate and frequent check-ins to maintain a focus
on priorities, and they use technology-based engagement, like pulse surveys, to
continually gather feedback.

2 ADP, How to Take Care of Your People and

Deliver Bold Solutions in a Fast-Changing
World, 2015 6
 Getting the most out of your people

2. Talent leaders seek insight

Leaders seek to understand common trends within their organisation so they
can improve and maintain employee engagement. For example, they want to know
why staff leave, what makes them unhappy and if the reality of the role matches
up to their expectations.

They tend to have a clear view of how skills are utilised across their teams and
where the gaps exist, so they can plan their talent strategy for the future.
Having visibility of skills and performance means they are better able to equip
teams with the core training for their roles, and also identify what additional
Only 30% of employees support may be required to close performance gaps.
believe they get the
support they need to Leaders judge engagement at an individual level, looking at multiple data sources
expand their skills for each employee – such as time management, sickness, training and
development. But they also analyse benchmarking data to help them remain
and broaden their
competitive. For example, by comparing the wages of their staff with other
career paths.6 employees, competitors and industry averages, they can anticipate pay
demands and manage expectations.

Benchmarking data enables

organisations to move from
an inward-looking model to
one that looks outward for
insights grounded in
the context of the
wider industry.6
3. Talent leaders make things simple
Talent leaders spend the majority of their time on strategic, value-adding tasks,
rather than administration. They do this by using technology platforms to
streamline as many processes as possible – and by adopting practical changes to
established ways of working. Global companies are trying to manage, on average,
33 payroll systems and 31 HR systems3. Talent leaders recognise the many
benefits of bringing these together.

For example, they know that utilising cloud solutions can deliver significant
Over two-thirds productivity increases (up to 46.3%)4. They also explore outsourcing as a route
of global leaders say to efficiency, which can reduce the cost of payroll and employee administration
by 18% compared to managing them in-house5. Perhaps more important though is
they want more
the single view that talent leaders gain by bringing disparate systems together.
unified systems.3 With access to multiple sources of employee information on one platform, they
get a more complete picture of their people – allowing them to adopt the right
engagement strategy for each individual.

This unified approach has the added benefit of improving the employee
experience. With simple access to HR services in one place – such as holiday
bookings, expense claims, benefits packages, training courses and internal job
applications – employees get an easy consumer-like experience at work.
This helps keep them motivated and less frustrated by clunky disjointed
processes. It also allows for simpler communication between HR and
3A
 DP, Is HR Prepared to Support Global
Business Growth Priorities?, 2015 staff/candidates using convenient chat streams, social platforms and
4 ADP,
 5 steps to turn your payroll into a
talent communities.
business asset, 2015

5P
 wC, The hidden reality of payroll &
HR administration costs, 2011

6A
 DP, Take Your Talent Strategy Further:
Connecting People and Work, 2018 7
How do
you compare?

We’ve looked at the key characteristics

and behaviour that talent leaders
exhibit. But how does your organisation
compare? And what’s at risk if you’re
behind the curve? Here are some key
questions to assess where you are on
the roadmap to talent leadership.

Do you give your people opportunities for growth,

purpose, direction and success?

Only 30% of employees believe they get the support they need to expand
their skills and nearly half say they would need to leave their current job to
advance their career – what’s more, 60% say they have left a job that did not
live up to initial expectations7.

If you don’t have a culture that empowers people to develop, you risk
increased attrition. And you’ll have limited visibility on the reasons why
staff are leaving. This means you’ll continually need to recruit new people to
replace lost skills, and waste time on training and onboarding that could be
focused on value-add activities.

7 ADP, Take Your Talent Strategy Further;

Connecting People and Work, 2018 8
 How do you compare?

Do you know what’s driving performance,

motivation and loyalty within your people?

In a competitive skills market, it’s important to keep hold of your best people.
But with easier access to pay data than ever before – via social tools like
LinkedIn and Glassdoor – people increasingly know their worth. And they’ll
move on if not suitably remunerated, especially if they’re disengaged in other
aspects of their role.

The ability to have accurate and real-time benchmarks on salary data is critical
for employers to attract and retain in-demand talent. You need to know how
your employee’s salaries and benefits compare to the market and to your key
competitors. But you also need to know what else is driving their performance.

In addition to pay information, you need a range of continual HR data points –

their timekeeping and sickness record, their training and development, their
direct feedback on line management. This will give you a single view of their
engagement level, so you can prioritise any interventions that may be needed.

Do your managers have the tools and time to manage

employee development and engagement?

Your managers play an important role in developing, engaging and getting

great performance out of your top talent. They have a huge impact on whether
people stay or go, and they need to be equipped accordingly. In short, employee
engagement starts with an engaged manager.

Yet more than half of active job seekers say they do not feel connected to their
direct managers8. When you empower managers with access to assessments,
personalised reports and coaching resources – all via a single platform – they
can develop as leaders and help team members grow as individuals. The whole
organisation benefits.

