Talent Management

‘‘ Acquiring talent rather than growing it can seem an easy quick-fix to problems of filling senior leadership gaps. But it may not pay-off in practice. ’’ ( Frank Adamo, USA )



Sonny Vaughe is the Human Resource Manager of multi national Oil and Gas corporation in Bahrain. We met 2 years ago at an international convention in Dubai. Two weeks ago, he had asked me to share with him about Talent Management in his company, because he found that some of the talented staff left the company after 12 to 15 months service with the company.

I shared with him that there are two main strategic choices available when considering talent management. These can be summarized as:



1. Aligning people with roles (APR) with an assumption is that there are agreed roles and the aim is to align people with these.

2. Aligning roles with people (ARP). This strategic arena is based on taking the people as fixed and adjusting factors in the context of the organization.



The distinction between these two strategic arenas can be made clearer by elaborating on the specific strategic and tactical choices open under each of these headings.


Note that there is a systemic interaction between these factors. You do not solve talent issues by just focusing on one dimension.


Aligning people with roles

There are four main factors in relation to the performance of people in this domain.

Selection, recruitment, placement and promotion

In this area the aim could be first to recruit the right people using the personal personality profile assessment tool. Placement and promotion decisions follow from this – and are equally as important as recruiting the talent that the organization wants.


Learning and development

Development activity needs to link strategically with selection decisions. For instance it may be that fully capable people are not available in the labor market. Then the organization has to consider if it will take people on who are a) less than capable at present but b) are good learners who will respond to development opportunities.

Similarly in promotion decisions there may need to be strategic choices about giving

someone a chance to take on a new role where they still need further development in order to do it well.


Succession planning

Organizations increasingly want to try to ensure that they have someone in place that can succeed a person who leaves the organization or gets an internal promotion. A problem is that such changes, except at retirement, are often unpredictable. Hence more progressive organizations recognize that they need a pool of able people who are promotable in to leadership roles. This means investing in junior managers, graduates and others who can be in a position to take on more responsibility if needed. One way to characterize this approach is that it is more in the nature of ‘‘succession development’’ than succession planning. Rather than attempting a mechanistic process where an individual is identified as a successor to their manager, the succession development approach recognizes that organizations need the flexibility to choose from a range of options when someone leaves a post.


For one thing where organizations have identified a successor they have been caught out when it is the nominated successor who leaves the organization first. Another factor counting against succession planning has been the tendency for discriminatory practices to occur – white male managers have been known to identify potential successors who are like them and therefore have underestimated the possibility of a woman or ethnic minority manager being able to take on the role.


Career guidance

Career guidance is the mirror image of succession development. Here the focus is on the person and their career choices rather than roles that need to be filled.

Many people welcome support in making career choices. From a development point of view.


it can be helpful for younger employees to see that they need to consider career choices which will equip them for a variety of possible future roles; the world is changing too fast for people to assume that all the current senior roles will be in the future the same as they are now. This might mean people taking sideways moves rather than always looking for promotions. It can also mean people rejecting promotions if they do not see developmental opportunities in the role offered them.


Aligning roles with people

So far the items above indicated four different strategic arenas where the issue is to align a person with a role. Under this heading are some ways in which roles can be managed such that they align with people and their needs.


Organization design

If the organization does not provide career development and other opportunities for talented individuals, they may not want to stay.


Role design

Role design means more than just what is contained in a job description. The notion of role includes the relationships with others and is more than a list of tasks or responsibilities that might be contained in a typical job description.

Rewards

Rewards may be more than financial – cafeteria approaches have become more popular.

Working environment If people are able to interact easily with people who can support their on-the-job learning this enhances development. For instance a manager struggling with using a new piece of software may learn to solve any problems by having close by colleagues who can assist with the problem. Conversely a manager who is isolated and has little opportunity to interact with peers might find such situations more of a problem – and therefore find learning more difficult.


Working methods

Sometimes the actual working methods used by the organization can support or inhibit
development. For instance if managers are confined to routines which restrict them to
working only on one part of a problem, they are unable to learn about the totality of the work of which they are a part. One reason for the interest in business process re-engineering was the desire to integrate working processes such that one person or one team could see through a whole process instead of it being fragmented across sections or departments.


Conclusion

Learning and development practitioners need to engage with the dynamic interaction of the different elements outlined above. They may need to make a case for a more learning based approach to talent management but they cannot claim that learning and development activity alone will solve talent management issues. They need to engage in dialogue with HR colleagues in areas such as compensation and benefits and recruitment to make certain that all elements are in place to engage and retain talented people.


To start the talent management process in an organization, it is highly recommended for the targeted staff to do a personal personality profile assessment so that he/she will know his/her inner geography.