77 Percent of American C-Suite Executives Admit They Have A Diversity Problem

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 20, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Eightfold.ai,the company with the first Talent Intelligence Platform (TIP) to address the talent gap by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and search, today announced the results from the inaugural "Talent Intelligence and Management" Report, a new research survey to identify key organizational challenges including hiring, managing and promoting talent. The survey, conducted by Harris of more than 1,000 executives and candidates found that companies struggle to hire new talent, retain top talent, and foster diversity within their organizations, but reported intention to address and improve each challenge. 

"Executives have spoken and it's clear that the diversity problem in talent management feels like it's worse than ever," said Ashutosh Garg, co-founder and chief executive officer at Eightfold.ai. "At the same time, we know that the quality of diverse candidates available today is unmatched. That's why we feel both concerned by these problems and motivated more than ever to help enterprises solve them."

Chief human resource executives (CHRO's) and employees alike agree that much more work needs to be done to solve the talent crisis. According to the findings, 28% of open roles will go unfilled, 47% of top talent will quit within two years and 83% of employees across the board are actively looking for a new role, internally or externally. Utilizing AI in their HR practices could solve major challenges from hiring and managing talent to fostering diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

"By surveying over a thousand executives who make key HR decisions for their organizations, Eightfold has uncovered new data about today's workforce that merits attention from anyone looking to grow their organizations and fill open roles," said Michael Ross, HR tech advisor and former CHRO at Visa. "In addition to widespread recognition of retention and diversity as strategic priorities across organizations, it's encouraging to see how AI can be applied to closing the gap between the importance and effectiveness of talent programs." 

Key takeaways from the new report include:

Bias in the workplace.
Ensuring diversity in the workforce is considered by executives as highly important, but also a top challenge to their organizations.

"It's clear that an intervention is needed immediately in order to have an impact on diversity and inclusion efforts," added Kamal Ahluwalia, president, Eightfold.ai. "We've had customers sign up specifically for eliminating bias from their organizations. We believe blind screening should be mandatory in addition to analyzing a much wider, more customized talent pool to help reduce human bias as much as possible."

• While the majority (84%) of executives consider diversity to be of top importance, most of them (77%) also feel that their efforts toward this are ineffective in the workplace.
• Even for organizations that are trying to proactively attract and retain people from various social groups — such as millennials, women, and people from ethnic minorities — only 45% of reportees think their organization is highly effective in achieving this objective.
• Thirty-eight percent (38%) reported the ability to retain diverse talent as one of their top two diversity challenges.

If you want your employees to stay (and thrive), make sure they feel valued.
When it comes to turnover, more than half of candidates have changed employers in the past three years.

• Talent retention is an HR challenge for 2 out of 3 (66%) organizations.
• On average, 6 in 10 employees (61%) don't stay in the same organization for more than 3 years.
• Half (56%) of candidates have changed employers in the last 3 years and 84% are looking for a new position either with another company or with their current employer.
• Candidates cite feeling that their work is not valued, issues with management, and salary dissatisfaction as main factors for having changed or being in the process of looking for a new position.

AI is helping HR leaders visualize the future of work now.
Organizations that are already using artificial intelligence are much more likely than average to have adequate visibility of capabilities, aspirations, strengths, weaknesses, and skill gaps in their current workforce.

• Despite being an emerging technology, artificial intelligence is currently used by 1 in 5 (22%) to power HR processes.
• There is wide agreement that artificial intelligence can make a positive impact on talent management (61%), particularly among organizations already using it (88%).
• Specifically, a large majority of leaders believe that artificial intelligence can have important benefits, such as: helping to find candidates more quickly (72%), providing internal mobility (70%) and optimizing HR programs (68%).
• By implementing artificial intelligence, organizations can achieve highly essential employee benefits, including the ability to find candidates at a reduced time (72%), and providing employees with internal mobility (70%). 

"At Eightfold, we talk a lot about human potential," added Garg. "While we're not surprised by these findings, they've emboldened us further to continue on the path we're on towards a more enlightened and engaged workforce. We are using advanced artificial intelligence at scale to do this through better job matching, faster and more efficient HR processes, and, ultimately, happier people at every level."

About the Eightfold.ai "Talent Intelligence and Management" Survey
Eightfold.ai's inaugural "Talent Intelligence and Management" survey was conducted in July 2018 by Harris Interactive in order to develop a new report on the state of talent management in the U.S. Quantitative research was commissioned to generate robust statistics for this report. Online interviews (using a self-completion methodology) were conducted with two different audiences: C-Suites: 1,007 interviews with executives who have responsibility for strategy and investment in talent acquisition and retention, working in organizations with 1,000+ full-time employees; and Candidates: 204 interviews with working people who have looked for a new position in the last 3 years. Interviews were completed between July 6-28, 2018.

For more detailed study findings on the state of talent management in America, visit https://tinyurl.com/talent-report-2018 and join the conversation online using #transformtalent and #talentgapsolved.

About Eightfold.ai
Eightfold.ai Talent Intelligence Platform is bridging the talent gap by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to give candidates and employers forward-looking insights that reveal not just what someone has done, but also provide insights into their full potential. With this data companies can find, engage, and motivate their best people to help them achieve business and personal success. Eightfold.ai was named one of Gartner's 2018 Cool Vendors for the platform's multidirectional breadth of its machine learning data sets and the contextual approaches used to generate AI insights regarding talent.

SOURCE Eightfold.ai