Talent management

Citation

Nolan, S. (2009), "Talent management", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 8 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2009.37208daa.001

Talent management

Article Type: Editorial From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 8, Issue 4

This issue of Strategic HR Review is focused on talent management. Always a relevant and interesting topic, the current economic market conditions and the associated budget cuts make it an even more pertinent theme to address. Everyone knows the theory of investing in the downturn to be ready for recovery, but this demands a carefully thought-out strategy and a forward-thinking and confident leader.

The first of our articles is particularly relevant within this context as it tackles an issue that is at the heart of most HR activities in today’s challenging times – return on investment. In her article, “Measuring the ROI of talent management”, Dr Maria Yapp discusses current views and priorities in relation to talent management. Her findings show that while it is seen as crucial to the health of the business, few organizations have a systematic approach to measuring the commercial return of investment in talent. For some, such evaluation is not seen as necessary, as investment in talent management is simply good business practice. For others, it is necessary, however, it is difficult to establish links between the investment and business outcomes – rather than HR or internal outcomes. She suggests a variety of approaches for evaluating whether an investment in talent is delivering value for the business and examines how UK energy company, npower, successfully measured its investment in talent.

In “The corporate university: meeting the learning needs of a changing workforce”, Audrey White provides an insight into the Alcatel-Lucent University as an example of a successful solution for developing talent on a global scale. With campuses located around the world, the university provides learning solutions both internally to employees and externally to customers. Its success is to a large degree based on its alignment with the organization’s strategic direction, helped by regular communication with an advisory board made up of personnel from across the Alcatel-Lucent organization, and the result of its focus on speed and flexibility. The aim of the university is to create a competitive differentiator by adding value and acting as a consultative partner early in the planning process and it is the organization’s key tool in transforming its workforce, developing and retaining talent at all levels and building a global talent pipeline.

“Being the change you want to see: developing the leadership culture at Ernst & Young”, by Professor Peter Hawkins and Andrew Wright, tackles the topic of leadership development. The authors argue that leadership lies within the relationships that leaders create, rather than within leaders themselves, and that many leadership development programs fail as they focus on developing leadership skills within individual leaders. Market leadership is about engagement – how employees engage with clients, which is impacted by how those employees are engaged by leadership. Therefore, the focus should ultimately be on those relationships, with leadership development a means to an end, rather than the end goal. They demonstrate how Ernst & Young moved the organization up in the marketplace by bringing its leaders through a transformational leadership development program with relationships at its core.

Gordon Barker looks at talent management in tough economic times in his article, “Challenging times require a different talent focus”. He argues that during tough economic times, the talent focus moves from attraction and retention to employee engagement, as organizations no longer have the same financial scope for investment in recruitment activities. However, this breaks what he describes as a viscious circle, of organizations investing too much of their HR budget in the recruitment of staff and not spending enough time and money on engaging employees and enabling them to be successful – areas that more directly impact on organizational performance – thus fuelling the need for the ongoing recruitment activity. He says that tough economic times force organizations to redress this balance and calls on the results of the Employee Engagement and Retention Survey 2009 to demonstrate the impact that economic instability is having on HR strategies and budgets and employee turnover.

Our final case study feature, “Costs down, talent up”, by Paul Hills, addresses the talent balancing act that many organizations are struggling to master in difficult market conditions – reducing headcount to lower costs while improving talent management and development to improve efficiencies. The author describes the “Cost Down, Talent Up” model applied at EMI to manage this dual focus. He stresses that cutting costs alone is not a sufficient survival tactic in today’s economic climate as organizations need to carefully plan change management programs – in order to retain the core values embedded in the employer brand – and to put the right people in the right roles in order to survive and succeed when the economy shows signs of recovery.

Sara NolanE-mail: shr@emeraldinsight.com