Talent making is a lot like cooking, you get out what you put in. Use the wrong cook or sub-standard ingredients and you’ll get a sub-standard product. Talent making, just like cooking, depends on understanding how the various ingredients work together to produce great talent. Cooked too slowly and talent is under prepared, cooked too fast and talent is burned out, cooked in the wrong appliance and the final product is undesirable.
In today’s “just-in-time” everything, organizations often expect talent acquisition and development to be the same. With organizational demands which often require employers to turn-on-a-dime at a moment’s notice, it is understandable that mangers expect somewhere out there in the talent-sphere, there is a supply of potential employee’s with just the right mix of knowledge, skills, and abilities to match their needs. However, as the economy continues its slow and protracted recovery, fewer and fewer desirable individuals are waiting in the wings. Increasingly, employers are faced with the dilemma to buy or build their talent. In either case, the raw materials must be identified within the organization or acquired externally.
On the one hand, there are hundreds of “staffing agencies” who have stables full of talent. In the world of a la carte staffing organizations, employers can staff virtually any position required on a “temp” basis. Why should any organization attempt to source, screen, recruit, onboard, and manage a cadre of workers when in 6 days or 6 months workers with a different set of skills may be needed? Hobbled with all of the current and future rules and regulations surrounding employment, compensation, and benefits, would it not make economic sense to let some staffing agency deal with those issues? And, there is an upside for “temp” workers”, many do get placed with employers. So employers get to “test drive” an employee and the worker gets to try on the job for a “goodness of fit”.
On the other hand, the very fabric of an organization is found in its employees. Often the brand itself is linked closely to the services provided by those same employees to the organization’s customers. As good as many temp workers are they have little vested interest in an organization which sees no value in their long term tenure. While there are exceptions, long term employees see a connection between the success of their organization and their own success. As much as it can be in today’s business world, employers and employees are symbiotically bonded to one another. That bonding is best explained by “social exchange theory”.
Regardless, whether an organization buys or builds its talent, talent is essential to the long term success of any employer. From the CEO down to the loading dock, employers are always seeking the best talent they can find and afford. Cheap talent is like the throw-away paint brush from the corner home improvement store, it is good for one job, and sometimes not even for that.
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