Poor spreadsheets. These days, everyone is on the bandwagon to dump the spreadsheet as a primary tool for business management. The emergence of easy to use, low cost on-demand software is quieting even the most staunch supporters of spreadsheets, other than for individual use and personal productivity.
Spreadsheets are a particularly bad tool for managing employee talent in an organization. A company that is intent on extracting maximum value from its employee talent pool requires a central repository – or “Single Source of Truth” – for capturing and processing employee data. Despite their myriad uses, spreadsheets will never be more than silos of disparate information.
By contrast, talent management systems automate and unite functions, including recruiting, performance, development and compensation, bringing people and processes closer together. The best talent management solutions are inherently capable of handling collaborative activities, because data is integrated and filters back to a common receptacle.
Employee recruiting is an example of a process that has no business being managed via spreadsheet. Any given company likely has dozens of positions available, for which hundreds of candidates may be applying. Tracking and managing candidates through the interview process produces significant amounts of data. Ideally, the content would reside in a recruiting system that is connected to other talent management solutions, enabling managers to share information, and ensure that key data – or a superstar candidate – does not slip through the cracks.
Spreadsheet-based talent management also compromises data security and auditability. For example, when an employee edits a spreadsheet, whether intentionally or otherwise, frequently there is no trail of that change, or who made it, left behind. If that spreadsheet contains sensitive data, such as employee compensation information, the company may be exposed legally. The same is true for recruiting and performance data, which must be centralized and easily accessible, should an employee raise questions about the hiring and firing processes.
Security and compliance are only part of the reason to automate talent management activities. Equally important is the impact that a Single Source of Truth has on company growth. Companies that desire to grow rapidly must have a system that links and centralizes employee data. The thought of managing recruiting, performance, development and compensation manually, with spreadsheets, is daunting, and may bring a company to a halt entirely.
Similarly, employees must be firing on all cylinders for a company to grow successfully. Research shows that, in many companies, only a minority of employees are highly productive and engaged. To grow fast, businesses need a single system of record for finding and hiring top talent, establishing performance goals, development, compensation, etc. When process management is cobbled together with spreadsheets, employees become disconnected and companies have a difficult time meeting growth projections.
Workstream has addresses these issues by automating talent management, and eliminating the need for spreadsheets in mid-sized and large organizations. Workstream offers the most broad set of talent management solutions in the industry, and its systems work together out-of-the-box, since it is only logical that a company would want to compensate an employee based on his or her performance. Most important, Workstream delivers its solutions on-demand, which means they are cost-effective, quick to deploy, and require minimal support from IT.
Spreadsheets are great – I use them all the time for personal and trivial business purposes. But talent management is critical, and only an automated, integrated on-demand system provides the Single Source of Truth companies need to maximize their potential.
~ Kevin Haugh, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Workstream Inc
