Talent Management - Talent Retention

by Mark Evenden @ Developing People Ltd

Is talent retention a serious issue for your organisation? Many organisations suffer each time a talented manager or member of staff leaves, as they often take with them valuable knowledge and expertise, and leave a void which can be time consuming and expensive to fill.

But why do some organisations struggle to keep their talent, and why do talented people become disillusioned and leave?

My own personal experiences have led me to a number of conclusions. Many years ago I worked for one of the UK’s largest nationalised industries which employed hundreds of thousand of people. While the organisation had many strengths, nepotism was rife, and those that got on the most were relatives and/or close friends of more senior personnel within the organisation. While I was there I witnessed numerous well qualified and talented individuals be ‘sidelined’ and not given the career opportunities they deserved.

In other organisations, I have seen talented individuals and their managers in ‘competition’ with each other. They both try and climb what appears to them as the same ladder in the organisation, and feel their personal career interests are in direct conflict. The line manager is usually the one with the power and I have seen them resort to ‘blocking behaviour’, which prevents the talented individual from progressing. The consequence of which is that they quickly became disillusioned and left.

Another main reason why talent leaves is because they become “turned off” by their line manager. A number of years ago I experienced a boss who was a ‘do what I tell you to’ manager. He wasn’t empowering, and didn’t like the idea of me (or anyone else in his team), demonstrating a great deal of initiative. However, talented individuals want opportunities to stretch and prove themselves, but some managers can perceive that giving their staff stretch opportunities to learn and develop is just too risky. They like to keep tight control as they are ultimately responsible for what their staff deliver, they do not want to risk their own reputation or career because a particular person has failed to deliver. However, the consequence of this is that the talented individual feels that they are not stretched, they become frustrated and leave. Which is exactly what I and a number of my colleagues did.

So how can businesses prevent talent from leaving? How can they prevent nepotism, blocking behaviour and over control from managers? The key is to have a visible talent management programme that is owned by senior managers where these issues can be highlighted and dealt with. In addition, businesses must provide their managers with the necessary skills to manage their talent appropriately and help them to understand the benefits of developing talent, for themselves, their team and ultimately the business’ success.

Leadership and Talent Management - Follow the Leader?

by Lucy Cadman at Developing People

Before settling down to life at Developing People at the grand old age of 33, I had previously had a grand total of 12 (yes, twelve!) jobs since leaving University. It doesn’t take the world’s greatest mathematician to work out that in the 12 years since I graduated at the age of 21, that equates to an average of one job per year. Add in the fact that I was at home with my young family for 4 of those 12 years, and the statistics become too embarrassing to calculate! I’m not even going to mention the fact that absolutely none of my jobs have ever been in the subject area within which I graduated …

So why the massive turnover rate? What was so dissatisfying about my previous roles, and what makes me so sure that I will be at Developing People for the long term?

The 12 roles I have previously held are so amazingly diverse that you couldn’t begin to imagine they have all belonged to the same person. There have been three legal roles, two accounting roles, one teaching role, one equine role, one electronics role, one publishing role and three businesses of my own – one selling baby items, one making dance dresses, and one making dog coats. If you add in my occasional dalliances into life as a wedding saxophonist, a music teacher, a driving instructor and a Tarantula breeder, the list goes from the sublime to the ridiculous!

Law, accounting and teaching were all areas that I enjoyed very much, but at which I actually possessed very little obvious talent. My mistakes were ready, my successes were few, and my leaders were constantly irate with me – instead of giving any time and effort to what I *could* do, I felt as though they were constantly berating me for what I *couldn’t* do. In my work with horses, I was constantly taken for granted – whilst I loved the beautiful animals, their owners were a whole different ball game! I would regularly put in ten hour days and often sixty or more hours in a week for no recompense whatsoever, whether it be a surprise day off, a bit of extra pay or even just a simple “thank you”. Working in electronics turned out to be rather a let down – the company had massive ideas and ambition, but no one was actually capable of leading it into realising its potential. Whilst I had some happy times at the publishing company, again the leadership there was fatally flawed – given that the company was a Christian charity, the fact that the boss was a regular moonlighter did nothing for the morale of the rest of the staff. And probably the least said about me running my own businesses the better – let’s just say that I lack the discipline to produce the required output when working for myself from home.

