The whole concept of talent management can be summed up in one sentence by Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft: " If 20 specific people left Microsoft, the company would fail." This phrase alone conveys the growing importance of talent in modern management.
At the present time, talent is the differential value par excellence and the competitiveness of companies is going to be directly related to their capacity to attract, retain and develop talent.
The growing importance of talent is due to four main factors:
- The increasing complexity and uncertainty in the business world. Social and demographic changes: the low birth rate in Europe, the end of the "baby boom" in Spain, changes in the relationship between company and person, the highest educational level, the increasing dynamism, the entrepreneurial spirit, etc. Assimilation of the new reality. Although talent has been very important for decades, now is when this situation has become more visible to managers. New jobs related to technology appear. In most technology-related jobs, demand is far greater than supply.
Clearly, it can be said that the "war for talent" is currently underway and that companies that understand this profound change will be the leaders of tomorrow.
Some cases of this situation is what happened in the days of Internet companies.com in which, workers from "traditional" companies left their jobs to move on to new companies related to technologies. In sectors such as consulting and the financial sector, turnover rates skyrocketed to levels unthinkable in recent years.
Another clear case is that of soccer stars. In soccer, the stars are the people (the players) turning the organization (club) around them. Although possibly the football clubs are very clear about the battle for attraction (with the big signings that are made), they are possibly not so clear about the battle for retention: this explains the high turnover.
This is what will happen in companies in the coming years. Organizations will revolve around talented people and their needs and not the other way around, as it is now.
This new situation of "employee power" has many consequences for both companies and workers as it moves from a situation in which the company "controls the situation" to a situation in which it is the worker who controls it. Therefore, in this sense, the same phenomenon will occur that has occurred in the area of customer relations.
Today, all employees are treated equally, as if they all had the same needs and expectations. But this is not true, which is why the concept of "employee segments" will appear, each one different from the others, and with value propositions tailored to them as it happens in the area of customer management. With this change, problems will appear due to «internal differences», a challenge that companies will face.
For all these reasons, there has been a spectacular change in the competencies of the human resources department, going from the traditional recruitment and administrative processes (payment of payroll, advances, etc.) to a much more global vision that ranges from recruitment to loyalty., passing through remuneration, internal communication, career plans, coaching, training, performance management, etc.
Regarding retention, citing the APD and Hay Group study, the main reasons for attracting talent are professional development (20%), working in a leading company (14%) and working in an innovative one (13%). However, the factor of high pay is only a main reason in 7% of cases.
But the reality of everyday life is different. Although most organizations comment that the greatest asset of their companies is people (an APD and Hay Group study shows that the recruitment, development and retention of talent is considered a strategic priority for 44% of the companies surveyed), daily reality differs greatly from this statement.
What is reflected in corporate communications or by human resources coordinators is very different from the day-to-day reality in companies. A cultural change is needed at all levels of the organization, and this will take a few years to happen completely.
Some questions to ask managers are:
- What reasons does a person have to work with us instead of the competition? Do we value human capital as we value sales or cost reduction? What mechanisms are used to attract talent? Is there a real concern for talent development and retention? What mechanisms are used? Has the performance (and therefore profitability) of the people been really analyzed? Are all these concerns aligned with the strategic objectives? Are there two-way communication procedures in the organization?
Two-way communication in the organization
After this table, compare the two columns that contain the answers. Our experience tells us that on many occasions, this simple questionnaire clarifies many concepts. In many cases it is necessary to reflect on whether we really believe the whole content of "philosophy".
In future articles we will discuss best practices to attract, retain and develop talent.
What are the trends in talent management?
Both companies and individuals have and will have great challenges in talent management.
As for people, they will need to get used to new work environments in which job instability and mobility will be constant.
As for companies, they will have great challenges with a growing way of working: teleworking (working from the employee's home using New Technologies such as the Internet). Companies must define different procedures than the current ones to consider the figure of teleworking: to communicate with teleworkers, so that they feel integrated in the company, for performance management, etc.
Furthermore, as discussed above, the concept of value proposition design for employee segments will be a revolutionary concept.
