Measuring success

Knowing whether talented employees feel that they are valued and supported by their organisation is an important piece of information, yet few organisations have access to this kind of data.

A growing interest in measurement
Over the past 12 months there has been an increasing level of interest in this issue. Mercer has worked with a number of organisations that have decided to supplement their regular employee engagement survey with a more targeted survey of their ‘talent’. These are all organisations facing real pressure to retain their best people – either because market changes are making their employees attractive to competitors or because they are anticipating shortfalls in the supply of key skills. Using Web-based opinion surveys it has been easy to target the ‘talent’ population and ask for their feedback on talent management activities.

Talent management taking second place
These studies have found that even in large, well-established international organisations frequently only half of senior managers believe their organisation is doing a good job of developing people to their full potential or retaining their best talent. Many managers have said that in recent years there has been much greater emphasis on performance management, with a focus on immediate work objectives, than on talent management, with a longer-term view of managing human capital requirements. A clear consensus has emerged: this has to change.

Another interesting finding is that although more than eight in 10 line managers see talent management as part of their role, only four in 10 believe they are held accountable for this or think they are recognised for doing a good job in this area. This lack of recognition is clearly risky because it encourages managers to pursue their own agenda, rather than broader corporate goals with regard to talent management. Balancing local and corporate priorities lies at the heart of many of the difficulties experienced by organisations trying to best manage their talent. Conducting a survey helps to highlight these issues and promote a debate between the stakeholder groups by identifying obstacles and enablers in an objective manner, rather than relying on anecdotal evidence.

Developing measures of success
It has been clear from these surveys that managers are eager to give their views on the topic of talent management. It is an area where they have a vested interest, but lack the opportunity to contribute their views and shape corporate objectives and processes. Mercer specifically asked managers what measures of success should be in place in their company, and many believe that a regular survey is a valuable tool.

Collecting feedback from opinion surveys complements the use of other fact-based assessments of recruitment, development and talent retention. Mercer describes this combined approach as ‘say-do measurement’. We can measure what talent and line-managers ‘say’ through opinion surveys, while also measuring what they ‘do’ through objective fact gathering about how talent moves through the organisation and how line managers implement policies and care for talent under their control.

Keep it simple
Unfortunately many organisations lack the records or IT systems to provide data that will create useful measures of success. It is becoming clearer that an opinion survey of the talent population is a fast and robust method for measuring success.

However, even with rudimentary data the ‘say-do’ approach is compelling because it provides clear insights that help organisations to better target their investments, build a consensus around a stronger corporate
direction for talent management and to track progress over time.