Converting rumour into reality

It can be a daunting choice. As the talent management software industry starts to gather speed offering a spectrum of choices for talent management leaders you could be forgiven for thinking this could be the answer to all your strategic problems. Bersin & Associates conducted a survey last year around talent management strategy and found that 14 per cent of organistions who operated a talent management system were more effective than those with paper processes, but organisations with in-house developed systems were nine per cent more effective than those with vendor solutions. So, although software solutions can make an important contribution to ensuring you have the right skills in your talent pipeline at the right time, it is worth remembering they do not create processes – they simply facilitate and enable the processes already there.

Standard Chartered Bank use leading edge human capital metrics to track all their relevant data (page 16). The results are then analysed and reviewed to help them identify problem areas or best practice. The goal for them was to maintain a consistency worldwide. This was quite a feat for an organisation with 73,000 employess across 115 nationalities.

One of the key challenges for ArcelorMittal (page 22) was addressing the culture/language differences among their employees when they fused two corporate universities following the Arcelor and Mittal Steel merger. Despite English being the official corporate language, less than 15 per cent of its employees were native English speakers. They have estimated, however, that improving English skills will save the organisation approximately €5.5m annually. Also, as part of their Leadership and Management Academy, they have developed ‘talent pipeline’ programmes to help provide a clear career progression path for their selected managers.

Clear career progressions and tailored development is at the core of the Aviva strategy. Arvinder Dhesi (page 8) describes how each and everyone of their employees has a personalised development plan. And they use dialogue between regional HR directors on a regular basis to make sure opportunities are filled with the right skills and talent – it means choice is not restricted to local candidates.

So it may not be all down to complicated software solutions, perhaps dialogue – whether person-to-person or conference call – is the answer to making the skills of our workforce more than just a rumour.




Katie Pattullo
Editor