It is a sad fact that all the companies I have worked for previously had lacked good Leadership and equally as importantly, good Talent Management skills. If I had received the right encouragement, training, appreciation and had leaders that I could aspire to be like, then I don’t doubt that my previous role count would be a quarter of what it actually stands at.

Talent management is concerned with the long term success of a business by ensuring that it has the right people in place to fulfil all the necessary roles in the future. It minimises the risk to the long term future of the business or organisation by ensuring that there is a pipeline of people with the right skills, experience and behaviours to fulfil key positions in the future.

As we stand in May 2010, the job market is currently on a steady increase after the economic downfall that the UK has faced in recent months. However, whilst this is a good thing in some ways, it brings its difficulties in other ways, as the talented members of an organisation’s staff become harder to retain. Businesses face their staff being “poached” – leaders, team members and all. If they want to retain their staff, they need to do something positive and proactive about encouraging and developing them.

Whilst remuneration is a key influence, other factors such as strong leadership, the potential for job advancement, new career paths and training and development programmes for high potential individuals will all act as significant motivation for employees.

So back to the second part of my original question – how can I be so sure that I will stay at Developing People for the long term?

I am now in the job of my dreams. From my thorough but gentle induction plan through to the regular reviews where I get chance to both give and receive feedback, from a relaxed and fun yet so very productive working atmosphere through to fantastic colleagues and leaders who are always ready to help, support and encourage, from challenging yet stress-free work through to ever increasing opportunities for advancement, and from feeling like a valued team player to having the space and time to manage my own workload in my own way – I feel like I have landed on my feet ten times over. This is down to flawless Leadership and impeccable Talent Management within the company.

Would you like your employees to feel this way about your company? Or as an employee, do you want your boss to make you feel like you couldn’t possibly ever leave and move on? If so, take a look at the Talent Management section of the Developing People website for some ideas on how we can help this to happen.

Bringing Out the Best in Your Organisation’s Top Assets by Developing People Ltd

Any organisation that wishes to be successful must master the art of nurturing their talent – the people who will make a long term difference to the organisation’s performance.

Talented people are likely to have a low boredom threshold, and therefore need constant variety and challenge. To keep up momentum, development programmes need to be highly impactful, spread over a limited time span (eg 9 – 12 months), and balance learning modules with challenging assignments and projects. Support also needs to be provided in terms of executive coaching or mentoring to give appropriate guidance and support. This can help talent explore their own understanding of themselves and the wider aspects of their role, such as leading in a responsible way.

Whatever talent nurturing method you choose, it is also important to measure its effectiveness. Dave Marchant at Developing People suggests that organisations use several criteria:

• The successful application of knowledge and skills on the job
• The impact of the employee’s performance
• Acceleration of the organisation’s “talent pipeline”

“In this way, your organisation can be sure that it is nurturing the right talent in the right way”, suggests Marchant, who has helped organisations such as IBM to make the most of their talent.

Identifying Talent in your Organisation

At Developing People Ltd, we help organisations to identify and assess their talented people. We believe that talent is a complex combination of an employee’s skills, knowledge, experience, behavior as well as other characteristics such as their personal preferences, values, and motivations. It is important to recognise that each organisation needs their own definition of what constitutes talent.

One way of thinking about talent is to consider it in terms of an individual’s potential. People with potential have by definition not reached their full potential. They have an ability to take on more complex, broader or senior roles to the one they are currently in. However, it is important to recognise that just because someone is currently a high performer they may or may not have potential. A high performer may consistently deliver results over time in relatively similar situations, but may struggle to deliver high performance under first-time, different, or non repeat situations. Such a person is clearly capable of fulfilling their current role effectively, but it is unlikely that they have the potential to fulfil a more complex or demanding role.

It is therefore important to clearly define the characteristics of someone with high potential. For example they may:

• Demonstrate superior leadership traits beyond their current work role.
• Learn very quickly and have the ability to change/modify their behaviour.
• Manage ambiguous circumstances extremely effectively.
• Have significant impact and influence outside of own work area.
• Think strategically across the whole of the business/organisation and not just about their own function
• Deliver superior performance under first-time, different, or not repeat situations with limited guidance.

We have worked with Agusta Westland, (part of the Finmechanica Group), to help them define what constitutes talent as well as independently assessing over 100 of their managers to identify and validate their potential, motivations, strengths as well as development needs.

