Organisations are increasingly growing the scope of talent management activities in order to handle skill shortages and other changes in the workforce. John Sullivan details three new roles every modern, strategic talent management function must have
Organisations are increasingly growing the scope of talent management activities in order to handle skill shortages and other changes in the workforce. John Sullivan details three new roles every modern, strategic talent management function must have
The HR profession is one often perceived by those outside the function as a bureaucratic, compliance-driven, administrative function that is reactive versus proactive and which changes at the speed of a rock.
In most organisations, that perception is well-founded, since most HR processes and policies are developed in response to a significant event and are intended to limit certain behaviours instead of enabling others. HR has become the function known for saying “you can’t do that” as opposed to the function known for saying “this is how we can accomplish that”. However, a few leading organisations are breaking with tradition – at least when it comes to talent management – establishing new functional structures that account for current labour market realities, and adding proactive initiatives to the stable of HR services.
A growing number of organisations are leveraging the prominence of the impending talent shortage/crisis for corporate leaders. They are growing the scope of talent management activities to include formalised processes, programs and departments focusing on proactive management of employment brand, retention and workforce planning. These groundbreaking organisations are tearing down massive walls that years of political infighting between HR functions have created in order to develop entirely new HR structures. Within these structures all deliverables are integrated to strategically manage the portfolio of talent that the organisation can use to achieve both short- and long-term objectives.
No longer does the training and development function devise and offer training programs for skill sets that can more readily be acquired through recruitment at a lower cost. No longer do key employees leave the organisation because a bad manager kept them from advancing or learning. No longer do offers made to top candidates get rejected because compensation cannot adequately assess the market value of talent. Sounds too good to be true? It isn’t, but getting there isn’t easy; lots of archaic thinking gets in the way.
Driving change: three new roles defined
While breaking down the barriers between the existing HR functions that impact talent management is in itself a profound success, leading organisations are also formalising a number of proactive activities that add true strategic power to talent management.
By creating a formal workforce planning role, organisations are empowering staffing departments, training departments and operations departments to take the guesswork out of how it will happen. They are managing using robust forecasts that scientifically demonstrate the correlation between workforce utilisation/composition and organisational capability and capacity.
To further support strategic talent management, workforce planning is coming online with two other proactive roles. Employment branding is becoming more mainstream as organisations recognise the need to make themselves more visible and attractive to top talent as well as motivating existing employees. Retention efforts are formalising not just to stave off the need for hard-to-find replacement talent but also to support knowledge management and knowledge transfer between several generations of talent. Each of these new roles is outlined here.
Vice president/director/manager of workforce planning
This role will be responsible for developing systems that ensure the organisation has an adequate supply of talent to support planned business objectives in both existing and new markets. Note the emphasis here is not to run statistics and create reports, but rather to ensure an adequate supply of talent. Specific responsibilities for this role include:
• Overseeing the creation and management of all strategic HR goals, management practices, organisational policies, and talent management systems to ensure the organisation has the capability and capacity to secure an adequate workforce when needed.
• Participating in organisation-wide strategic planning and operations planning sessions to provide input on workforce-related touch points.
• Projecting the organisation’s supply and demand for talent on a moving one, three or five year basis (timing dependent upon industry).
• Identifying gaps in projected supply and demand for talent and developing strategic and tactical plans to acquire the labour needed to meet objectives.
• Marshalling the cooperation and integration of HR deliverables.
• Establishing and maintaining the business case for organisational change needed to retain a position as the employer of choice among key internal and external talent constituencies.
• Analysing data from all internal functions to determine the relationship between talent availability or utilisation and productivity, or the occurrence of “sentinel events”, or unforseen serious problems.
Vice president/director/manager of employment branding
This role will be responsible for developing systems that identify and manage how the organisation is perceived both internally and externally to ensure that the organisation develops and maintains a dominant position in relevant labour markets as the employer of choice. Note that the emphasis of this new role is not on employment advertising but on understanding and managing perception among key constituents. Specific responsibilities for this role include:
• Developing and implementing an employment branding strategy that ensures key constituents continue to perceive the organisation as an employer of choice, thereby simplifying talent retention, motivation, and attraction.
• Marshalling internal management practices and people programs to ensure that the employment experience delivered is one capable of sustaining projected talent needs.
• Overseeing the creation and integration of employment branding messages in all public relations, media relations, marketing communications, community relations, special events and recruitment advertising campaigns.
• Identifying and developing storylines around company management practices that can be repeated internally and externally through employee referral campaigns and public speeches by executives/managers, news stories and select awards program applications.
• Periodically assessing employment brand internally and externally to ensure alignment between current strategy and labour market conditions.
• Establishing and maintaining the business case for organisational change needed to develop the required employment brand.
Vice president/director/manager of retention
This role will be responsible for developing systems that identify mission-critical talent stores within the organisation and a stable of tools and approaches that can be used on a one-to-one basis to retain them. Note the emphasis here is not to develop organisation-wide approaches that treat employees equally. Rather it is to provide differentiated treatment to top performers in key roles that have been characterised as critical to the success/failure of organisational objectives. Specific responsibilities for this role include:
• Overseeing the development and implementation of talent management methodologies to identify mission-critical roles within the organisation based on objective assessment versus speculation.
• Overseeing the creation and deployment of tools and approaches on a case-by-case basis to ensure the retention of key employees.
• Analysing internal data from all functions to identify relationships between organisational practices/events and turnover.
• Developing and administering knowledge management and transition processes for planned turnover.
• Developing and maintaining systems that monitor and report on managers’ abilities to develop and retain top performers.
• Establishing and maintaining the business case for organisational change needed to drive retention efforts.
Conclusion
It’s a brave new world – one with few barriers to competition, which is why barriers to strategic talent management must be removed. Existing barriers include isolated HR functions, lack of strategic mindset and lack of infrastructure to power true strategic talent management. Removing these barriers isn’t easy, but is a necessity for survival in a global economy. Many professionals in HR are not adequately equipped and will not survive in a modern HR function. Organisations cannot let those incapable of transitioning become barriers themselves.
It is time to step up to the plate. It is time to embrace new proactive activities. It is time to stop talking about being strategic and actually be strategic. Enjoy the future – it’s your turn to be the corporate hero.
Dr John Sullivan is professor and head of the HR program at San Francisco State University, and is a noted author, speaker and advisor to corporations around the globe. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Master Burnett also contributed to this article.
