From insights to action, the path to extraordinary value starts here.
Elevate every
decision with
intelligent
Talent and HR
operations
Fast-track to future-ready performance

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Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Why you need an
agile workforce
CEOs and HR leaders are facing
unprecedented challenges, including:
• Competition for talent
• Attrition
• Burnout
• Widening skill gaps
• Lack of productivity, performance
and purpose.
CEOs and their leaders must be ready to meet
the future, and foster a workforce that’s agile,
skilled and innovative. Culture and people are
the key elements to help organizations truly
thrive as they undergo digital transformation.

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Create a workforce
that’s more agile
and productive
To really deliver on the promise of a future-
ready organization, leaders must come to see
the combination of technology AND human
ingenuity as inextricably linked and powerful
enough to elevate employee potential,
collaboration and creativity.
This means, they must advance their operating
models to achieve better performance and
retention of their people.
The journey begins here and now.

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 4
Future-ready organizations
need future-ready talent
Our research reveals there are four levels of operational maturity.
Each level has progressively more sophisticated technology,
processes, data and talent.
In terms of talent, future-ready organizations provide their people
with a better employee experience, training and development, and
opportunities to advance their careers.
Predictive
Stable
Future-ready
Efficient of CEOs surveyed
expect to be future-
ready by 2023.
21%

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Advantages of being
future-ready
1 Future-ready organizations exhibited 6.4 pp higher profitability and 13.1 percent greater efficiency, on average
Source: Accenture Research and Oxford Economics Intelligent Operations Survey, 2020
Other future-ready benefits:
improved talent mix, reskilling, customer
experiences and ecosystem relationships
2.8x
1.7x
higher efficiency
levels for future-ready
organizations.1
boost in corporate
profitability for future-
ready organizations.1
More profitable
More efficient
It takes work, but it’s worth it: Better
outcomes are a direct result of becoming—
and remaining—future-ready.
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 6
of CEOs see attracting
and retaining talent to
achieve transformation
as a top challenge.
Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 6
21%
Culture and the journey
to operations maturity
To achieve a high level of transformational
value, the entire C-suite, led by the CEO and
HR leaders, needs to drive changes to the
culture and the talent strategy.

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
of workers believe
that AI will have a
positive impact on
their jobs.
62%
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Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 7
It takes skill(ing)
As technology continues to shape the
workforce, organizations have a responsibility
to ensure their people have access to training
that connects them to the future of work.
Responsible skilling: An investment in people
so they have marketable, in-demand skills to
obtain good jobs and advance in their careers.
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 8
of CEOs report wide
use of an agile
workforce, compared
to 77% of HR leaders
and 71% of all leaders.
Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 8
54%
Get in alignment
There’s a disconnect between CEOs and
HR leaders.
The CEO and CHRO need to align on what
barriers exist across their leadership teams,
with all leaders thinking holistically about
charting a path forward for the organization.

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
of CEOs see talent
attraction and retention
as a top challenge
compared to just 16% of
respondents across all
other functions.
21%
of HR leaders see technology
as a top challenge for
attracting and retaining talent.
They also report less progress
than overall leaders when it
comes to talent mix, reskilling,
engagement and retention.
29%
CEOs see structure,
technology AND talent as the
primary challenges to scaling
in key capability areas that
support future readiness.
In fact, they indicate that
attracting and retaining talent
to achieve transformation is a
particularly distinctive challenge.
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
03
02
01
Know how
to leapfrog
maturity levels
Know the
key steps
Know the
ultimate goal
Here’s how to become future-ready through an effective people strategy:
Give power to your people

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Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Know the
ultimate
goal
01
Future-ready organizations
prioritize, elevate and
advance their people.
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 12
of HR leaders have seen
leading practices improve
more than 3x over the past
three years.
Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 12
74%
01 Know the ultimate goal
Strategic reskilling solutions help
organizations re-align their people
from transactional roles to in-demand
value-added activities:
• Statistical assistants may become
data scientists
• Web administrators move into
software programming
• HR assistants become
talent advisors

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
01 Know the ultimate goal
Think like
an employee
Employees expect a consumer-grade
experience at the workplace. Meeting
those expectation requires HR to
redesign the service delivery model
from more of an employee’s point of
view—one that anticipates the needs
of the business and the workforce.
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations

Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 14
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Know the
key steps
02
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Create a data-driven
culture, enabling agility

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 15
Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 15
02 Know the key steps
of CEOs saying their
organization’s operating
model is designed based on
data instead of intuition.
71%
HR should deliver real-time insights into
every part of the employee lifecycle:
hiring, retention (including increasing
employee engagement) and promotions.
Additionally, leaders across the C-suite
should have access to data that supports
improving employee well-being.