We provided the business with a summary report detailing the outcomes from the process identifying the high potentials and key development needs across the group. We also provided a detailed report for each participant detailing an assessment of their competencies against the job profile requirements, likely potential, key development needs and their performance benchmarked against managers from other organisations.

Our work helped the organisation to minimise the risk to its long term business by ensuring that there is a pipeline of people with the right skills, experience and behaviours to fulfil key positions in the future.

Assessing the Potential You Need

For many businesses one of the biggest risks to their future success is having the right talent in place as and when key people leave the organisation.

While finding good people may be less difficult during a recession, the demand and competition for talent will increase over the next few years because of a number of factors:

• The global economy will recover.
• Companies are operating more and more on a global scale and can attract the best from around the world.
• Changing demographics means that it is estimated that one in four of the working population is over 45.
• A change in working culture and the choices people make mean that young people are more likely to move jobs.

All of this provides a number of challenges for businesses who wish to find and retain talent. At first glance it may appear easier to hire talent from the outside, to bring in “fresh blood” or someone with a “different perspective”, but is this really the right thing to do?

Certainly with competition increasing, this will become a more time consuming and expensive process. It has been estimated that it “costs” between 1-2 times the salary before a new middle management recruit becomes effective. In other words, if you hire a manager on £60,000 p.a., it could cost the company between £60,000 -£120,000 before that person starts to be effective. However, this money might be better invested (and less risky!) in identifying and developing “in house” talent.

However, what techniques are available to assess the capability and talent internally?

The first assessment that should be made is how an individual has performed previously. While previous performance is no guarantee of future success it is a good guide to how the individual is likely to perform in the future. However, there are also other factors that should be assessed such as:

• Undertaking an assessment of an individual’s critical thinking, numerical and verbal reasoning will provide an indicator of their thinking capability and innate intelligence.
• Psychometric profiling instruments can assess an individual’s personality traits, likely communication and leadership styles. How do these fit with what the business needs?
• Giving an individual specific business or organisational problems to resolve will provide valuable assessments of their business acumen and problem solving skills.
• 360 degree feedback tools are valuable for assessing an individual’s performance and behaviour in the workplace. This assessment will provide a broader view than one simply based on the line manager’s assessment.
• Asking the individual to lead a challenging business improvement project that will take them out of their usual work experiences, will provide a valuable assessment about how they handle new and unfamiliar challenges.

Some of the above techniques can be blended with others (such as formal presentations) at an assessment/development centre. How each individual deals with such a pressurised and stressful situation will provide additional evidence of their future potential.

While the assessments described above will not guarantee the identification of those with the greatest potential, they will provide the business with vital information on which objective decisions can be based. As the marketplace for talent becomes even more competitive, it is vital that businesses meet this challenge and establish their own assessment and talent management programmes – after all you don’t have to scour the world for talent if the potential you need is right under your nose!

Talent Management – A top HR challenge

Not so long ago, many organisations compiled confidential lists of their “Top Managers” or “High Potentials”. People on the lists didn’t know that they had been ear marked for future greatness and the process was cloaked in secrecy.

However, the pressures of globalisation and ageing workforces have changed all this with many organisations pointing to talent management as being a top priority and implementing highly visible talent management processes and programmes.

This is supported by a survey from the Boston Consulting Group and European Association for Personnel Management which highlighted that talent management is currently the most critical challenge for HR.

The survey identified that talent shortages loom, particularly in Europe and that companies need to take steps now if they are to address these shortages in the future.

But what are the characteristics of a successful talent management programme?

1. It is owned by the senior executives in the organisation. If the Board is not fully involved and committed to it, it won’t work.
2. It has a clear “profile” of the skills, experiences and attributes that are needed to deliver the organisations strategy.
3. It is visible and consistent. There must be visibility across the process (i.e. no secret lists!) and the process must eliminate as much as possible different manager’s ideas of “talent”.
4. It has sophisticated recruitment, selection and succession planning processes to deliver the right people for the organisation.
5. It provides a range of stretching development opportunities to enable talent to develop the necessary skills, experiences and capabilities.
6. It identifies and raises talent related issues so that they can be dealt with appropriately. For example when a talented individual becomes disillusioned with the organisation, or is not fulfilling their potential the organisation resolves it quickly.
7. It uses appropriate metrics to measure effectiveness.

Talent management is a key challenge for organisations and their HR functions. However, it is a challenge that needs to be addressed if organisations are to maintain their success in the future.

