Elevating Talent Management: Innovations and Challenges in the Volvo Group

Blanca Estela Aguilar González, Attraction and Talent Management manager and HRB and Lilia Cortes, People and Culture Director, Volvo Group.

How do the latest developments in talent management address the challenges your business faces in satisfying its requirements?

With a holistic vision that incorporates technology and innovation, we have tools that promote business-critical competencies development with a direct impact on the results. We have our business University, Volvo Group University with thousands of courses in different specialties that any employee in the organization can access to improve and develop their current and future skills, whenever they wish. We also have different programs and systems that support continuous dialogues between employees and their leaders to understand their needs, seek to improve skills and performance and promote their self-development.

Can you share your experiences from one of the projects that you were recently involved in?

Of course, we were part of the implementation of SuccessFactors for some of the human resources processes, to improve the current and future experience of our employees, aligned with the innovation that is a cornerstone of the organization and in order to standardize them globally. We are just at the beginning of the start-up, the process has been a great experience that has allowed us to be in contact with colleagues from all over the world, to know in detail how our processes work and how they are integrated to support the success of employees in the organization and at the same time provide efficiency to the business to the end to end through one integrated platform that includes the most critical HR processes in the value stream map of the business.

What are some of the challenges in your business that current services are unable to provide an optimal solution?

We are growing significantly in different places within the country, we have corporate offices and a manufacturing plant where most of our services as a human resources team are centrally located, so it is complex to be able to provide the same support in different places, with the same proximity, efficiency, and quality. We must replicate the same programs and the same service in all these spaces, but it has not been easy. We need to incorporate more and more technology resources towards them to near the same level of experience in comparison with the corporate offices.

‘With a holistic vision that incorporates technology and innovation, we have tools that promote business-critical competencies development with a direct impact on the results.’

What advice would you extend to professionals in your role working in other companies within the HR space regarding things they should do?

We want to invite our HR colleagues to be true allies and partners of the business, which implies a deep immersion in the design of the strategy, vision, objectives, etc., and at the same time be clear about the impact of contributions of the area towards the organization's results. We must be part of the key decisions, we can’t be on the sidelines, all the issues that have to do with and impact people must be part of the agenda of the executive boards, which implies being present and actively participating in the decision-making process.

Are there specific elements of a technology trend in talent management that excite you the most, and if yes, what are they?

Yes, of course, increasing access to information is essential, the amount of learning available is something that we must take advantage of and maximize as the growth of corporate universities and the use of technology for the development of future competencies becomes critical. As professionals in people matter, we must be immersed in the knowledge of virtual learning and artificial intelligence (AI) for employee development will come to replace many of the current processes and we must be prepared for its arrival, sooner than we imagine.

Artificial Intelligence

AI