Talent

Citation

Nolan, S. (2014), "Talent", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 13 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-12-2013-0112

Talent

Article Type: Editorial From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 13, Issue 2

The theme of this issue of Strategic HR Review is Talent. The key focus is on retention, development and engagement with authors providing case studies and best practice advice that delve into collecting and applying employee data, identifying and developing leadership behaviors, finding new management structures that facilitate talent development at all levels, and engaging talent during times of change.

In her article "Using employee surveys to attract and retain the best talent", Kate Pritchard proposes that researching employees can be extremely valuable in overcoming the challenges of attracting and retaining talent. Often employee surveys are analyzed on an aggregate level and offer anonymous results giving an indication to employee engagement levels. While this is a valuable exercise, the author suggests that more specific and focused research can help improve talent management. It can be used to analyze external and internal perception of the employer brand and to spot any mismatch and miscommunications. Another common mismatch is between intentions and behaviors with those intending to leave the organization staying, and those initially intending to stay actually leaving. This can mean the disenchanted remain and the talent leaves. By assigning individuals with numbers that can be tracked, information can still be anonymous but can be cross checked with other data using the same assigned numbers. This allows for deeper analysis and examination of the factors that potentially precede talent leakage.

In "Four questions every leader needs to ask about talent management", Nik Kinley and Shlomo Ben-Hur examine the use of talent intelligence – the ability of businesses to understand the skills, expertise and qualities of their people. Talent intelligence is established as a means of gaining competitive advantage – with benefits such as reduced turnover, improved performance levels and reduced absenteeism – and a global talent measurement market has arisen, estimated to be worth more than US$3 billion per annum. However, organizations that are effectively using talent intelligence are still in the minority. The problem, according to the authors, is that many organizations are unaware that their attempts to improve talent intelligence are not working. They put forward four practical steps to help HR professionals gauge the quality of their talent measurement processes and the application of the resulting talent intelligence in the organization, and to improve on areas of weakness.

"Leadership in organizational practice: closing the knowing-doing gap", by Ksenia Zheltoukhova, addresses the question of how in the UK there is seemingly so much knowledge about good management and leadership, yet it is not seen enough in practice. The gap between knowledge and practice is wide and the author proposes that it is the focus of leadership development activities, combined with a lack of enabling organizational systems and processes, that can inhibit leader behaviors. She advises HR professionals looking to create leadership development strategies that align with business priorities to consider the workforce segments that would add value by demonstrating leader behaviors, to identify the aspects of the organizational context that may enable or inhibit the demonstration of those behaviors, and to examine the incentives that are in place to motivate individuals to demonstrate leader behaviors. There is no longer a clear group of leaders in the organization, which blurs the lines of traditional development activities. To achieve effective learning and development that impacts on practice, the author recommends a systemic approach to identify leaders throughout the organization (not just senior execs) and to understand context and its impact on putting learned behaviors into practice.

Janice Caplan proposes a new approach to strategic talent development in her paper, "Develop and engage all your people for business success". She believes that line managers have been put under too much pressure. Their work loads and influence have increased significantly, while cost cutting has reduced their numbers, creating an impossible work load and competing priorities, leaving little time for direct feedback to growing numbers of direct reports seeking direction and development. With line manager interaction linked to engagement, and engagement linked to profitability, this has far reaching business implications. The author proposed a new approach, based on shared management and a wider view of talent management. Shared management means moving away from command and control to consider new structures and roles, such as ‘nearby’ managers who provide an observation point for line managers. Widening the view of talent management means looking at development for all, not just the elite or chosen few. This requires a long term view, recognition that work itself provides development opportunity and the use of tools and processes to develop self-awareness. She includes a case study to show how the use of technology is helping one organization to improve and widen its assessment processes.

"Employee engagement creates a brighter economic future at Jupiter Hotels" is a case study by Gary Cattermole, Jaime Johnson and Diane Jackson that addresses the issue of engaging talent during a time of great change. The organization had undergone a management buyout and subsequently was facing restructuring that involved job losses. It recognized the value of employee engagement and the link to business results and reputation. During this period of change it decided that it would focus on maintaining and building employee engagement through staff consultation and swift action so that employees would quickly feel the benefits of change. It teamed up with a specialist staff survey provider to benchmark performance and find out where improvements in engagement levels could be made. A bespoke survey was created to analyze the main drivers of engagement and motivation and gave the HR team the information to work collaboratively with employees on the issues identified as needing improvement. Post the major change period, staff surveys are an ongoing way of gauging the success of new initiatives and finding any further areas of development.

Sara Nolan
E-mail: strategichrreview@gmail.com