8T
 he Evolution of Work 2.0: The Me vs. We Mindset,
ADP Research Institute®, 2017 9
Technology:
the enabler for
employee engagement

This guide has covered the fundamental

behaviour and principles needed for
an engaged workforce. We’ve also
considered if your organisation has
gaps to fill. Now let’s consider how
technology can play a key role in
boosting employee engagement –
and enhancing your organisation’s
status as a talent leader.

Integrate everything

Thanks to mobile devices and social platforms, people are more connected and
integrated than ever. Organisations need to follow suit by delivering more human
and intuitive experiences across all employee touchpoints: HR, payroll, training and
development, expenses, staff benefits, time management etc.

Technology can do that. Human capital management (HCM) systems can provide
a unified platform on which people can carry out their personnel-related tasks –
booking holiday, filing expense claims, enrolling on training.

The ADP® iHCM 2 solution, for example, allows HR managers and talent leaders
to collaborate in real time. It offers a single view of each employee, so they can
manage people’s experience at work holistically to boost engagement.

This can extend from the initial recruitment exercise, where multiple stakeholders
can track applicants via the ADP® iHCM 2 portal, to an effective onboarding
experience that encourages daily employee engagement, through to payroll,
performance management and training.

10
 How do you compare?
Technology: the enabler for employee engagement
Analyse and act
To manage people effectively from
recruitment through to retirement, you
need data. But not data that’s distributed
across multiple different systems. You
need a unified database that provides a
complete overview of your workforce.
Then you need an analytics capability
to provide fast, insightful reports on
that data, so you can keep track of
key employee metrics and make more
22%
objective decisions.
ADP® iHCM 2 gives managers that single
unified database, plus access to daily
of new employees insights via secure analytics dashboards.
These can be configured to focus on
leave within 45 days.9 specific business problems – for example,
the need to reduce staff turnover in
a critical role – and they can draw in
industry-wide benchmarking data to
help you compare performance against
57%
competitors.
The ADP system also aids recruitment.
By analysing candidate data, ADP® iHCM
of UK employees say 2 can help managers quickly align skills
to the right jobs and teams, resulting in
that an improved better hiring decisions. This can reduce
benefits package could the number of interviews required and
shorten overall recruitment time.
motivate them to stay
with their current
Collect feedback
company.10
High attrition is a common problem.
It can be particularly high during the
first months of employment, when new
staff find the reality of the role differs
from their expectations. By asking for
feedback, regularly, you can get early
visibility on potential disengagement –
and then take remedial steps before the
person decides to leave. Technology – and
HCM in particular – can help with this.
For example, ADP® iHCM 2 provides staff
with digital feedback forms. These offer
an easy way for people to flag issues they
may not feel comfortable bringing up in a
formal one-to-one session. They can even
be anonymised if the employee prefers.
9 The Wynhurst Group
10 MetLife (2015), Employee Benefits Trends Survey
Address concerns
To retain employees, you need a clear
plan for each of them, and you need to
make space to address their key concerns.
Development plans should be aligned to
both individual needs and the needs of
the business. They should provide a clear
roadmap for career progression, to both
boost the employee’s engagement and
help the business with robust
succession planning.
Again, technology can be the enabler
for this. ADP® iHCM 2 includes clear
feedback mechanisms between manager
and employee, setting out regular
review dates, action points and future
milestones, so both parties can track
progress and see how concerns are
being actioned.
Administer rewards
Employees like to be recognised for
individual achievements and their
contribution to wider business objectives.
This shows that they’re making a
meaningful impact at work. However,
they are not great fans of the typical
‘one-size-fits-all’ work benefit scheme.
They want a more personalised approach,
with rewards gifted at the discretion of
their managers and accessible via flexible,
self-service portals – similar to how
they would buy and apply for consumer
products and services online.
When benefit schemes are integrated
along with other HR systems in a unified
HCM system, rewards can be deployed
quickly – even automatically. Employees
have freedom to choose the benefit
that’s best for them, and rewards can be
configured precisely to their employment
status so as to generate accurate payroll.
Research shows that employees greatly
value work benefit schemes, so their
importance is not to be overlooked.
11
Why ADP?
Run your entire
people business on
a single platform
with ADP® iHCM 2.
Increase employee engagement
and become a talent leader with
our complete suite of people
management applications:
ADP HR Core Administration
ADP Payroll Cloud
ADP Time Cloud
ADP Talent Cloud
ADP Data Cloud
ADP® iHCM 2
For easier, smarter and better human
capital management.
ADP® iHCM 2 is a comprehensive, cloud-based human capital management system.
It allows you to monitor everything from one system: from employee performance
and time management to talent acquisition and people analytics. It is scalable and
modular, so you can choose from some or all of the following capabilities:
ADP HR Core Administration
Tools to increase employee productivity, better manage teams and connect more with staff
ADP Payroll Cloud
Helps unify HR and payroll, without any complex integration
ADP Time Cloud
Automates workflows and anticipates employees’ time tracking needs
ADP Talent Cloud
Tools to help you recruit, hire and develop your employees
ADP Data Cloud
Unifies datasets from multiple sources for fast and informed analytics
Find out more about ADP® iHCM 2 at:
www.adp.co.uk/our-solutions-services/hcm-services/cloud-hcm-system
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