Currently viewing the tag: "Key Talent"

Job Design2Inadequately structured jobs create disputes, negative perceptions, inequality, and frustration among employees.  On the other hand, well-articulated jobs, appropriate distribution of work, justified authority levels, and correct estimation of value of individual jobs elevate employee engagement levels, productivity, and job satisfaction.  Organized job levels are a sign of effective Human Resources Management function.

The lack of a structured job design—and ill-defined jobs—renders the organizations ineffective and burdened with excessive staffing and payroll costs.  This warrants from the leadership to plan and undertake a Job Leveling initiative.  Job Leveling is a disciplined approach to gauge the value of work for individual positions across the organization.  It entails ascertaining the nature of work done by each position, authority levels, and the effect of each job on business results.  The initiative is critical in administering rewards structures.

However, Job Leveling is a concern at most organizations—not many people are satisfied with the value assigned to their roles.  The absence of proper—or inadequate—job levels yields grave consequences for the entire organization.  Jobs valued higher than their actual value lead to wastage of resources, whereas low valued jobs are perceived as offensive and inculcate demotivation.

Job Design and Job Leveling is essential when organizations consistently encounter issues, such as:

  • Constant employees complaints and demands to reclassify jobs
  • Excessive job titles
  • Widespread dissatisfaction with remuneration
  • Task / processes redundancy
  • Financial outflow
  • Staffing imbalances and top heavy structure

Workforce planners should lay out a clearly-defined Job Leveling Framework to tackle these issues and methodically benchmark the value of jobs at their organizations.  To accomplish this, they need to first analyze all the activities required under each position, the professional competences and demeanor essential to perform those activities, and gauging the effect each position has on business results.

The 4 core benefits to developing and executing an efficient Job Leveling Framework include:

  1. Establish Consistency across the Human Resource Initiatives
  2. Develop Clear Paths for Career Growth
  3. Improve Ease of Administration
  4. Increase Flexibility for M&A

Let’s delve deeper into 3 of these benefits, for now.

Establish Consistency Across the HR Initiatives

A standardized job evaluation approach enables a consistent job structure terminology.  It makes communication and Job Leveling related decisions easier.  A Job Leveling Framework aids in defining relative placement of various jobs, using elements, such as, knowledge, problem solving, interaction, impact, and accountabilities.  Alignment of jobs through a Job Leveling Framework helps in developing consistency across other HR initiatives and make better talent related decisions.

Develop Clear Paths for Career Growth

Organizations use clear career pathways to enhance employee engagement, meet employee expectations, and provide opportunities for their development.  A Job Leveling Framework provide clear-cut job structure to inspire the employees.  Career pathways developed through Job Leveling Framework helps the leaders as they strive to improve the amount of mobility across teams, units, and divisions.

Improve Ease of Administration

A Job Leveling Framework assists in developing efficient methods to administer HR initiatives.  A Job Leveling Framework enables improved efficiencies and decisions related to key talent and their work.  For instance, it streamlines pay grades and salary structures; standardizes job titles; simplifies short-term incentive criteria and objectives definition; and structures long-term reward eligibility criteria and nominations.

Interested in learning more about the Job Leveling Framework and benefits associated with its implementation? You can download an editable PowerPoint on HR Strategy: Job Leveling Framework here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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TM4Traditional Talent Management practices fail to meet the high-potential talent requirements imperative to compete in the digital world today.  In fact, they disappoint the key talent available in the market.

A 2016 Digital Business research by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte on 3700+ executives reveals attracting and retaining talent as the most pressing concern for organizations large or small.  The study indicates that organizations that are still using traditional approaches to manage Talent face a number of pressing challenges, including:

  • Building new competencies within limited resources.
  • Alignment of culture, strategic initiatives, human capital, and hierarchies with organizational objectives.
  • Attracting, selecting, and retaining key talent.
  • Creating robust Performance Management, compensation, and benefits systems.
  • Finding and developing talent with critical capabilities—such as forward thinking, transformative vision, and change focus—alongside technical skills.
  • Providing opportunities that require digital skills, to attract and keep critical Talent engaged in the organization.

One of the findings of the 2016 digital business study demonstrate that it’s both the younger as well as middle management people who tend to look elsewhere in case they don’t find opportunities to develop digital skills in their existing organizations.  Such results call for senior management to identify, evaluate, and implement more immediate and appropriate digital technologies methods to attract and retain key talent.  Leading organizations are now incorporating these Talent Transformation efforts into their Digital Transformation programs.

Research on 3700 plus Digital-native respondents further reveals leading organizations to be using a combination of 2 distinct models to manage their Talent:

  1. Talent Markets for Contractors
  2. Digital Tools for Employees

Let’s discuss the first approach to Talent Management in detail, for now.

Talent Markets for Contractors

Acquisition of right talent necessitates fostering linkages with on-demand talent markets for the timely availability of required talent.  Many organizations seek help from on-demand Talent Markets to attract and sustain talent in the digital business environment.  These organizations pursue a flexible recruitment model using digital platforms to attract skilled contractors and consultants.  Digital talent markets can be expanded or contracted depending on the quantity of work and skillsets required.

Digital talent markets can coordinate the work of full-time employees as well as cover live activities of contractors more nimbly and reliably.  Digital platforms offer superior talent markets to assess and manage large talent pool of contractors.  A few organizations are experimenting with developing their own on-demand talent markets while some have cooperated with other organizations to share talent markets.  It’s up to senior management to decide if they want to leverage existing on-demand talent markets or cultivate their own to ensure availability of required skills when needed.  Talent markets can be nurtured using 3 best practices:

  1. Manage on-demand talent markets as a community
  2. Strike a balance between full-time and part-time talent
  3. Create an environment where the best people want to work

Manage on-demand talent markets as a community

To make the availability of required key talent certain:

  • On-demand talent markets should be considered strategic resources and cultivated carefully with future talent requirements in mind.
  • Companies should devote resources and efforts to develop their own talent pool.

