How to tame the top talent
Effective talent management systems help grab the lion's share of top performers. John Charlton reports.
Successful organisations and teams will always include top performers in their ranks. Team sports are an obvious example of this tenet. But how can organisations be sure that they're attracting, recruiting, nurturing and developing the best performers?
The answer is to develop and apply effective talent management systems. These can be complex and they must be flexible. Issues such as demographic changes, short product life cycles, flatter organisational structures and more customer-centric approaches demand more of organisations and those who manage them. Thus the need for organisations to develop their 'A' types, which every company wants.
The landmark 1997 McKinsey & Company study identified the "war for talent" as a strategic business challenge and a key driver of corporate and organisational performance. This brought talent management to the forefront of innovative and effective HR thinking and prompted its systematic application in some organisations. But what should talent management comprise?
Build a brand and mind your As, Bs and Cs
Branding is core to talent management. Organisations should have brands that encapsulate people, processes, premises and supply chains as well as products. The brand should be built on common corporate beliefs based on shared vision, goals, aspirations, behaviour and practice. It should help project the self-esteem, confidence and pride that staff have in their organisation.
This has a positive impact on how they deal with issues and encourages innovative and creative responses to challenges.
The McKinsey consultants, who wrote The War for Talent, identified five imperatives organisations should act on if they want the best managerial talent and strive to make talent a competitive advantage:
- Create an employee value proposition that will make your company uniquely attractive to talented people
- Build a long-term recruiting strategy
- Use job experiences, coaching and mentoring to cultivate managers' potential
- Strengthen your talent pool by investing in A players, developing B players and acting decisively on C players
- Have a talent mindset that pervades the organisation - a conviction shared by leaders throughout the company that competitive advantage comes from having better talent at all levels.
What motivates winners?
Individuals with the will to win will create organisations that win. How can human resources help create an environment where that will happen? Principally through the development of a 'buzzing' and enjoyable working environment where creativity, diversity and innovation are championed.
HR can help by developing and implementing systems which include and encourage loyalty, informality, support when needed, challenge, honest feedback, coaching and empowerment.
Remember, innovative and creative people often crave management and reward and recognition systems that transcend those typical of hierarchies.
Research by the Talent Management Guide's authors shows they like to see risk-taking encouraged, for example, and rewards based on contribution to ideas and results rather than on grades and targets alone.
Coaching, training and wisdom
Training is key to workforce development.
It is especially pertinent and attractive to very good performers, but not if it is provided in an ad hoc fashion. Research indicates they want clearly structured training programmes and coaching.
The latter incorporates honest, open and regular feedback and also creates a role for mentors - often senior and experienced staff are able to give relevant and valuable knowledge, advice and motivation. Individuals should be encouraged to understand that they need to play a significant part in originating and developing their own training and coaching paths.
Coaching from the top level down - as highlighted in Daniel Goleman's work The New Leaders - will help unleash individual and corporate potential.
Talent spotting
Talent identification processes are notoriously unreliable and too often based on intuition and hearsay. Personnel Today's One Stop Guide to Talent Management gives cogent advice on how to identify talent and future potential. A sound system should:
- Assess people against high competence and performance standards
- Identify and allocate development opportunities to advance people
- Provide feedback to the organisation on the breadth and depth of the talent pool
- Help identify talent weaknesses and shortfalls in specific business areas.
Spotting people with future potential is notoriously hit and miss. But there are various approaches and structural conditions which help. Just ask yourself if your organisation's assessment process is viewed as negative or positive, whether your company espouses openness and honesty, and if your line managers have the nous and skills needed to assess talent in their areas. The answers to these and other issues will help in implementing an effective system for identifying those with true and relevant potential.
Action points…
