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Sponsored: TEaaS is your key to supporting the entire talent journey

There has been a fundamental shift in the way companies use technology, as it’s become embedded in every department across the enterprise. Meanwhile, an uncertain economy requires businesses to prepare for more change. The bottom line: Companies need a way to attract, develop and retain tech talent in the US.

“Technology is now the core of every business,” says Ashwin Bharath, founder and CEO of Revature. “It is very, very important for you to get the maximum out of your tech initiative — so you need to have local talent.”

That’s where talent enablement as a service [1], or TEaaS, comes in. Talent enablement as a service is a revolutionary new way to think about your talent enablement ecosystem. Offered as a portfolio of unbundled solutions, the model can support talent acquisition, continuous investment and talent transformation. It is a cost-effective solution for the entire employee lifecycle, from talent acquisition through investment in talent, all the way to the employee engagement that will lead to talent transformation.

Talent Acquisition

In short, the TEaaS acquisition approach puts talent at the center of the process.

TEaaS strategies focus recruiting on aptitude and attitude [2] rather than looking for people who have all of the specific technical skills the job requires. This can be particularly helpful for filling jobs in hard-to-find technical areas.

“If you are looking for people with 10 skills, it’s impossible for you to hire people who can check the box on all of them,” Bharath says. “But it’s easy to find people with five, six or eight skills and enable them to develop the rest [3].”

Combining this mindset of homing in on aptitude and attitude with the infrastructure to efficiently onboard and train on technical skills enables TEaaS candidate recruitment to pull from much more broad talent pools. This approach shortens the hiring process and produces a more diverse workforce than traditional models. One key benefit of talent enablement as a service: “Rather than getting contractors for now, who in 12 months will be working as contractors for your competitors, you are investing in your own talent that will eventually become your management team,” Bharath says.

Continuous Investment

Once the talent is on board, TEaaS enables organizations to support employee growth with upskilling and reskilling — both to retain the workers [4] and to keep their tech skills current.

“Technology is changing at a rapid pace,” says Gaurav Gautam, senior vice president of strategic engagements at Revature. “For the enterprise to retain talent by taking them to the next level in an organization, the organization must help them acquire new skill sets.”

Assessment is a key component of this investment. It starts during the talent acquisition process, identifying the additional training workers need before they start a job. Accurately assessing both technical and nontechnical skills helps create a better curated talent pool and can reduce time to hire. Depending on the assessment of their basic and advanced technical skills, workers may proceed directly to onboarding or start with customized technology training.

Both assessment and training should continue in order to help employees grow into new responsibilities. Sometimes, reskilling an entire team can enable a company to maintain its workforce while tackling new challenges.

“By not upskilling their existing talent [5], companies are losing massive revenue,” Bharath says. “They are losing people to attrition, and having people do their jobs without adequate skills is also costing them. Upskilling is no longer a nice-to-have feature — it is an absolute necessity.”

The pace of technological change also makes it imperative for companies to take a high-level approach to upskilling.

“In the past, it was expected for the employees to take ownership of upskilling themselves because the pace was manageable,” Bharath says. “Now, with the pace at which change is happening, there has to be a systemic solution put in place for upskilling.”

Talent Transformation

To truly reap the rewards of talent enablement, with high retention rates and engaged employees, companies need to build a systemic employee engagement infrastructure with dynamic programs that focus on individual success. TEaaS does just this.

“One of the key challenges we have seen in the past is the inability of organizations to hold onto talent,” Gautam says. “One of the primary reasons was a lack of opportunities for them to upskill and learn new technologies.”

Although the cooling economy may mean there is a slight pullback, it’s likely that tech talent will remain in demand — and as soon as the economy picks up again, employee retention will once again be a challenge.

Talent enablement as a service “can help companies with retention goals and the upward career movement of their employees,” Gautam says.

Keeping employees engaged is another priority — and it will remain so even as the economy slows.

“Employee engagement should be proactive rather than reactive,” Bharath says. Most current employee engagement programs focus on resolving issues or just having a regular cadence of calls. “Nobody tells them how the industry is changing. Nobody’s telling them what they can do to be better. Nobody’s telling them the technology roadmap of the company. You have to add a significant, proactive piece.”

The bottom line: It’s tempting to put off investing in upskilling programs until absolutely necessary. But the risks may be apparent only after it’s too late — for example, a cyber attack that demonstrates employees’ out-of-date skills.

“If you don’t wear a seatbelt when you’re driving a car, you’re going to be fine most of the time — but you will realize the power of the seatbelt when you get in an accident,” Bharath says. “Most companies are ignoring upskilling because it’s not affecting them. But it’s important to start wearing that seatbelt now.”


To learn more about how Revature’s Talent Enablement as a Service can benefit your organization, chat with our experts at https://revature.com/hire-talent [6].

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