Decentralised talent data is restricting strategic succession, hiring, and workforce utilisation for organisations, a global survey shows. The lack of integration of talent systems means that more leaders use intuition rather than insights to guide talent initiatives.
Data fragmentation is creating a financial and productivity drag across companies, according to data from Korn Ferry. In a survey of about 1,600 members of the C-suite, 68% of leaders said their organisation operates with only partial or minimal talent data integration, and 26% said it can take weeks to access connected talent insights.
The business cost of such fragmentation is high. Eighty per cent of respondents estimate that fragmented talent data systems cost their companies at least 3% of total payroll. Data silos also amount to lost productivity, as 31% of leaders reported that over a quarter of their workforce is underutilised.
“When talent insight is incomplete or hard to access, leaders go with their gut,” the survey said. “That’s why 71% of leaders told us that they rely on instincts, instead of insights, when making talent decisions.”
Leaders in organisations with 10 or more talent systems are almost twice as likely to rely on intuition, the survey found. According to the survey, 84% have between 3 and 10 different talent data platforms.
Difficulty sourcing reliable data is creating distrust in human resources leaders. Over half of business leaders asserted that HR is seen as less strategic (57%), that talent processes are seen as unreliable and inconsistent (54%), and that HR initiatives lose organisational support (51%).
“At its core, this is a credibility issue. When workforce insights feel incomplete or inconsistent, HR’s voice carries less weight,” the survey said. “Leaders default to instinct because the evidence presented doesn’t feel reliable.”
However, gut instinct is often unreliable and affected by numerous biases, motivational speaker and mental health adviser Andrew Pain said in a podcast interview with FM.
“We live in a very immediate culture,” Pain said. “We have everything at our fingertips, so there’s pressure for quick decisions. We put that pressure on ourselves; we put it on others. And yet actually our guts are flawed.”
Korn Ferry’s survey showed that just 5% of business leaders reported having fully connected talent data systems. Leaders with fully integrated talent data systems reported increased productivity (68%), faster hiring (60%), stronger workforce engagement (60%), reduced costs (43%), and reduced staff turnover (33%).
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