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 16
A personal care and manufacturing company
wanted to build a diversified workforce with a
profile more similar to its customer base. The
company used data and analytics to better
understand the candidate market and hiring
process to improve outcomes around DEI. The
work pinpointed the company’s bias toward
internal candidates and catalyzed the expansion
of the diversity of the talent pipeline. Through
data-driven actions—for example, increasing job
finalist slates from three to five candidates—the
company increased its ethnic and gender
diversity of new hires from 38% to 60%.
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
02 Know the key steps

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
02 Know the key steps
Elevate human talent
through tech innovation
Future-ready organizations are using
technology to develop an inclusive,
engaged and skilled workforce. They’re also
building people’s digital fluency—which is
key to unleashing newfound creativity and
ways of working across the enterprise.
What’s more, across all functional leaders,
cloud is one of the most important
technologies applied today.
of CEOs and 68% of HR
leaders report that their
enterprise has applied
cloud at scale.
52%
Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 17
17

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 18
02 Know the key steps
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
A leading telecommunications company
wanted to reduce HR operating costs, transform
recruitment processes and gain global visibility
of its people. That meant eliminating multiple,
aging HR legacy systems.
To streamline the salary negotiations process,
the company used cloud solutions to obtain
advanced analytics and insights on a job’s
detail, the availability of candidates and salary
expectations. This allowed the company to
maintain compensation parity and offer the
appropriate salary to people with the right
skills and qualifications.
With fewer people involved in salary
negotiations, the HR team can now focus on
supporting the business strategy and growth.
HR operations reduced costs by more than 30%,
and employee satisfaction rates are above 95%.

Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 19
of all future-ready
organizations expect
business and technology
functions to collaborate fully
by 2023, up from 55% today.
86%
Collaborate across business
and technology functions
Organizations that want to close the
gap on intelligent operations need to
strategically break down barriers
between IT and other departments.
Leaders across functions should use
technology to review skills in the local
labor market so HR professionals can
work with the business to understand
workforce skill needs.
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
02 Know the key steps

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 20
02 Know the key steps
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
An oil and gas company that needed to reskill
their procurement workforce wanted an
unbiased, 360-degree view of their talent to
analyze historically untapped employee data.
The company created an AI-backed solution to
assess employees’ skills and strengths, their skill
proximities for the future and how to fill skills
gaps to meet the needs of the procurement
organization. Now they have a sustainable,
scalable solution that supports their long-term
digital transformation workforce strategy.

Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 21
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Know how
to leapfrog
maturity
levels
03
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Future-ready organizations are
taking steps to redesign how their
people work and invest in the skills
required to work differently.

Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 22
03 Know how to leapfrog maturity levels
Intelligent Operations | Marketing Operations
They’re building ecosystem relationships
If a skills review doesn’t find the appropriate
talent when promoting internally or within the
local labor market, an ecosystem partner could
effectively bring those skills within closer reach.
And an ecosystem partner can suggest learning
paths for reskilling individuals rather than
manually designing them.
Being a part of a reliable ecosystem can also help
organizations break through one of the greatest
barriers to operational transformation: access to
technology skills and know-how.
55%
of HR leaders said
their ecosystem
partnerships have
improved over the
past three years.

Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 23
03 Know how to leapfrog maturity levels
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
They’re building workforce
digital readiness
As organizations return to the
workplace, there’s an even stronger
emphasis around digital technology
and skills.
But because technology isn’t static,
enterprises will need a culture that
encourages continuous learning to
address potential digital skill gaps.
of companies are
reallocating real estate
budgets to hiring and
upskilling talent.
47%

Create a culture
designed to outpace
and outperform
When people are valued for their ingenuity
and given the technology, data and
processes needed to perform at their best,
organizations will see greater productivity,
engagement and retention.
Intelligent HR operations can help people
to bring out their most creative and
innovative selves. While the journey to get
there will differ for every organization,
individuals and functions alike should be
looking forward to a challenging yet
rewarding future.
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 24

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations Copyright © 2021 Accenture. All rights reserved. 25
Learn more at: accenture.com/futurereadytalent
Foster
an agile
and skilled
workforce
that enables
true human
ingenuity
Fill in
the skills gaps
through re-skilling
and upskilling and
thereby enabling
the workforce to be
future-ready within
the organization
and beyond
Break
down
functional silos
across the
organization;
workforce
transformation
impacts all
employees
Enhance
intuition with the
highest-quality,
diverse data that
powers your
decision-making
Build
complementary
third-party and
ecosystem
relationships
Think
big and go
beyond
incremental
change.
Now is the time to make your move to intelligent operations. Here’s how:
Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations

Intelligent Operations | Talent and HR Operations
Predictive
Concentrate mostly
on core process
improvements and on
improving quality and
compliance controls.
Stable
Future-ready
Efficient
More productive, they
incorporate tested
methods, such as Lean
Six Sigma and process
standardization and
deploy automation
technologies.
Focus on how automation
can support and augment
human ingenuity. They
deploy technologies and
leading practices with
that goal in mind.
See increased efficiency
and profitability, improved
stakeholder experiences and
better business outcomes.
They are more agile and
resilient than others.
Appendix
Four levels of operations maturity:

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