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Managing talent before you have a dedicated system

Terry Shane 17 Nov 2011
Posted by Terry Shane

Implementing a talent management system can be a mighty task and has a number of system, process and cultural dependencies. From decision making through to go live can take many years. But during this time, how do you manage and extract value from the talent pool?
 
For sure, managing top talent (top 50, 100, 150 etc.) is a task that can be undertaken with lots of manual interventions, using a range of slide decks and spread sheets. But scaling this up to manage talent deeper in to the organisation needs a bit more structure, process and a well thought through tool kit if you are to capture potential ratings and complete integrated organisation-wide succession planning across business units, functions, countries, tiers or grade groups. The good news is that it can be done, and relatively easily (as long as you have a source of relatively accurate people data from your HRIS…).
 
Whilst Chaucer is supporting the implementation of a global talent management solution, we have also been managing a manual process for the past few years that captures critical talent management information for the top few thousand distributed across 50+ countries.
 
Our processes and tool kits evolved from 9 box grids, succession plan and health check slides into a range of slick, well-designed and integrated spreadsheets using Visual Basic functionality. These are distributed with guidelines within a global timeline and delivery framework to HR business partners to capture outputs from talent conversations and workshops. What has been of real benefit is the ability of these partners and business or function HRDs to analyse their data in real time, rather than this analysis only being possible once all the data is collated. The distributed data can be quickly assimilated to build a complete talent story for senior management and executive review and intervention.
 
There is no discernible difference in the outputs between this manual process and the yet to be implemented talent management system. In fact, our outputs are so good that our talent dashboard has been incorporated into the system reporting suite!
 
So, don’t wait for your system implementation before you start managing your talent pool. You can be doing it right now. In fact, do you even need that system at all?

Comments

29 November 2011 13:56 Aled Laugharne says

Quite often when a new Talent Management process is being implemented, the various stakeholders request multiple different analyses based on the same data set. It may be that these requests are a reflection of the process' nascency, and stakeholders are getting to grips with how they need to look at their Talent data to make sense of it and assign actions/make decisions. However, I'm pretty sure that the need to cut the data differently is also reflective of organisational initiatives/changes separate to Talent Management, as well as the maturity of the Talent process itself. Either way, I think flexibility in being able to quickly do the analyses demanded is critical in the early stages of a Talent process deployment, and even in the latter stages, some flexibility in the analysis capability will be required. I wonder how the cost profile for Talent analysis varies depending on the chosen solution?

14 December 2011 18:01 Terry Shane says

Aled, I agree with the sentiment. If the client requirements align exactly to the reporting capability of the chosen solution, then reporting from a solution rather than a self-build option should be more economical. A solution should align to changes to organisational management through the connections to the HR information system (SAP or PeopleSoft etc). However, what I have found is that reporting requirements tend to evolve as the organisation matures in its understanding of managing talent, and as talent priorities change, and as issues are resolved and new ones emerge. In this scenario, an adaptable reporting system from a solution provider may meet these needs, but I suspect there is a lag between a requirement being raised and the solution being put in place. In this scenario, I think it likely that the self-built system, with a bit of clever manipulation, can quickly be adapted to produce reports that meet these emergent requirements.

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