We’re in the thick of open enrollment season, which means brokers arebusy helping clients educate employees on their benefits offerings.But before we know it, we’ll be ringing in 2018, and alreadyplanning for next year’s enrollment process.

Come 2018, I believe brokers will continue to shift theconversation with clients from technology to talent. Instead ofdiscussing the latest and greatest benefits administration tools onthe market, brokers will focus more on how clients canstrategically use the data they’re collecting to drive talentacquisition and talent activation throughout theirorganizations.

As employers battle for skilled workers, they will also need toshift their focus toward activating the talent they already have.The “winners” of the future will be those who can engage, develop,and retain their internal top talent.

We all know that HR plays a critical role here and that thehallmark of a world-class HR organization is the ability to turntalent into an incredibly powerful asset. An HR organization withan acute focus on talent helps to develop a fully-engaged andhighly-functional workforce that can help drive innovation,business strategy, and financial outcomes.

According to recent research from the Hackett Group®, world-class HRorganizations spend 25 percent less than their peers and require 30percent fewer staff. Their error rates for transactions are 2 to 5times lower than their peers. Further, turnover rates for first-and second-year hires are markedly better, and as we know, betterretention leads to more institutionalized knowledge kept within acompany’s walls.

Helping your clients achieve world-class status can be donethrough digital transformation, which involves moving beyond justautomating existing processes. It’s about leveraging data analyticsto drive better decision making, designing new ways to engage thecustomer and shifting focus from discrete projects to continuoustransformation, to name a few. Digital transformation requires acommitment to operational excellence, a proficiency at managingtalent strategically, and tight alignment of processes within thebusiness. It isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s a huge, momentous, andsometimes slightly messy transformation of the living organism thatis your client’s business. Digital transformation is unsuccessfulif a business just has commitment from the head, or theheart, or the muscles, or the bones. It requires all parts of anorganization to move forward in lock-step.

Here are some tips for brokers to turn the conversation towardtalent activation and help their clients drive digitaltransformation throughout their business in 2018:

Remember, data comes first. Data is thefoundation on which your clients are able to sell the importance oftalent activation to the rest of the organization. For businessleaders, employee engagement can sometimes take a back seat toharder metrics. HR leaders need to be able to collect and analyze employee data to show howimproved engagement can lead to increased financial performance.Brokers should work with their clients to ensure they arecollecting this data, and help them make it actionable andinsightful for managers and executives. When HR professionals arebetter able to connect the dots between engagement and financialperformance, brokers can shine as strategic partners, not just toHR, but to the business at-large.

Help clients build a lasting infrastructure.The mentality of “a tool here, a tool there,” won’t help clientssee the lasting benefits of digital technologies. This is because,often, businesses strive so hard to reach a revenue number thatthey don’t deploy the necessary holistic infrastructure to seegrowth follow through.

This harkens back to having a commitment to operationalexcellence, and the fact that digital technologies need to work insync to drive processes. If businesses only focus on what digitaltransformation can do for their financial projections, they mighthit their targets, but at the end of the day they won’t achieveworld-class status until the necessary infrastructure (the toolsand the processes) is deployed. Start talking to yourclients now about the gaps in their business processes that digitaltechnologies might be able to fill, as well as strategies for howdata can bolster weak spots in their operations.

Utilize technology to pull your clients out of theweeds. Well-built technology simplifies peoples’ lives. Too often, peopleget involved in the tactical and forget the broader picture. Butwith the right technology behind them, they are able to thinkholistically and turn their attention from low- to high-valuetasks. This ultimately allows businesses to have greater connectionoutwardly, to vendors and partners, by eliminating operationalwaste. When the executive leadership, HR, managers, and frontlineemployees are functioning in unison, this allows companies to bemore strategic advisors to their clients and offer data-backedsolutions that are driven by the full power of their company, allin alignment.

Yesterday’s solution to HR was throwing more bodies at theproblem; today’s solution is using partners, data, and technologyto drive talent and achieve world-class HCM. For the year ahead,brokers should continue working with clients to research the toolsthey will need to strengthen their analytic and talent activationabilities, as well as teaching them to be more data fluent. Don’thesitate. World-class status is within reach for yourclients.

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