Total talent management is an emerging model that includes an organization’s entire workforce from contingents to traditionally hired workers and more.

For this week’s topic, we asked Alejandro Builes, associate director procurement – corporate and professional services at Kraft Heinz Company, the importance of the concept of total talent management in the future? Builes said total talent management is an important tool and believes companies won’t be able to reap the full benefit of holistic workforce planning without a total talent management strategy and overall program in place.

Such programs offer visibility into the whole workforce and could help firms determine the most efficient labor type to get work done. This would enable firms to ensure they are getting the best value for their investment in labor, while staying compliant with laws and internal policies, Builes said.

However, when pursuing such a system, “It will only be successful if workforce planning is a shared strategy with common end goals across the organization,” Builes said.

“For companies that also have professional/consulting services, business process outsourcing and shared services strategies, how does this total talent management program marry up with those strategies? What are some of the natural synergies when total talent management is looked at within the context of a broader services strategy,” he said. “That is next generation.”

Total talent management is not just contractors and full-time workers, Builes said. Total talent management must address the broader question of how work gets done — full-time workers, temporary agency workers and services in general. Included in services are consulting and other methods of getting work done.

But for total talent management to move forward, Builes believes a firm’s human resources department must be a champion of workforce planning — it can’t only be up to procurement to lead the charge. “You have to have a willing partner in HR,” Builes said. “If [workforce planning] is not already part of their DNA and goals, total management pushed from a procurement perspective is not going to be successful.”

Given the war for talent, holistic workforce planning becomes a necessity and a not a strategic choice for corporations in the coming decade.

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