Halogen Provides a Comprehensive and Integrated Talent Management Suite
by Bill Ives
I have covered Halogen Software before (see: Halogen – Using Transparency to Promote Accountability in HR). Processes. They have recently launched a new module, Halogen eRecruitment, to round out their integrated suite of talent management tools. I spoke with Donna Ronayne, VP of marketing to learn about this latest move and their efforts since we last spoke.
Donna began by pointing the increasingly strategic nature of talent management. I would agree with this. She mentioned that according to PwC’s annual CEO survey managing talent has overtaken risk as top of the CEO agenda and 83 percent of the 1,200 CEOs surveyed globally plan to change their firm’s talent management strategy over the next 12 months. In addition, in companies with better talent management Bersin found 22% higher revenue per employee, McKinsey found 22% higher shareholder return, and Watson Wyatt found a 30% higher corporate valuation. These are all numbers that seem reasonable to me. I feel that companies that invest more in their people are bound to do better and it is nice to see numbers to back up this assumption.
Donna said that one of the obstacles to sound talent management has been the siloed nature of the functions that support this effort. Often recruiting, compensation, succession and learning are not linked. Part of the problem is that many of these functions have adopted their own tool sets and these tools do not link across functions. While this siloed approach does not make good business sense, it is also not surprising.
The Halogen suite is designed to address this issue. They have made performance management the hub of this integration that also includes: appraisal, compensation, succession, learning, talent profiles, job description, and now recruitment. Each of these capabilities are integrated so they can coordinate employees efforts from recruitment through succession. For example, a job description can drive a job requisition that drives recruitment and on-boarding and then learning programs. The suite is based on HR best practices and unifies talent management strategy through performance, handling the employee lifecycle from hire to retire.
Donna said the recruitment is often isolated from the rest of the HR functions and the addition of this function to their integrated suite helps to round out their capabilities. Halogen eRecruitment includes all the features of a classic Applicant Tracking Systems, but allows recruiters to be fully integrated into all talent management processes. Halogen eRecruitment is designed from the ground up to leverage all the important integration points of a talent management suite that includes performance, learning, succession, compensation, job descriptions, talent profiles and more. One of the features allows you to compare both internal and external candidates for a position.
The integrated nature of the suite allows for multi-tasking by managers when handling talent management functions. For example, they can work on succession planning and learning management while they are doing performance appraisals. Below you can see a sample manager’s screen with the work activities on the left and an activity stream of recent employee actions on the right. He is currently working on a job description and recruitment.
You can also easily see your performance against goals as shown in the screen below.
Each component of the system is designed for ease of use and the screens do seem intuitive to me. I can see real benefits from having an integrated approach such as the one Halogen provides. Apparently their customers do also as they have experienced 36 consecutive quarters of record growth.
