If you have read my earlier article: Talent Management: Have You Got It Right, you will know that as yet, there appears to be no clear definition of what exactly “talent” is. Hopefully it also convinced you that the term should refer to you entire workforce and to apply it to anything else is to build in a two-class structure that will undermine your efforts to optimise the contribution of your people.
Now, however, I want to refer back to the source of that article and address a couple of other key points it identified. The report identified 2 things that stood out, viz that:-
* Integrated talent management remains more aspiration than reality.
* Current talent management practices are insufficiently forward looking.
Perhaps this is only to be expected if there is still no real consensus as to who or what talent is. It is even more understandable if you are looking to operate a two-class structure that differentiates “talent” from the rest of your employees! Unfortunately, in presenting the findings of the survey, the October 2009 Tower Perrin report “Managing Talent in Tough Times: A Tipping Point for Talent Management?” completely fails to identify the way out of the predicament it depicts.
The first exhibit in the report identifies reveals the main strategic actions planned over the next 18 months as:-
* Significant expense reduction (74%)
* Small-scale targeted reduction in workforce (64%)
* Expansion into new product/service lines (57%)
* Expansion into new geographic markets (53%)
* Significant change in organisational structure (45%)
* Medium or small-scale merger or acquisition (39%)
* Major shift in business strategy 21%
* Significant outsourcing/offshoring of operations (16%)
* Large scale merger or acquisition (14%)
* Large scale work-force reduction (12%)
The list makes for interesting reading and every one of those actions is going to impact employees. Certainly to deliver anything like the success that management is looking for they will need to ensure they have the whole-hearted engagement of the entire work-force. Yet the report does not pick up on this or the fact the strategies actually mitigate against this.
It is widely reported that employee engagement is one of the biggest issues currently facing management. Yet there is nothing in this list that suggests any action to remedy the problem and in fact a number are, if anything, more likely to exacerbate the problem. Certainly focusing on “a talented few” is not going to help solve the problem and the HR profession is doing management a disservice by holding up an abridged talent management solution as the answer. There has to be a greater strategic connection between people management and business strategy and such alignment will only happen if the matter is looked at urgently and the focus is on the talent of the entire workforce, looking to use the latent power and energy that is currently wasted.
Tags: talent management