Where Is Your Talent Management Toolbox?

Friday, August 9, 2013

 

No, I am not talking about the latest talent management smart phone app.  I am talking about how management and the organization define and direct talent.  The value the organization sees in talent.  How that talent is nurtured, shaped, and molded to meet the organization’s needs now and in 3, 5 or 10 years.  Does anyone within the organization know who these individuals are, what their talents are, and where and how they might benefit from mentoring?  Has anyone sat down, face to face, and talked to these wunderkinder about where they see themselves within the organization?  How can an organization expect to attract, retain, and motivate talented individuals, if that organization cannot articulate, at a minimum, some kind of a coherent talent management plan?

 

BillMillar, a contributor for Forbes Insights suggests in his April 24, 2013 article, “Essential Tools of Talent Management”, it may come down to priorities.  If management is busy growing the business, they are not focused on what is happening to their top talent.  As a result, the organization is losing the leverage that top talent would, should, and could bring to a fast growth business.  In the end, an organization’s top talent gets lost with everyone else and then they jump ship.  Any by the way, they took two of the organization’s top store managers with them to the competition!

 

It is difficult to visualize the issues surrounding talent management until you consider that even during the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression; many employers struggled to find the right talent to meet their needs, even with unemployment rates approaching 10%.  The Manpower Group’s 2013 Talent ShortageSurvey, ‎continues to report that many organizations are finding it difficult to staff their organizations at all levels with employees who possess the requisite skills.  The shortage of talented employees is not just an issue with the US, or even western developed societies; it is an issue around the globe.  The survey reports that a major force behind talent shortage, and hence the need to manage talent, is a lack of hard skills in many potential employees.  Of course the trickle-down effect of this is an inability to serve the organization’s customers, both internally and externally.  To mitigate this and other outcomes, organizations have increased training and development efforts for their current staffs, redefined job requirements and expectations, enhanced cash and non-cash rewards, and upped starting salaries.

 

All organizations have to do is to map their needs to their resources and identify the gaps.  To do that employers must identify and prioritize their needs, attract, retain and motivate the necessary talent, deliver that talent when, where, and in what quantities they are needed.  Harkening back to Millar’s observation, it just may come down to priorities and setting those priorities at the same level as capital formation, acquisitions, and product development.  It all boils down to a case of logistics, having the right tools in the organizational toolbox at the right time and place to get the job done.