Master HR challenges with Candidate Personas

What determines the success of companies from an HR perspective?

In 2023, skill-based organization will be the most important success factor for 60 percent of HR managers. In concrete terms, this means checking the level of knowledge in companies and expanding it where necessary. The goal is to improve the skillset and promote employability in the company through tailored recruiting and employee management. At present, only twelve percent of companies are in a position to assess which skills are available, which can be developed, and where external resources are needed. According to surveys, the development of the corporate culture and the framework conditions for remote and hybrid working models are almost as important for the success of a company. More than half of HR managers in 2023 would therefore like to optimize processes around skills , adapt the employee experience for important target groups and realign the employer brand. Data-based candidate personas help with all of these plans. They provide HR managers with a solid basis for evaluating companies from the perspective of potential employees. A look at the most important topics in HR shows how this works in practice. The basis for this is Mercer's Global Talent Trend Report.

1) Establish new skills and promote employability in the company

To be successful, companies must continuously integrate new technologies, work areas, and complex processes. This requires a workforce that possesses the necessary skills and is capable of meeting new challenges over the long term. One of the tasks of HR managers is therefore to assess and expand skills: by hiring new specialists and providing targeted training for suitable employees. The so-called “skills-based organization” dominated the Global Talent Trends 2022—an update to the study reveals what HR managers are particularly focused on in this regard. For example, 6 out of 10 HR managers in the DACH region stated that they are primarily focused on strategic workforce planning. This process identifies, on the one hand, which knowledge gaps exist within the company and, on the other, how many skilled workers are needed to fill them. The prerequisite for this is business plans that are detailed enough to allow for the derivation of future skill requirements. For 58 percent of HR managers, this task is the main focus, followed by 53 percent who are primarily concerned with identifying which skills can be developed internally and where new skilled workers are needed. Even in this context, only seven percent report that their workforce planning is advanced. A data-driven candidate persona is particularly helpful when it comes to the skill sets of potential candidates. Drawing on thousands of data sources regarding educational background, professional experience, and personality traits, the Persona Profiler generates “sedcards” of candidates who can contribute to the company’s success. At the same time, insights into media usage help reach skilled professionals more quickly. This aids both in the planning and in the operational implementation of a skills-based organization.

2) Corporate culture: sustainability, diversity and living wages.

In addition to skill-based organization, more than half of HR managers would like to further develop corporate culture. 83 percent of companies in the German-speaking region focus on environmental protection and sustainability, followed by 70 percent that primarily promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the company. Here, the DACH region with Europe is three percentage points below the global comparison. It is striking that only around half of the companies surveyed are committed to a salary that enables employees to have a sufficient standard of living. For a strong corporate culture, it is important that employees identify with corporate values. Here, too, Candidate Personas provide support by assigning professionals, values and beliefs - relevant to the industry and based on data. If desired, not only external but also internal company data can be included.

3) Employee experience: work-life balance and teamwork at eye level

In addition to company culture, data-based Candidate Personas contribute to better employee and candidate experience by showing what really matters to workers. Important to realistically evaluate work environment, workflows and benefits. In short, candidate personas help attract skilled workers and retain employees for the long term. This results in a cycle for your company's success: because if you attract new skilled employees thanks to a good employee experience and keep them in the company for the long term, you will continuously expand your skillset. According to the Global Talent Trend Report, the following areas are the focus for optimizing the employee experience in the long term:

• More flexibility: The pandemic has strengthened the desire among workers for more flexible working models. The companies that are successful are those that specifically respond to this. Candidate personas can be used to determine the pain points and wishes of new specialists in detail. This, in turn, allows concrete recommendations for action with which new ways of working can be implemented in a way that is appropriate to the target group.
• Cooperation at eye level: Whereas most companies used to be dominated by the dependence of employees on managers, current figures show that employees now perceive their work as cooperation at eye level. While this trend is clearly gaining ground in theory, there is still a lack of implementation. More than a third of the companies surveyed said they had developed new guidelines for this purpose. The goal here was more effective collaboration as well as training managers to create inclusive and equitable team sets. However, only 17 percent of the companies said they used target group-specific persona concepts and involved employees in the development process. One reason for this could be that working with personas has so far involved a great deal of effort - both in terms of financial outlay and in terms of time and resources. Service providers who create data-driven personas take this effort away, so that every company can afford to work with and on personas.
• Salary and benefits: With rising inflation and the corresponding cost of living, the topics of salary and wage compensation through benefits will also come into sharper focus in 2023. While 35 percent of companies compensate for inflation through bonuses instead of regular salary increases, 33 percent of companies adjust salaries in hard-hit areas to reflect increased costs of living. Three in ten companies pay higher bonuses and salaries to all employees. A quarter of companies are sticking with the original salary model. Only ten percent in the DACH region rely on employee benefits to offset salaries.
• Wellbeing and health: In terms of benefits, health offers for employees are in first place, followed by measures to feel better at work (55%). Forty-five percent of companies focus on automating administrative processes. The challenge for HR managers is to determine where and with which offerings they really relieve employees. Candidate personas help here by identifying pain points and interests of professionals based on data.
• Question workload and set new priorities: One of the biggest challenges in transforming existing structures cited by 38% of the companies surveyed is overburdening employees. This can be attributed not only to the pandemic, but above all to the fact that employees are burdened with too many priorities at the same time in their daily work. Candidate personas help to scrutinize the skillset of specialists and to better allocate activities.