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Talent management

Any reader of business literature over the last few years will have encountered the phrase ‘Talent management’, usually associated with phrases like ‘the war for talent’ Certainly, the economic projections about the availability of good quality labour are pessimistic with the Government’s Leitch Review predicting the UK slipping from (an already low) 11th in the world in terms of percentage of the population with degree level qualifications to 13th and an anticipated demand for an additional 4.5 million graduates for business by 2020.

Hence the pressure for business to attract good calibre people, develop them and keep them. A scan of recent literature shows Asda embarking on an apprenticeship scheme, Union Bank of Switzerland running ‘Career Comeback’ seminars around the world for professionals on career breaks, MacDonald’s making it to the red tops with their so-called MacDegrees and Coca-Cola investing heavily in recruiting and developing the future marketers who they see protecting their market into the future. All of these schemes are, of course, parts of a Talent management programme in each of these organisations but none of them stand on their own and that is where Talent management is a distinctive offering that all business large and small can take value from. There are plenty of definitions out there but the most persuasive one to us is that Talent management is a distinctive set of management processes relating to people in the organisation from whom higher performance or rapid development is expected.

A recent study from Ashridge Business School (www.ashridge.org.uk) identified the following strategic needs which led to the introduction of talent management programmes and their likely effect on elements of the scheme:

Strategic need	Recruitment	Retention	Succession Planning	Approach to development
Bundle up all HR process into a single programme	Competence based, predictable	High process focus – e.g. work/life balance	Part of performance review cycle, systematic and slow	Development review as part of performance management, HR managed and overseen
Talent is vital for success	Identify raw talent – creative and entrepreneurial methods	Grant considerable freedoms – encourage success and allow failure	Develop in-house quickly or look outside	Coaching and mentoring prevalent – individuals drive their own needs
Keep talent away from the competition	Poach from competitors, pay above market rate	Generous Reward. Employer of choice objective.	Create opportunity to support retention even where no management need exists	High prestige of provision. Use of mentors to build loyalty
Accelerated development for high potentials	Aim to recruit only at entry level and promote from within	Clear and published progression	Part of performance review cycle, systematic	Modularised in-house courses
Workforce planning	Number and quota driven approach focused on defined weaknesses in the business	Turnover expected and factored into planning	Part of performance review cycle, systematic	Modularised in-house courses planned on a business cycle according to needs
Introduce change	Seek out change agents to join at any level	Form team in talent pool for mutual support. Anticipate turnover in existing staff	Opportunistic	Use change agents to build their own teams in their own ways

 

In our experience, there are at least five distinctive phases to any Talent management engagement with the point being their integration with one another and the operational demands of the business, not their individual value as pieces of HR process:

Define talent

This starts from the obvious question – what are you doing this for?  and leads into a segmentation of the workforce into those that are the recipients of the programme – top performers, those with high potential, senior managers, the next cadre of Directors – whoever it is that is critical to the success of your business in the medium – long run. Some interesting statistics:

• 50% of UK organisations have some sort of talent management within this definition.
• 84% of UK managers want to be considered high potential and those that feel that their organisations treat them as such are more motivated than those that don’t.
• Only 7% of managers outside of talent management schemes expressed resentment for those in the schemes.
• The most successful schemes seem to be those that allow people to rotate into and out of the talent pool at various stages in their career – the days of ‘Graduate Development’ as the sole means of developing future talent are long gone.
• Transparency over selection and monitoring of the talent pool are critical to success.

This is not as simple as developing a competency framework (‘though there is no harm in having one) – the linkage to organisational strategy requires a greater flexibility than these traditional methods lend themselves to without really winning the hearts and minds of the business and it’s existing management.

Recruit talent

Be rigorous and disciplined in your selection – both into the firm and into the talent pool. Once you have defined what talent is for your business it becomes easier to recruit it. Recent studies have highlighted the correlation between efficient recruitment – that which spends least money and takes least time – and effective recruitment – that which delivers the best available quality of recruit – and a focus on good process is more likely to bring results than a reliance on poorly briefed recruitment consultants.

Develop talent

The most common means of development are still project work, promotion and management training. Secondments, transfers and shadowing are still seldom used ‘in anger’ even in larger firms and this one-track approach shows some confusion between the development opportunities given to the talent pool and the broader population – after all, if you know that training increases the skills of your managers, why limit it to those that you expect great things of?  Increasing use of coaching, mentoring, and support outside of the management line for credible individuals are all good practice. Ultimately, the development process has to be in line with the needs of the individual as well as the business.

Support and measure talent  

Performance management universally applied is a requirement for the individuals in the talent pool and adding the development of talented individuals to the measures that you hold against your existing workforce or managers is a sensible means to add incentives. The whole bundle of HR processes, including Reward can be deployed here as an effective way to support the individuals and larger businesses can utilise a wealth of inexpensive IS solutions. Even more critical than support for the individual is rigorous measurement and holding those accountable in the firm to demonstrate a return on the considerable investment.

Deploy talent

Demonstrate that performance is the requirement of the individual by giving them the maximum opportunity to display their skills. Don’t hold them back and don’t ‘dump’ them in backwaters of the business – take chances with them and you will see your ROI in their performance. Certainly don’t waste all the time and effort that have brought you this far by placing your precious talent with managers you know are no equipped to utilise them.

Like many consultancy-led fads, there is a risk that confusion over what talent management is may lead to it being overlooked by many businesses that can take advantage of the thinking behind it. The truth is that attracting, retaining, developing and utilising good staff has been vital to business success for a long time and joining these processes up into a whole aligned with your strategic aims is well worth the effort.