Some things take time to figure out, while others are blindingly apparent at first sight. As John Sullivan and Master Burnett write, those slow to master talent management may find themselves unemployed
Some things take time to figure out, while others are blindingly apparent at first sight. As John Sullivan and Master Burnett write, those slow to master talent management may find themselves unemployed
For the best and brightest in the HR world, the fact that senior leaders were demanding that talent management be elevated to an all new level following the collapse of the new economy during the spring of 2000 was blindingly apparent. Leaders were fed up with boom and bust and new visions were espoused of organisations that could forecast and respond more quickly to fluctuations in economic conditions.
Unfortunately, the best and the brightest make up less than one percent of the total HR population, and five plus years later, the rest still seem oblivious to the mandate that may some day render them less than useful to the 21st century HR function.
Patience is waning
Senior leaders thoroughly understand that building an organisation or changing one takes vision, planning, patience and flawless execution. To that point, they have given HR five years.
All indicators are that HR has yet to change or plan to change anything, and that the patience of senior leaders is wearing thin. Around the globe, corporate leaders – and in a few cases, the boards of directors – are taking action and, in most cases, that action supplants HR professionals with years of experience.
For example, one of the world’s leading banks recently decided to sack an entire team of HR professionals, opting to replace them with a team made up of professionals from other functions including finance, marketing and sales. In a leading global software company, the board of directors has issued an order that establishes a talent management role that will report on the health of the workforce to the board each quarter.
These mandates are widespread, and not exclusive to the world’s most elite companies. Prime talent management-related jobs, such as those responsible for workforce planning, are being awarded to professionals so far removed from the human resource function that they’re not even sure where the HR offices are located.
It’s a truly sad day when business professionals cannot prove they are capable of mastering a practice that is theoretically the foundation of their profession.
The better candidate
During a chance encounter with an exceptionally talented individual, who now heads workforce planning for a company charged with monitoring one-third of the world’s airspace, it was clear why her leadership team found that the best candidate for such a mission critical post didn’t come from HR.
Leaders explained that the company needed someone capable of demonstrating an understanding of the business at a macro level and who was capable of applying common forecasting and planning models to the organisation’s workforce.
Leaders also needed someone who could communicate with senior leaders and managers in a language they understood about what actions need to be taken to maximise the productivity of the organisation and achieve its strategic objectives
The statements above certainly aren’t groundbreaking; in fact, leaders have for years complained that HR professionals lacked such basic business skills. The truth is that it was just a matter of time: either HR professionals would step up to the plate, prove their value, and change the perception of senior leaders, or said leaders would get fed up and other functions would seize control of choice HR activities.
Events of late indicate that judgment day is upon us, and that many of those people who now make up HR may be heading to the unemployment line, or redeployed to posts most leaders accept as administrative, such as the mail room. Regardless, change is coming.
Talent management element audit
Talent management isn’t easy, but it isn’t rocket science either. At its core, talent management is a macro-level practice that combines the scope of recruiting/staffing, training and development, and performance management with robust capabilities of strategic workforce planning, forecasting, and change management.
While talent management may not change the ownership of talent resources in an organisation, it most certainly coordinates their acquisition, development, deployment and retention in an effort to maximise the capability and capacity of the organisation. As a strategic practice, it by itself, when executed, flawlessly proves that HR does have what senior leaders demand from a strategic business function.
Consider using the following list as an audit. If your organisation fails to do more than one third of the items on the list, then you could be at risk, even if your managers like you as a person.
Strategic planning elements
A talent management strategy that defines the coordination required between each of the major systems involved in talent management is essential to ensuring strategic level performance.
The high level elements required in your talent management planning include: integration with other core business and strategic planning activities; defined processes to extract talent inventory drivers from business strategy and product/service lifecycle plans; clearly defined points of coordination and collaboration required between talent management factions; performance measures and targeted levels of performance for each of the talent management system processes; and communications to inform individual line managers of talent management initiatives that will impact them as forecasted by quarter.
Workforce planning process elements
Workforce planning is an essential process that takes input from a multitude of directions and translates it into forecasts around the organisations talent pool used to focus other talent management processes. It informs other processes and line managers about the type and volume of new talent needed, the movement of existing talent, and the release of talent no longer of use to the organisation.
