Client Login
|
|
Next
Confusing, isn’t it? You’ve had the consultants in, continually redeveloped your processes, invested in systems and partnerships with world-class suppliers – yet you can’t really see a significant improvement in your company’s ability to develop talent. Perhaps you don’t have the correct measurement procedures, or it’s something to do with market conditions. Is it connected with global warming or the rise in sport utility vehicle ownership? Or are you failing to take a broad enough view of the required factors for a breakthrough in talent management?
I have a hypothesis. Once the basic processes are in place, and they are of adequate fitness for purpose, the real prize lies not in continually reinventing the talent management processes and systems that we already have, but in looking beyond these processes and asking “are they being supported or disenabled by what’s out there, and where should we best spend our money and effort to unlock the benefit?”
It is easy to fall into habits. We can throw out our existing talent framework and start again, maybe move from a 3x3 to a 5x5 matrix, and refresh the look of the appraisal forms. These may all be valid procedures, but they should never be the only procedures.
We need to broaden our perspective to look beyond the central process, view things from end to end. We need to be clear, for example, about what the business really needs in terms of talent. Our line managers may need help to develop the skills to identify and nurture talent, and they need to understand our tools and processes and use them in an appropriate and consistent way. As a result, these efforts can potentially redirect the HR from to a wider involvement in the surrounding landscape of the organisation.
Are performance discussions really taking place? Do our recruitment process and employer brand align with our ambitions around talent? Do our reward processes drive the right behaviours, and do our senior managers visibly demonstrate our values in this area? All these factors can ultimately have much more influence on the success of a talent management enterprise than changing the wording in the ‘what potential means’ brochure simply because we are all still arguing over whether or not we should use the word ‘HiPo’.
We should expend more effort in maximising the power of our talent processes to deliver both inside and outside our organisations: and adopt a mindset of ‘whole system talent management’.
In reality, HR organisations can often fall into a continual cycle of repeatedly addressing process redesign, in the belief that they will eventually stumble upon a magic formula. By looking beyond the basic processes to the key influences impacting a business, we should be able to uncover some powerful levers to pull, to make what we already have deliver to its full potential.
By Nick Kemsley, Director of Resourcing & Development, Prudential |
Search Site |