Strike a balance between full-time and part-time talent

Talent markets are meant to manage freelancers.  However, a few organizations have also begun collaborating with them and deploying their full-time employees to project work that is critical to build new competences.  A few considerations in this regard include:

  • Companies need to strike an equilibrium between full-time and part-time talent.
  • Some people prefer full-time employment while others fancy flexibility or work from home options.
  • Some workforce providers even offer services of retired people with expert skills, who have proved to be a valuable asset.
  • Firms can choose on-demand workforce providers to have full-time employees to maintain a steady employee base, or pick part-time contractors to handle workload surges.

Create an environment where the best people want to work

Setting up the right environment is central to attracting and retaining the best flexible, on-demand talent.  A majority of companies consider freelancers or independent contractors inferior to their permanent employees.  Organizations that want to attract great talent should think of contractors as valuable resources and treat them as such.  To get top talent, organizations need to:

  • Nurture an Organizational Culture conducive to support on-demand workers.
  • Devise remuneration and reward systems that value contractors and full-time employees equally.
  • Create an atmosphere that offers attractive work experiences for the employees.
  • Deploy people on interesting projects and allow them to experience job rotations to improve their skills sets, problem solving abilities, cross-departmental team collaboration, and improve their engagement levels.

Interested in learning more about the 2 distinct approaches to Talent Management through Digital Transformation? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Digital Transformation: Talent Management here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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TM1Enterprises worldwide face problems selecting, staffing, developing, compensating, motivating, and sustaining their key talent.  Building a sustainable Talent pipeline is quite strenuous even for large multinationals.

Replicating best practices from somewhere and applying them alone isn’t sufficient for organizations to build a Talent pipeline and achieve Competitive Advantage.  This warrants overcoming arduous challenges associated with this digital age, including:

  • Adjusting to varying dynamics in global markets
  • Handling the expectations of varied customer segments in different geographies
  • Managing the preferences of key Talent
  • Acquiring new technologies
  • Building novel capabilities
  • Achieving Operational Excellence by streamlining operations and improving processes
  • Exploring new markets
  • Devising strategies to attract, select, develop, assess, and reward top Talent.

Developing Talent Management practices helps the organizations build and retain talented people available in the job market.  The term was first used by McKinsey & Company in 1997, and it pertains to planning and managing strategic Human Capital through activities, i.e. attracting, selecting, developing, evaluating, rewarding, and retaining key people.

Executives use diverse Talent Management strategies and career pathways based on various departments, levels, and roles in their Talent pool.  Multi-year research on Talent Management practices conducted by an international team of researchers from INSEAD, Cornell, Cambridge, and Tillburg universities studied 33 multi-national corporations, headquartered in 11 countries.  The study revealed that successful Human Capital practitioners and workforce planners adopted 6 core principles.  These principles act as the 6 pillars to effective Talent Management implementation:

  1. Alignment with Corporate Strategy
  2. Consistency of Talent Management Practices
  3. Integration with Corporate Culture
  4. Involvement of Leadership
  5. Global Strategy with Localization
  6. Branding and Differentiation

Let’s discuss the first 3 pillars in detail, for now.

Alignment with Corporate Strategy

Integrating Talent Management with Corporate Strategy is imperative as the need for future Talent depends on the company’s long-term strategy.  Corporate Strategy should guide the identification of Talent required to accomplish organizational goals, since it’s the right Talent that drives the key strategic initiatives rather than strategic planning.

For example, GE’s Talent Management practices have been a great assistance in implementing their strategic initiatives.  The organization regards its Talent Management system as their most potent execution tool and has integrated TM processes into their strategic planning process.  To sustain its image as an innovation leader, GE targets technical skills as a priority in its annual Strategic Planning sessions.  Individual business units lay out their business as well as the Human Capital objectives in GE’s annual strategic planning sessions.  Significant time is spent on reviewing its Innovation pipeline, its engineering function’s structure, and Talent requirements.  To achieve its vision, GE promotes more engineers in its senior management than its rivals.

Consistency of Talent Management Practices

Talent Management practices must be consistent and synchronous with each other.  It is critical not only to invest in advancing the careers of key Talent but also to invest in processes to empower, compensate, and retain them.  Human Capital practitioners utilize various tools to ensure consistency of Talent Management practices, including Human Resources satisfaction surveys and qualitative and quantitative data on TM practices implementation.

For example, the success of Siemens is based on consistent monitoring of its systems, processes, and key performance metrics across its subsidiaries.  Every element of Human Capital Management is connected, continuously assessed, and linked to rewards.  This goes from recruitment of graduates each year, to their orientation, to mentoring and development, to performance evaluation and management, and compensation and benefits.

Integration with Corporate Culture

Corporate culture is regarded as important as vision and mission by renowned global organizations. These companies hold their core values and behavioral standards very high and promote them among their employees through coaching and mentoring.  They strive to embed this into their hiring, leadership development, performance management, remuneration, and reward processes / programs.  So much so that they consider cultural adaptability a crucial element of their recruitment process—as personality traits and mindsets are hard to develop than technical skills—and evaluate applicants’ behaviors and values rigorously.

For example, among other leading companies, IBM has a special emphasis on values while selecting and promoting people.  To ensure consistent values across the board, it organizes regular values jam sessions and employee health index surveys.  These sessions encourage open communication and debate on values and organizational culture and their importance among employees.

Interested in learning more about the other pillars of Talent Management, the various approaches to TM? You can download an editable PowerPoint on 6 Pillars of Talent Management here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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