Examining Integrated Talent Management

Employees are seeking a talent experience that traditional areas of talent management cannot create, and yesterday’s approach to talent management will no longer effectively provide competitive advantage. A new approach is key—one that puts employees at the center and creates a personalized, networked experience for them. Organizations that do this can increase their likelihood of performing strongly on other important talent and business outcomes. To do this, organizations in G2000 and emerging markets should continue to leverage foundational strengths, create business-aligned talent strategies, and then invest in critical areas of talent management.

However, leaders should also pay careful attention to the nuances of their relevant markets and implement changes accordingly. Another area of focus is having a systemic relationship with talent.21 Though Brazilian organizations report approximately the same level of effectiveness as G2000 organizations (36 percent vs. 37 percent, respectively) there are opportunities for improvement.

This shortfall likely results from an aging population and shrinking workforce, as well as the more recent brain drain to Western companies. As figure 9 illustrates, Chinese organizations tend to be low in talent management maturity and will need substantial investments to effectively address some of their talent challenges. Expanding their perspective on diversity beyond gender and implementing D&I policies that are larger in scale and designed to enable employees to bring their whole selves to work. Many organizations are evolving performance management so managers have more frequent conversations, which can help in personalizing the talent experience.

Digital Workplace Experience: Winter 2021

She also has more than 15 years of experience as an executive coach and received her coaching credential from the International Coach Federation. Lynn is a sought-after presenter on topics such as leadership development, succession management, learning scorecards, and coaching, and is the author of several publications, including Integrated Talent Management Scorecards. Previously, Lynn was a talent management director at Group Health Cooperative and was responsible for succession management, leadership development, coaching, leader onboarding, and performance management. Lynn has a BS in business administration, an MBA, an MA in human and organizational systems, and a PhD in human and organizational systems. She received the Talent Leadership Award at the World HRD Congress in Mumbai, India, for her contributions to the field of talent development. If you want to position yourself and your talent team as strategic partners in the business, you can’t focus only on filling open roles and running your recruiting process.

These organizations tend to view talent as critical to their business-unit and corporate strategies and are intent on building a relationship with and an ecosystem for people to enable them to be successful. Therefore, these organizations do not limit their focus to basic talent management operational excellence. Instead, they build a talent experience that encourages a culture of growth, insight, understanding, engagement, and communication. David DeFilippo is an executive coach, leadership development and talent management consultant with more than 25 years of experience in strategic human capital, leadership development and talent management. He is an executive coach in Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program and former chief people and learning officer at Suffolk Construction.

• This is accomplished through processes that focus on individual, team and overall organizational capability building.
• In more than 20 years of consulting experience, she has led large-scale global programs focused on building critical capabilities, planning workforce transitions, and preparing companies for future of work.
• Ultimately, talent management’s goal is to improve an organization’s performance and value by aligning human capital requirements with business goals.
• Ina Gantcheva is a principal with Deloitte’s Human Capital practice and focuses on workforce and organizational transformations of multinational corporations.
• Talent management practices connect the stages of the employee lifecycle from the business need to hiring and through each phase of an employee’s experience.

Turnover tends to be low, and there is little churn, particularly at senior levels. The HR department consists of one person and the organization is just starting to think about how it is going to survive the impending retirement of the CEO.

Nine Functional Areas Of Talent Management: Benchmarking Your Company

In conclusion, our research in India, China, and Brazil has shown that a talent strategy mapped toward driving business results can deliver superior performance compared to one merely emphasizing the effectiveness of talent management processes. This indicates that insights about the market in which organizations operate are critical in how an organization addresses talent management. Companies with global operations should seek out business- and market-specific insights to customize their organizations’ generic talent strategy to local markets to be able to achieve the most value. Talent management matters and understanding what drives talent management maturity, and acting upon it appropriately, delivers better business results. Brazilian organizations should create partnerships with local education systems to help create and maintain a steady supply of entry-level talent; this can be done through apprenticeships and the continued, if not increased, use of internships. These practices can help round out deficiencies in the educational system and signal to potential candidates that the organization values continued development.

The TM functional macro scorecard is created at the talent management functional level. The functions may include talent acquisition, learning and development, and succession management. This scorecard is aligned with the TM organizational macro scorecard, but would include additional activity, efficiency, and effectiveness measures specific to the talent management function that would roll up measures from the TM initiative micro scorecards.

They have created an internal ‘talent pool’ that consists of those who constantly exceed expectations and perform at a higher than average level. The talent pool cohort meets on a regular basis with the aims of sharing learning and experience, brainstorming issues and problems, co-coaching each other, and carrying out specific organizational projects. Our research identified that Chinese organizations should also focus on evolving their culture of learning and leadership, with only 32 percent of surveyed organizations effective at this . Chinese organizations should start by developing the capabilities of front-line and mid-level managers, who are responsible for managing the vast majority of employees. Due to the focus within Chinese culture on collective success,18 this type of development will likely need to be designed to scale broadly across the organization. But despite rapid workforce growth, employees’ technical and leadership skills are often limited, creating an imbalance between labor supply and demand.

