Talent management demystified A white paper that explains the principles behind organisational talent management, its link to succession planning and the latest thinking in developing an effective strategy to embed it in any organisation Sponsored exclusively by
Finding and keeping the talent organisations need to succeed in a competitive and globalised world is increasingly difficult. However, developing an effective strategy and embedding it can be far from straightforward. This is backed up by the CIPD s Learning and Talent Development report, which confirms that only 57 per cent of organisations surveyed have talent management strategies, and just 8 per cent of those believe their activities are very effective. A skilled, flexible and adaptable workforce is the lifeblood of resilient, sustainable, future-proofed organisations. Talent management and succession planning can be an agile mechanism for speeding up adjustment to shifting business demands and diverse employee desires, says Wendy Hirsh, an independent researcher and consultant in employment issues. The challenge of defining talent Traditional talent management programmes have tended to focus on an elite group of people who have been judged capable with the right grooming and development opportunities of fast-tracking through the organisational hierarchy. More recent thinking is that such a narrow definition of talent could be detrimental to the business, as HR guru David Clutterbuck points out in his new book, The Talent Wave. In the flurry to find the nuggets of gold, other precious metals get overlooked, says Clutterbuck. It is my firm belief that the more people an organisation has who are perceived and perceive themselves as talented, the greater the energy that can be directed towards achieving shared objectives, and the higher the attractiveness of the organisation to talented people. Defining talent management and aligning it to the culture and business priorities within their own organisation is perhaps the first challenge human resources professionals will face. For some people, talent management and succession planning are synonymous; for others, talent management means seamlessly integrated efforts to attract, develop and retain the best people. For others still it means efforts designed to integrate all components of an organisation s HR system to attract, select, develop, appraise, reward and retain the best people. The best advice, suggests Professor William J Rothwell of Pennsylvania State University, is to come up with a definition for talent management that meets your organisation s unique needs. Talent management is not something done in isolation by HR people, but something that takes the organisation s strategic objectives as its starting point and works back from there. What sort of skills and competencies will the organisation need in the future, and how should it go about developing them? As such, HR must work closely with the CEO and the senior executive team from the outset to create a talent management strategy that is fit for purpose and has their full support. Gyan Nagpal, talent strategist, leadership coach and author of a new book, Talent Economics, agrees. In the 21st century, successful companies will find that talent decisions must be woven into business decisions. Talent pools, pipelines or waves the link between talent and succession planning Identifying those talented individuals and categorising them as such has led to much debate. More recently the term wave has joined the more traditional pool and pipeline terminology, when referring to talented people. Clutterbuck thinks terminology matters because the metaphors we use shape our assumptions, which in turn influence processes, expectations and behaviour. He thinks the frequently discussed pools and pipelines are unhelpful concepts in talent management, because pools are stagnant and pipelines linear, constrained and prone to leaks. Waves, on the other hand, are pure energy. 2
And the essence of a talent wave mindset is, he says, enabling talent to make its own way, instead of trying to predict the unpredictable. That means HR ceding control and putting more responsibility on employees themselves because, as he says, it s not just the economic environment that s changing, but employees too. We live in an age of non-linear careers, in which younger employees in particular don t necessarily aspire to their boss s job and seek more meaning from work and more balance in their lives. Clutterbuck points out that the qualities that make people talented are often those that make them unique, difficult to classify and unpredictable. The more HR tries to make talented people fit standardised talent management and succession planning processes, the more likely it is to fail, he says. The role of HR is not to control the succession planning process, but to enable it. Clearly, the need to have the right talent in place to help the organisation survive and thrive in a constantly changing landscape is a given. HR s role is to ensure that everyone in the organisation understands that. One HR director interviewed for a Corporate Research Forum report summed up the challenge as follows: We need to ensure that talent management becomes part of our culture not just a set of tools and that everyone knows they are accountable for managing talent and for managing their own careers. For most organisations, knowing that for key positions, at least, there is a succession plan in place will be comforting. However, talent management can bring more to the table if it links to other areas of the business, rather than just a pool or pipeline of people able to succeed each other. Investing in talent and losing it shouldn t be feared You still hear business leaders expressing reluctance to invest in training and developing their people because they quickly lose them to competitors. But research suggests that, whatever they say, most people don t leave a job for a higher-paying job elsewhere: they leave their bosses. Losing people isn t necessarily a bad thing provided you lose them for the right reasons. Clutterbuck argues that one of the best ways to attract talent is to have a reputation for losing it. He has explored the concept of talent factories companies that had a reputation for producing so much talent in particular disciplines that their alumni accounted for a disproportionate percentage of people in top roles in other companies. Ford, for example, excelled at creating finance directors; Mars, HR directors and Procter & Gamble, marketing directors. In each case, the company took in and invested deeply in highly talented young people, knowing that many of them would be stolen by headhunters at some point, Clutterbuck writes. The trade-off was that by having a reputation for developing talent in these disciplines, the companies attracted very bright, motivated people into those functions. When these people stayed they brought a high level of commitment and energy to their job roles. When they moved on with the companies blessing they created an updraft that sucked in new talent, with new ideas. Conclusion Talent management is essential to future-proof the organisation and allow it to remain competitive. However 92 per cent of organisations don t rate their talent management as very effective. This represents a considerable challenge for HR professionals, who may need to rethink their traditional approaches. The nature of modern organisations and employees means that careers are no longer linear, and individuals are motivated by a range of different criteria. The role of HR in this new environment is one of enablement, not control. It involves identifying a talent management strategy and processes that fit uniquely with your organisation s requirements and future direction, then embedding them into the culture and other areas of your business. 3
This approach should be flexible and have the ability to align with the constantly fluctuating demands of environment, company and employee. A strategy that is right for one organisation isn t necessarily right for another but one thing is for sure: successfully embedding it in the culture of the organisation and aligning it to business objectives and strategy are key. HR can be incredibly influential here: with the backing of the senior executive team, the use of processes and strategies in areas such as recruitment, performance management, training and development and reward will undoubtedly bring benefits such as a stronger employer brand and greater employee engagement while ultimately increasing profitability. Next steps to implementing an effective talent management strategy Before starting, you will need to be able to say yes to the following questions: 1. Is your organisation willing to invest in developing staff? 2. Does your organisation have a business plan stating objectives? 3. Do you have a performance management process? 4. Will the strategy be supported by senior colleagues? 5. Do you have the time to invest in developing the strategy, implementing and monitoring it? From that point, there are a number of areas to tackle: If you have a succession planning strategy, decide if this will form part of a wider talent management strategy Define what talent means to your organisation and ensure that progression is seen as horizontal as well as vertical Ensure that you have time to review other strategic HR elements that will feed into the talent management strategy, such as recruitment, performance management, training and development, reward etc. Identify the organisational objectives and how the talent management strategy can support their achievement Decide on KPIs/deliverables to measure success Communicate with all employees to ensure that talent management becomes part of your culture and people accept that it is everyone s responsibility. 4
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