With skills-based hiring and internal mobility growing priorities for HR, talent acquisition teams are increasingly concerned with their organization’s learning and development opportunities. It’s a shift fueling a greater demand for stronger partnerships between TA and L&D teams.
In fact, nearly 85% of TA professionals expressed a desire for greater collaboration with L&D teams, according to a LinkedIn recruiting report released last week. Driving this interest is the 90% of executives across the globe who are leaning into skills-based hiring—both internally and externally—to bolster workforce agility and diversity and to help their organizations compete in a tight labor market.
Required hard and soft job skills have evolved tremendously over the past few years and are projected to change by 51% globally between 2016 and 2030, says Stephanie Conway, senior director of talent development at LinkedIn. She adds that these skills will change even faster at organizations using generative AI—by a predicted 68%.
“It’s critical that talent leaders prioritize skill building and skills-based strategies across their organizations,” Conway says.
The ROI of TA and L&D bonds
In addition to a focus on skills-based hiring, a growing emphasis on internal mobility is also driving the need for tighter collaboration between TA and L&D teams.
When talent acquisition and L&D teams work closely together to build a learning culture, the ROI can be seen in better retention, internal mobility and promotion rates, according to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report.
“Bringing TA and L&D together enables us to look at building an intentional learning culture across the end-to-end talent lifecycle,” Conway says. According to LinkedIn, to reinforce that continuous culture for employees, teams should select one person to serve as the point of contact with employees throughout the lifecycle, from recruitment and orientation to engagement, learning, and offboarding.
A stronger relationship between TA and L&D can show employers that career development is a virtuous cycle, Conway adds. Employee growth speeds company growth, which in turn powers employee engagement, retention and further business growth, says Conway.
Learn how organizations are addressing skills strategies at HRE‘s upcoming EPIC Conference, April 24-26 in Las Vegas, including at the “Unlocking the Future of HR: Navigating Megatrends, Adaptation Imperatives and New Skillsets” session. Register here.
TA, L&D and the ‘systemic’ lens on talent
At consulting giant Accenture, its talent management and L&D teams work together to pore over the AI-driven skills data collected from its workforce of more than 700,000 employees, the company says. Using this information, the teams collaborate to tackle Accenture’s people-related business needs—from recruiting to talent management and learning.
This partnership, for example, has been influential in the company training more than 600,000 employees in the fundamentals of AI, which can ultimately serve as a retention driver, as well as move the business toward its goal of doubling its Data & AI practice workforce to 80,000, the company says.
“Organizations that bring TA and L&D together will be best equipped to look at the end-to-end talent lifecycle with a systemic lens and create skills-based organizations that both hire for skills and build the skills their teams need for the future,” Conway notes, adding that LinkedIn combined its own TA and L&D teams into one organization last year.
In looking at the future of TA and L&D collaborations, Conway foresees HR leaders becoming increasingly cross-functional. For example, skills similarity across all recruiting roles has increased by 30% in the last five years, a trend that will likely continue in the next five years, she notes.
“HR pros are extending their skills and moving beyond silos that previously separated them [from other departments within their company],” Conway says. “This will only enrich the working relationship between TA and L&D going forward as they work together to upskill their organizations.”
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