Talent assessment

Advance your talent strategies for the new shape of work. Start with an assessment of your organization’s talent and leadership teams’ current skills to gain an understanding of the gaps you need to bridge in building your workforce of the future.

Use an evidence-based approach to address your unique challenges while supporting a positive employee experience. 

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Talent assessment challenges

  • How do we understand the skillset of the talent we have today?
  • What roles do we need for the future, and what skills are required for these roles?
  • Where are the gaps, and how do we fill them?
  • How do we ensure our talent strategy is sustainable and future-proofed?
  • What is the most efficient way to build, buy or borrow talent?
  • How do we identify and retain high-potential talent?
  • How do we help our talent feel supported in their career growth?
  • How do we use data to make decisions for our talent pipeline?
  • How can we tell if our managers have an inclusive leadership style?
  • How do we build a culture of feedback to support performance management?

Aligning talent with dynamic business needs 

When talent is scarce, people development, upskilling and reskilling become the keys to organizational competitiveness and sustainability. Upskilling, reskilling and flexibly deploying skills are only possible if jobs are deconstructed into skills. Skills are the new currency of work. Skills flexibility provides business resilience and agility.

Mercer’s talent assessment solutions evaluate the current state of your internal labor market and quantify the talent gaps needed to future-proof the business. Mapping and analysis can help you focus on critical populations to answer essential questions about the potential for talent supply and demand in your organization. Future projections can then model how specific initiatives may be able to support your goals.

We can help an organization deliver on their reskilling strategies and investments by reflecting them in the broader talent management strategy, including learning and development, performance management, and total reward practices with pay-for-skills and pay-for-development innovations.

As organizations pursue workforce transformation, they are constantly looking for talent that can adapt to the rapid changes in the skills they demand while anticipating and planning for the skills they will need as they transform. 

Disruptors are changing the job landscape

Change is here. Consider AI and automation, globalization, the gig economy and multiple generations working together and the impact on your organization. How will you adapt to the shifts?

98%

of companies have significant skills shortages despite 91% of employees reporting learning a new skill in the last year.

1 in 3

executives says the pandemic helped them realize that knowing what skills they have in their workforce improves their agility. 

92%

of HR leaders are prioritizing improving their workforce planning to better inform buy/build/borrow talent strategies

Our talent assessment solutions

Not all performance assessment or potential assessment solutions have the complexity you need or are available from the same provider. More manual effort may be necessary to synthesize results, creating additional risk along with blind spots in the data. Mercer’s performance management and talent assessment solutions provide:
  • Tools to find the right-fit talent based on your organization’s needs
  • Tools that accurately and consistently monitor your workforce against key skills
  • Expert consulting to bolster a meaningful, integrated long-term people strategy
  • Tools to assess leadership readiness for high-potential identification and succession-planning initiatives
  • Tools to inform largescale talent development initiatives and target investment
  • Tools to understand inclusiveness of your managers and leaders
  • Tools to build individual development plans to support talent self-awareness and guide development
  • Open discussions with experts to improve participants’ self-awareness and guide their development 
  • Tools to promote the culture of feedback to improve awareness and integrate different perspectives

Our approach to talent assessment

Mercer proposes a strategic and integrated assessment approach that leverages skills as the basis of measurement for how work gets done in the organization. This means considering the different phases of the talent management strategy and integrating them in a continuous iteration process that places people the skills needed to do work at the center in relation to business needs and corporate strategies. This process feeds the pipeline for the identification of current and future state critical skills and roles and directs resources toward targeted growth, allowing you to steer your company toward successthat allow organizations to create agile talent pools that can be deployed fluidly against critical growth initiatives. Our assessment products and services inform build, buy, and borrow strategies as well as how to pay for those skills.

We leverage data and analytics to measure individual and organization success. Our strategic and integrated approach consists of four main steps:

1. Embark 2. Discover 3. Shape 4. Drive
Phase: Envision and articulate the future vision of skills Phase: Understand the current state through research insights and benchmarks  Phase: Create bold solutions with measurable outcomes toward the future state skill vision Phase: Deliver sustainable results and bake the skill transformation into the fabric of the organization
Focus: What's the real business challenge we're trying to solve with this shift – from an employer and an employee perspective? Focus: Where is the work going right and wrong from a productivity and an employee experience perspective? Focus: What changes to work will simultaneously improve productivity and the employee experience of work? Focus: How do we create a way of working that’s productive, compelling and sustainable?

Supporting and related talent assessment solutions

  • Talent marketplace

    Unlock skills and build future capacity by understanding what employees can do now and what they can do in the future with targeted development. A talent marketplace platform will match them to business needs at scale and speed.

  • Skills-based talent strategies

    Mercer Skills-Edge Suite offers consulting, technology and data to give you the insight to advance skills-based talent and pay practices across your company.

  • HR training (Mercer Learning)

    Equip your employees with e-learning courses and virtual workshops that will help them command the future. Or create a custom series targeted to your talent needs.

  • Mercer | Mettl assessment platform

    Choose the right customized or off-the-shelf psychometric and skill assessment tool on a self-administration platform. The platform allows you to assess technical and soft skills in all functional areas, IT, sales, HR, etc.

     

How can we help with your talent assessments?

Contact our specialists today.