How reliable is Excel for talent mapping?

A team’s skills are critical to success. Despite the willingness to learn more about their employees, most organisations are unsuccessful. In an effort to understand their teams, many managers turn to Excel for talent skill mapping because it is free, familiar, and convenient. Nevertheless, this method has many drawbacks. Here are some reasons why talent mapping shouldn’t be done in Excel.

Imagine you manage a company with 250+ employees. It would be impossible to get to know each person individually, particularly in Australia, where people don’t include all their information when applying for a job. You are working on an exciting new project, but there is a time limit and you need someone with a specific skill. However, you are prepared because a month ago, an employee created a very fancy skill map with many Excel forms, which seems to work fine.

When you try to start this new project, you discover the spreadsheet is not up-to-date. Most of these people have already left, and since everyone else was busy, no one took the time to update the data manually. Consequently, you become frustrated, unsure of who to call, and spend more time trying to locate the right person in your network. This delays the project, and the client is unhappy. Do you recognise this scenario? It happens a lot more often than we would like.

Talent Mapping: Why should you care?

The example above illustrates that being able to identify the gaps in your workforce and contacting the appropriate person quickly is a requisite capability for any organisation to succeed. We are dealing with many changes since Covid-19; things that impact the way we work and employees’ behavior. A few decades ago, keeping a stable job and having enough money to buy a house were the main goals of the average person, but today having work-life balance and flexibility, experiencing new things, and building a career that you love are key desires of the upcoming generation.

So, with the evolution of the workplace comes an unprecedented number of challenges for companies. The Great Resignation, Great Cancelation, Great Vacation, among other trends, make the hiring process difficult and costly, so instead of trying to hire new employees, it is imperative that you retain what you have, the good ones, and you do this by understanding them properly through talent mapping processes.

Talent mapping is the process of categorising the skills of an organisation’s workforce into four quadrants: core skills, competencies, knowledge, and skills gaps. This way, organisations can determine where there are skills gaps and what they need to do to overcome them.

Talent mapping is a critical step in the talent management process. It’s an organisation’s way of understanding its strengths and weaknesses, and determining how to best address them.

Would Excel be the best tool to create a skill matrix?

The internet is full of tutorials and free templates, which can be great, as long as you are also aware of the limitations. Excel is a powerful tool for analysis , but it lacks the ability to easily collect data at a large scale. As illustrated in the example, you only need to make one change in the database to make your forms no longer applicable.

Big companies hold a lot of information, but keeping it current is a challenge that separates a useful tool from a slew of spreadsheets. In other words, data is power as long as it’s updated and wisely used.

Why Excel isn’t the best option for talent mapping.

Excel is time-consuming and requires a lot of effort

It requires expertise and a lot of time to build a matrix, and it’s not accurate, since just a little mistake in the formula could change everything.

Excel is not real-time data.

The use of Excel requires data entry, which means any information in a row must be entered manually. This is a time-consuming process with a high risk of human error.

Can be easy to manipulate.

An excel file can be manipulated by anyone with full access, which creates uncertainty about the credibility of the information.

Lack of Insights

The problem with Excel, however, is that it doesn’t have the functionality to automatically collect information from many sources and the self-learning capability of identifying patterns that give valuable insights for taking decisions.

The advantages of using a specific type of software for talent mapping

There are many different types of software for talent mapping on the market today, and not all of them are created equal. You’ll want to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses before you make a final decision.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning now make it possible to collect information on a very large scale, identify patterns, and make data-driven decisions, unlike the human mind. This capability, however, can only be accessed with specialised software.

Additionally, talent mapping software is often used to create a database of potential candidates for recruiters to use. A database of potential candidates is essential because it provides recruiters with an easy way to access the information they need to find the right person for the job.

Find your perfect match

Finding the perfect talent map can be time-consuming and difficult. To start, you’ll need to deeply understand your company’s needs, which is why most software providers offer you a demo, where they can understand your needs and evaluate if the software is adaptable to you.

At first sight, most software might look similar, but you need to consider all of the features and functions you want your talent map to have. For example, do you want to be able to see all the people in your organization at a glance? Or would you rather have a more detailed list of specific people?

When you know what features you want, you can find software that offers them. You can do this by asking your colleagues, or researching on the web. There are websites such as Capterra, G2, and Crunchbase that can help you to identify software to compare and contact them for a demonstration.

The next step is the negotiation of prices, where it’s recommended not to think only of the short-term cost, but also of the long-term. Do you know how much turnover costs your organisation? What is the cost of the time taken by a manager to search for the right employee? How much revenue do you lose as a result of not finding the right person on time? When evaluating the price of the software, keep all this in mind.

Conclusion

In the end, the best way to make sure your talent map is as effective as possible is to find software that’s going to work for you. When you’re considering software, consider your organisation’s needs and how the software can help you meet those needs.

If you need help finding the right software, don’t hesitate to consult with a colleague, or visit some websites that are leaders in the field, as well as ask for demo presentations to deeply understand the value of each software.

If you’re looking to streamline your talent management strategy, with Xrosswork you can easily identify all your team’s skills and match them to your organisation’s needs.

There is no doubt that hiring HR software is worth the investment for big companies, and it will pay off with more profitability.