Strategic Talent Planning

On this page, you will find all of the links and resources to free Digital tools & technologies which were showcased in the course.

01) Recruitment

A) Creating self-marking tests for candidate screening

While there are many websites that will provide you with "Off The Shelf" tests that you can use to screen candidates, many of them have a cost associated with them.

To minimise the financial risk to your business, you can use Google Forms to create an unlimited number of forms and self-marking quizzes which candidates can complete.

Even if you don't want to use the Google Forms platform for your "final" tests, they are a great way of piloting questions and testing the overall flow of your feedback forms before you decide to implement them using a paid-for service.

Click here to go to Google Forms

B) Creating a Progressive Web App (PWA) for Onboarding

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a new kind of website which looks and feels like an app when viewed on a smartphone. Glide allows you to make any number of these PWAs for free.

There are many business use cases for PWAs, but for recruitment, one of the most effective things you can make is an onboarding app for your new starters.

Click here to view an example

What is a PWA?

Introducing Glide

02) Retention

C) Facilitate knowledge exchange and peer support with a Community of Practice

Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

They are defined by 3 things:

1) Domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest.

Membership implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people.

2) Community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information.

They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other; they care about their standing with each other.

3) Practice: Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.

Digital Tools to facilitate a CoP

There are many tools which will allow you to create the things required by a Community of Practice, below we've listed some free ones.

i) Community Portal

If you want to create a CoP then you first need to give your members an online home, a place to go to which will contain the other tools and resources listed below. There are many options available to you to do this and if your business uses an intranet or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) then ideally you should base your portal there.

However, if you cannot or do not want to use your existing intranet or VLE then you may wish to have a look at Google Sites to construct your community portal.

Google Sites is covered in more depth in section 03) Release.

ii) Access to mentors via real-time chat

The idea is that staff can communicate with their coaches and mentors in real-time, either by typing or via voice or video call.

Unless you have the resources to run a dedicated helpdesk, we recommend that you establish "surgery" times for them to be able to do this.

There are many free and paid-for tools which will allow you to do this, and the recent pandemic accelerated their adoption in business, so chances are, you are already using a tool that will let you do this.

If not, or if you wish to save some money and move to a free option, we recommend Discord.

Click here to learn more about Discord.

iii) Small group workspaces

Sometimes a subsection of a community requires a "break out" session and develop something together as a small team.

To facilitate this, your community members need the ability to work on a document together whilst also communicating with one another in real-time.

You may already be using tools in your workplace which allow you to do this, but if not, or if you would like to save some money, then you may wish to consider the following free tools:

1) Google Meet - For meetings and drawing on a collaborative whiteboard.

2) Google Drive - For Collboritivly creating and editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

iv) Staff Discussion forums

If you have based your community hub on a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Staff Intranet, then the chances are it's already got discussion forums built-in.

However, if it hasn't, you may wish to have a look at tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack or Discord.

As Discord is completely free, this is the tool we would suggest you look at / trial first:

Click here to learn more about Discord.

v) Communication broadcast channels

You need a way of sending out "parish announcements" to your community. Traditionally this could have been done via email or by sending out a digital or physical Newsletter.

If your intranet or VLE has staff forums then you can use this to post up important announcements, however, since the pandemic, many businesses have moved to tools such as Teams, Slack and Discord which easily allow such announcements to be sent.

Click here to learn more about Discord.

vi) Virtual Meeting Spaces

There will be times when the whole community, or subsections of it, wish to get together to have a meeting.

Again many options are available to you to do this and since the pandemic you have probably adopted one (or more!) already.

However, if you would like to save some money and move to a free option then we would suggest you review either Discord or Google Meet.

vii) Access to CPD materials and activities

We've combined the last two as they go hand in hand.

Members of your community of practice should have access to a web-based learning environment containing the resources and activities that they can use to learn about, and develop their skills on, whatever the focus of the CoP is.

It should be accessible to your staff via any online-enabled device regardless of their geographical location.

If your organisation does not have a Virtual Learning Environment or a Staff Intranet, you may wish to investigate Google Sites.

Google Sites is covered in more depth in section 03) Release.

03) Release

D) Empower employees with Employability E-portfolios

An e-portfolio is a website which contains a wide range of digital files (documents, videos, sound clips etc) that can be used by employees to showcase skills and abilities to other people. They can be a very effective way of evidencing how the CPD employees are actually being implemented within an organisation.

As the portfolio belongs to the individual, and not the employer, they can also facilitate a smooth release process - allowing the individual to showcase the work and opportunities you have afforded them and become an ambassador for your organisation as a result.

While there are many tools online which will allow people to build e-portfolios, many of them have incremental costs associated with them, however, Google Sites is completely free.

Watch the videos below to learn more, or click on the button below to go to Google Sites to start making your e-portfolio.

Click here to go to Google Sites