They have engaged the support of a small local consultancy to help them run a series of development centers to help identify any potential future managers, and they are putting in place a series of short management skills workshops. They are also considering a job-shadowing program, where people at all levels will be accompanying the CEO on his trips. Knowledge management is an issue—the CEO is the one who has built and maintained the majority of the client relationships and who also has in-depth understanding of the wine-buying process. The HR partner is now focusing on distilling this knowledge and ensuring that others can continue to grow the company. Therefore, they should focus on creating business-aligned talent strategies that can, in particular, improve the leadership and learning culture of the organization, and expand D&I initiatives in terms of scope and population . Further, many Brazilian organizations view competency models as synonymous with talent strategies.

They have conducted research and developed a competency framework and are aligning their recruitment to sales and administrative roles in line with this. The challenge is now to identify potential successors from within and outside the business to the top three roles. The HR partner is drawing up role profiles for all jobs, incorporating aspects of the new competency framework.

As figure 7 illustrates, India tends to have a higher percentage of organizations at level 2 maturity but is on par with G2000 organizations at level 4. In contrast, high-maturity talent management organizations have better business and talent outcomes.

The Business Outcomes Of An Investment In Skill And Competency Management Are Compelling

This approach can create a competitive employee value proposition difficult for others to replicate. As China shifts its economy from a reliance on low-skilled manufacturing to higher-end services and knowledge-based industries,15 Chinese companies face a critical need to invest in talent management. Despite China’s large population, the demand for talent exceeds supply given a shortage of skills and experience, particularly for mid-level managerial and leadership roles.

Ina Gantcheva is a principal with Deloitte’s Human Capital practice and focuses on workforce and organizational transformations of multinational corporations. In more than 20 years of consulting experience, she has led large-scale global programs focused on building critical capabilities, planning workforce transitions, and preparing companies for future of work. Ultimately, talent management’s goal is to improve an organization’s performance and value by aligning human capital requirements with business goals. This is accomplished through processes that focus on individual, team and overall organizational capability building. Talent management practices connect the stages of the employee lifecycle from the business need to hiring and through each phase of an employee’s experience. Our analysis found that while most Indian organizations excel at formal skills-based training, they have an opportunity to create an environment in which leader growth and learning is encouraged informally as well.

In general, Brazilian organizations should improve two-way communication between employees and their managers, colleagues, and the organization more broadly about talent capabilities, needs, and preferences. Further, Brazilian organizations should focus on improving the quality and breadth of their succession management conversations . Political challenges and an economic downturn have changed the landscape dramatically for organizations operating within Brazil. To complicate matters, an aging workforce, lack of investment in learning and leadership development, and gaps in the education system have contributed to a shortage of qualified talent to fill available roles. Figure 11 illustrates that, similar to China, organizations in Brazil tend to struggle with creating a mature talent management environment. Our data indicates that Indian organizations currently tend to have a clear talent strategy .

By going through the process of setting a talent strategy, HR organizations can create alignment with overall business objectives, prioritize talent management investments, and reduce redundant efforts across business units or functions. Companies that have reached level 2 on the maturity model have developed a greater appreciation for the importance of talent acquisition, Erickson said. They are starting to define a TA technology strategy, and processes are often standardized across the organization.

These are not synonymous, and the alignment of a competency model to organizational objectives, while important, is insufficient to address talent strategy development. To address this, HR leaders should focus on developing a talent strategy that identifies the most important talent priorities, given the organization’s business objectives and existing talent gaps. For more information on this topic, we recommend learning about Bersin’s Talent Management Maturity Model. Significant budget cuts have had a severe impact on recruitment and development activities.

However, deeper analysis found that strategy is often focused on foundational talent activities. It contains a roll-up of the metrics for all talent management functions within the organization, which shows the overall ITM contribution to each business goal. Succession management is focused on how businesses effectively identify, develop, and transition individuals into key roles to ensure continued business success.

Organizations doing this in the Indian context may need to supplement this approach by continuing to maintain or even enhance performance processes that emphasize transparency and fairness. Communicating extensively on how compensation and promotions are determined is one way to help improve transparency. Further, these organizations may want to continuously assess employees’ perceptions of fairness via real-time feedback and then communicate clearly how they are addressing these needs. Second, organizations should focus on creating talent strategies,11 which enable them to determine where to invest resources. This is an important focus area, as our research12 indicates that this is the linchpin for moving out of lower maturity levels into higher levels of maturity.

Further, Indian organizations should take care to create an environment that encourages learning—even if it means failing initially—throughout all levels. To that end, Indian organizations should analyze their incentive systems to determine how to encourage learning. For example, performance appraisals may take into account the type of effort or the amount of learning someone completes, not just whether that person hit her goals. Lynn Schmidt has more than 20 years of experience as a talent management and organization development leader in large organizations across multiple industries.

That’s an important part of your role, of course, but you also need to look for ways to build partnerships and promote collaboration with other teams. This can involve working with hiring managers to set expectations, define roles, and improve hiring processes as well as creating and communicating employee referral programs that involve your entire company. Other high level initiatives that can be spearheaded by the talent team include diversity and inclusion, employee retention, and quantitative metrics such as cost per hire and engineering time per hire.