Insights archive

How global talent realities impact your talent strategy

14 Dec 2011
Posted by Sue Stevens

The rapid speed of globalisation is affecting all our organisations to a greater or lesser extent and will impact upon current and future talent strategies. For UK based companies , greater labour market mobility together with the cap on non-EU migration will have an impact on the supply and diversity of talent. For companies operating in the global marketplace, for example, Oil and Gas companies, the need for talent is so strong that it is essential that resourcing and business strategies are aligned.

The challenge for HR and talent professionals is to anticipate business needs and ensure that appropriate structures are created for getting the right people into the right local markets where they are needed around the world. This might be by shaping operations around talent flow and resources; for example, moving jobs to the people, not people to the jobs.

In many places, there is no longer a place for Western traditional expatriate models. Too expensive, for a start. Instead, nationalisation programmes are prevalent in many countries who demand that the supply chain benefits their local economies and labour markets and others are looking towards the East for talent in any case.

So what are some of the global trends and challenges that need to be tackled in the brave new world of global talent and resourcing?

• How to attract global talent-particularly challenging if you do not have a big brand name
• Combining global consistency in attracting and developing talent with local relevance and application
• Developing leaders with a global mind-set to drive growth
• Understanding and navigating  the political, legal, social and economic climates of the geographies in which you are working
• Developing cultural sensitivity  and awareness (talent assessment and identification is extremely culturally sensitive)
• Recognising and clearly articulating the financial value of global talent to the business

And what should organisations be thinking about when considering their response to these challenges?

• Do you have a clear understanding of the shifts in the global marketplace and how these will affect your business and supply of talented people?
• Have you got the global consistency and local relevance balance right?
• Can you articulate the financial value of global talent to your business?
• What is your talent strategy and how does it incorporate attracting, retaining and developing global talent in to your business?

There are no set answers to these questions; but considering them will help inform the way you develop a talent strategy linked to your specific business challenges. 

1 Comment(s)

Implementing a talent management system

13 Dec 2011
Posted by Elizaveta Trushkina

A company can be viewed as a living organism that functions effectively through the people working in it, creating relationships that can even be called "friendship". A talent management solution can strengthen this “friendship” by serving the interests of both parties. The company gets transparency of its employees’ capabilities and competencies, at the same time focusing on the development/growth strategy. The employees get an unbiased assessment and proper recognition for their delivery, as well as clear development opportunities.

Talent management systems are currently critical for success, as companies wrestle with lower returns and a greater need to make the best use of their most valuable asset – their people. A talent management solution can bridge the gap between simply administering employees and building strong "bench strength". In some countries, such as the US, large companies are formally recommended to show that personnel are competent, qualified and capable to safely perform their assigned tasks and to ensure that  compensation is in part linked to meeting safety performance indicators. So a talent management solution becomes a really useful tool that can be used to store and classify all the competencies in one place; ensure employees sign up to the company's values and behaviours prior to creating their development plans in the system; ensure they are rewarded on a performance vs. goal basis.

Selecting the best fit talent management solution needs care and diligence. It’s crucial that the company is clear about what it really needs, what use it’s going to make of the system and its outputs, how it’s going to fit with its culture and ways of working, how much customisation will be needed, and what support will be available, before and after launch, and so on. An organisation must be ready and willing to embrace the changes that will ensue.

There are numerous talent management solution developers, but fewer companies who are independent and able to “squeeze” the utmost from the developer’s system, providing a tailored solution rather than simply opting for a well-marketed but potentially unsuitable hybrid!

An experienced and committed delivery partner will carefully capture the requirements, aligning them across the organisation, converting them into functional specifications, and rigorously manage selection and delivery against these. Then, in deploying the solution, the partner will take the burden of this highly sensitive task off the client’s shoulders, delivering essential functionality within budget and timelines whilst assuring its delivery.

Only then can the company start to truly enjoy the fruits of a really good talent management solution.

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Talent management: Getting the process right first

24 Nov 2011
Posted by Aled Laugharne

As a Continuous Improvement professional I have a vested interest in focussing on "The Process" itself, making sure that the value to be delivered is well-defined in the first instance, and that the delivery of the value is done as simply and efficiently as possible. It's too often that I've seen organisations, when wanting to introduce new processes, skip the first step of defining value and head straight into the system and supplier selection process.
 
The lessons here apply equally to Talent Management processes as much as anything else I've experienced, particularly in the current austere climate, when trying to run before you can walk can burn money that the organisation can ill afford to do.
 
Successfully managing talent can also be a culturally daunting prospect. It might mean moving towards greater levels of transparency to support meritocracy, which means that HR and line managers will need to have uncomfortable discussions and make difficult decisions. There's little value in investing capital in an expensive talent management system if these discussions don't happen as they should (or at all), is there?
 
So what's the solution? In this day and age you're acutely aware that you absolutely must manage talent to be competitive, but don't let the sense of urgency to do so blind you to the need to firstly address the process and cultural hurdles. Start small and simple, trialling a process with the top tiers of management, or within a particular business area where you know you have key stakeholders who will engage well and support your process development - this can be managed from a desktop, even when you get up to 1000+ employees. Learn the culture change lessons from your trial, and ensure a help chain is in place to support the difficult decisions when you scale up.

So before you reach for the systems brochures, consider this approach, where you'll be sure to have confidence in the underlying process and metrics, and accountability and buy-in from stakeholders will be greatly enhanced. This way will allow you to get your future system requirements right first time, and will most likely save you some money in the long-run.

2 Comment(s)

Managing talent before you have a dedicated system

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?

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Organisational Transformation

26 Apr 2011
Posted by Nick Faure

In recent years, organisational transformations seem to have been the magic cure for organisational deficiencies. For a transformation to be truly transforming and to obtain the support of employees, managers, leaders, customers, shareholders, etc. the instigator needs to clearly articulate what is going to change and why it has to change. Once the transformation is complete it must be obvious that indeed things have changed.
 
No transformation has the luxury of being delivered in a vacuum, while transforming, organisations will need to continue operating and delivering ‘business as usual’ and as any transformation will one way or another be affecting employees, the design, roll out and monitoring of the application of HR processes and principles is critical.
 
Chaucer has many years experience of providing the ‘glue’ for successful organisational transformations. We have experienced a variety of plans and outcomes. Rich in this experience we can now share some interesting lessons learned as well as common pitfalls and ‘quick wins’ with organisations who truly want to transform.

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