Retaining Talent

Retaining talent is a serious issue for many organisations. Each time a talented manager or member of staff leaves, they take valuable knowledge an expertise with them. But why do some organisations struggle to keep their talent, and why do talented people become disillusioned and leave?

One of the main reasons is that talent and their managers are often striving to climb what appears to them as the same ladder to reach higher levels in the organisation. The consequence of this is that they see themselves as “competitors” because they feel their personal career interests are in direct conflict. If the manager then resorts to “blocking“ behaviour, the talented individual quickly becomes disillusioned and leaves.

The second main reason why talent leaves is because they become “turned off” by their line manager. Talented people want stretch opportunities to prove themselves but managers can perceive that giving their staff stretch opportunities to learn and develop is a very risky business. As they are ultimately responsible for what the talent delivers, they do not want to risk their own reputation or career because a particular talent has failed to deliver. The result of this is that the talented individual feels that they are not stretched, they become frustrated and leave.

So how can organisations prevent this from happening? The key is to have a visible talent management programme that is owned by senior executives where these issues can be highlighted and dealt with. In addition, managers need to be given the skills to manage their talent appropriately and helped to understand the benefits of having talent for themselves, their team and ultimately the organisations success.

For more information contact www.developingpeople.co.uk

What is talent?

There is a big difference between having a talent, for example, being able to do mental arithmetic and being considered as “talent” by an organisation. This is because the definition of talent has two aspects to it. Firstly, a talented employee can only be talented if they apply their “talents” in a useful way, and secondly talent has to be considered in the context of an organisation. For example, a doctor may be a talented surgeon but put him/her in a garage and they will probably struggle to repair a vehicle that has broken down.

Context is therefore a key part of defining and subsequently identifying talent. Some organisations use the criteria “being capable of working at two grades above their current role” as a simple means of defining and identifying talent, while others use more complex means.

Whatever definition an organisation chooses to use, it is vital that it has a system in place to identify and develop talented staff for its own future success. With declining birth rates, there will be a huge shortage of people to replace current management roles within the next 20 years. To protect themselves, organisations must have a clear strategy of finding and developing the replacements for their key managers. Those that fail to do this will ultimately not survive.

Are you training your talent?

Racing people call it “training on” and it’s precisely what doesn’t happen to many individuals who are identified as “talented” or “having potential”.

“Training on” is the process of turning promise into achievement, turning immaturity into maturity.

In horses and in people, the process is similar, it is as much about internal mood, nature and temperament as it is about skills and knowledge. A horse that trains on changes its view of the world, settles down, becomes more confident and assured and more effective at the business of producing its best on the racetrack.

So how should you help your talent to turn promise into achievement?

· Provide them with a mentor who can give feedback and guidance on how they can improve their performance and effectiveness.

· Find both on and off the job opportunities for them to gain specific experiences. For example, can they lead a business improvement project, or alternatively a local community or charity activity? Generally people learn most from being taken outside of their comfort zone.

· Offer opportunities for secondments to different parts of the organisation and/or different countries to broaden their horizons and experience.

· Encourage them to network with people from other businesses and organisations to gain different prospectives.

By providing your talent with the right opportunities, guidance and support, will enable them to “train on” and turn promise into real achievement.

However, it is important to continually monitor their progress, as some may choose not to use their experiences to help them change and mature.

A wise man once said “If a man is no different at 50 than he was at 20 then he has wasted 30 years”.

Who is Responsible for Talent Management?

Over the past thirty years businesses have had to continuously improve what they do and reduce how much it costs them to do it. The result of this is that many large businesses have much flatter organisation structures, with managers who have much broader roles and many more demands on their time, than previously.

Because of this, managers sometimes want to hand over Talent Management to ‘specialists’ in HR. If this is combined with a Chief Executive who believes that Talent Management is an HR agenda, responsibility can soon slip away from line managers and managing talent becomes a ‘tick box’ activity.

While HR have an important role to play, active Talent Management needs an engaged Chief Executive with line managers who are prepared to take the long term view about the skills the business needs in the future and those who are best placed to meet them.

HR needs to provide the appropriate processes and frameworks to enable Talent Management to work effectively, but it is line management, who are ultimately responsible for identifying, nurturing and developing talent. After all, as a line manager, do you not want a say in who your successor will be?