I recently attended Korn Ferry’s RPO Client Advisory Forum, which was all about talent management. The theme was ‘unplugged’ and featured frank discussions about the RPO industry, including the challenges faced by the clients and service providers who attended from every region.

Beyond RPO, Korn Ferry offers many complementary talent management services, including those from its Organizational Consulting practice. One of the emerging talent trends of 2019 presented by Byrne Mulrooney, CEO, Korn Ferry RPO, Professional Search and Products, is rethinking performance management, and here, discussion topics included: engaging talent to create solutions that transform, helping people to see brilliantly, and building value through people.

Korn Ferry’s goal is to be the preeminent organizational consultancy, specifically regarding talent and the importance of articulating the right relationships.

Partnering with Qualtrics

As a step towards its goal, Korn Ferry and Qualtrics partnered earlier this year to build a global delivery and advisory service to improve employee experience. The partnership combines Korn Ferry’s Organizational Consulting services with Qualtrics’ Experience Management (XM) platform, to be applied throughout the employee lifecycle.

By joining the Qualtrics Partner Network (QPN), Korn Ferry is going to market by combining its organizational methodologies and expertise with Qualtrics’ XM platform to provide organizations with the expertise and technology they need to achieve breakthrough results at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

Korn Ferry has standardized on Qualtrics as its technology platform and will become a global strategic consulting partner for Qualtrics, providing end-to-end delivery and advisory services for clients globally. Through the QPN, Korn Ferry will also offer consulting and advisory services to Qualtrics EmployeeXM customers in more than 50 countries globally.

The partnership will enable Korn Ferry to go to market with offerings that include its platform, employee engagement and culture surveys, 360-degree reviews, and social listening tools, to enable employers to better manage talent and the associated talent management systems.

Impact for RPO buyers

Per NelsonHall’s recent RPO market analysis, including interviews with end-user buyside clients, one of the top drivers for outsourcing recruitment today is to gain better access to expertise, insights, technologies and tools. This is an area Korn Ferry has excelled in according to client satisfaction data. Recent interviews with Korn Ferry clients conducted by NelsonHall revealed high client satisfaction scores for their partnership capabilities in particular. And, having now attended three events with Korn Ferry RPO providers and buyers, my observation is that Korn Ferry does have a very strong relationship with its clients.

In terms of what will be driving buyers to outsource recruitment in the future, the research indicates that this will include requirements for talent management services that are complementary to RPO, such as internal development of existing employees through upskilling and reskilling.