The high level elements required include: an inventory of key questions your personalised workforce planning process must answer to line manager’s satisfaction; a clearly defined set of data feeds that contribute information about the demand and supply of requisite talent; a forecasting model that has been validated by senior leaders; and a communications process that provides actionable information to line managers just in time.
Recruitment and staffing elements
Recruitment and staffing process are responsible for the acquisition and deployment of talent in the organisation. Largely driven by forecasts from the workforce planning process, recruitment is responsible for filling new talent needs that cannot be mitigated through internal redeployment or development. Staffing is responsible for maintaining the optimal deployment of talent throughout the organisation.
High-level elements are: a position prioritisation schema that allocates recruiting and staffing resources to positions based on their potential to impact the success of the organisation; a mapping of pre-identified talent tools relevant to each family of positions in the organisations and the optimal channels used to reach each; a defined set of processes to identify and reallocate existing talent that could better serve the organisation in a different role (that is, proactive redeployment); and performance measures and targets for each of the core processes used to power both recruitment and staffing initiatives.
Retention process elements
The retention process is by far the most overlooked process in talent management, and by far the only one many organisations have yet to dedicate full-time headcount to. The retention process is responsible for identifying key talent that is essential to the organisation’s success, mapping its key retention drivers, and coordinating the delivery of these drivers when possible.
A key element is a pre-defined process to determine who in the organisation is essential to the success of the organisation. This is not the same as taking an org chart and lobbing off the bottom 85 per cent; this is a mapping of roles and incumbents that are truly mission critical. Many organisations could lose a high percentage of their senior management team and still have the ability to achieve the firm’s mission.
Other elements include a process to continuously determine what factors drive retention of this special population; authority to treat the pre-identified mission critical population differently; and performance metrics which demonstrate the impact of retention efforts both in percentages and dollar impacts.
Talent development process elements
Talent development is often seen as the least integrated of the core HR functions into talent management. While it is true that skills only enter an organisation in one of two ways – either being purchased (recruited) or built (development) – rarely is recruiting and training/development coordinated. Under talent management, coordination is not an option, it is a prerequisite.
The major high-level elements of talent development include: a process to determine the cost benefit of building versus buying talent for each of the major job families and experience levels needed in the organisation; a forecast of what talent needs identified in the workforce plan can be developed internally by the time needed at a better cost/benefit ratio than recruiting or staffing can provide; a defined set of training and development channels that can be relied upon to provide needed skills by the time needed and at the mastery level needed; and a plan for each talent resource in the organisation that links his or her capability/capacity to the workforce planning forecast of requisite talent.
Employment branding process elements
While the bulk of talent management focuses on the here and now, the employment branding process focuses on making the here and now easier to manage long term. It uses the longer-term projections from the workforce planning process to drive research initiatives that determine what factors make a firm desirable as the employer of choice and coordinates the development of an employment brand that embodies those factors.
The major high-level elements of employment branding include: a process to determine the desirable employment factors among key talent pools as identified by the recruiting and retention processes; an analysis of current perceptions about the organisation relative to each of the major desirability factors as determined above; an organisational change plan to adjust an organisation to meet the needs of target talent when possible; a communications strategy capable of adjusting or manipulating the perceptions of the target audience; and performance metrics and targets for each relative to each goal identified in the organisational change and communication strategies.
Conclusion
The dictum is clear: Talent management is seen as strategic by senior leaders, but the perception is that HR professionals in general are incapable of executing it well. As a result, many senior leaders are tapping non-HR professionals to fill choice talent management-related roles.
To stem the tide and secure your future, you must become adept at marketing to senior leaders your successes in the area of performance management in a way that responds to their perceptions, not yours. While your actions and performance to date may have been strategic in nature in your eyes, it’s not your eyes that matter.
Dr John Sullivan is professor and head of the HR program at San FranciscoStateUniversity, and is a noted author, speaker and advisor to corporations around the globe. Master Burnett is the managing director of Dr John Sullivan & Associates.
