The future of talent management in Asia

Technology, purpose and engagement, leadership development and networking are some of the things that HR leaders hope to see more of in the future of talent management.

"Talent management technology should be something that opens up the conversation, provides the experience to people and gets people excited about the programmes that HR is providing," said Aaron Hardy, solutions engineer at PageUp, who sat on a panel in our inaugural edition of Talent Management Asia, Hong Kong.

Joining him on the panel was Jaspreet Kakar, regional manager, talent management at AXA Asia, Louis Carter, author and CEO of Best Practice Institute, Riges Younan, vice president of sales, Asia Pacific at Avature.

The panel was moderated by Maya Hu-Chan, author, executive coach and president of Global Leadership Associates.

Hardy added technology should not be the focus of talent management, but be an enabler, supporting the programmes that HR has in place. He said that its usage should be so subtle that nobody is able to even realise that "we are using tech."

Louis Carter added his views, saying that the future of talent management is focused on  predictive analytics and a very refined user experience.

"The future of talent management is not just about prediction but also about amassing information in such a way that it brings about a different kind of change for organisations," he added.

Riges Younan agreed, saying however that while technology will continue to evolve rapidly, talent management is fundamentally about people and technology will only be there to help provide HR with the tools for something bigger - purpose and engagement.

"Our business, the way I see it, is that we develop software and provide tools to the organisation so they can deliver programmes to people to help those individuals to essentially find their purpose in life," he said. 

"What I’m really passionate about is helping our business deliver tools to HR professionals so that you could design programmes to programmes to help people find their purpose and therefore be engaged," Younan added.

Jaspreet Kakar felt that an important part of talent management is networking and exchange of information within communities.

"I hope to see people who are very well connected to each other and can exchange information and ideas with or without the use of technology. I think that’s one reason why I go to work everyday for - to try and build those communities and those networking," he said.