Talent Management

A member of Richard's IT team is keen to expand her capabilities and is spending time on projects not formally within the scope of her job. Her supervisor sees this as a problem. But Steve Huxham's advice is to view this in the context of good talent management strategy.

Just because someone is a high performer doesn't automatically mean that they will make a successful move into a leadership role. But that's what many organizations seem to think – and in doing so, they are setting up their high potential employees to fail.

Only around one in every seven U.S. organizations would be well prepared if their CEO suddenly departed, a new survey suggests, while one in five seem to have no succession plans in place at all.

As companies emerge from the recession, how they handle key workforce, leadership and performance issues will be critical in determining their success - or otherwise - over the coming years.

In a sign of returning confidence, more Americans quit their jobs in the past three months than were laid off. So could employers soon see a stampede for the exit as their top performers quit for better opportunities elsewhere?

Implementing and measuring effective human capital initiatives is a hallmark of top-performing organisations. But only a quarter of companies have such initiatives in place and many more simply don't collect reliable information on crucial workforce issues.

One of the ironic twists of the economic meltdown is that the very issues HR leaders have been voicing for decades are now the hot topics for CEOs and boards across all industries. That's good for HR - but it also means it needs to raise its game.

Many large businesses have built their workforce development plans on the creation of a corporate elite who are fast-tracked into becoming the leaders of the future. But could this model of talent management be seriously flawed?

As we slowly begin to emerge from recession, a mass of disgruntled, unmotivated and disengaged workers will be trying to change jobs. But will this represent a threat to organizations or an opportunity?

Has it ever occurred to you that responsibility for the vast bulk of an organisation's assets is typically in the hands of people without the aptitude, desire or capability for the task? No? But sadly, its true.

Organizations that have sat out the recession with the attitude that their best people have no choice but to stay because of the scarcity of other opportunities are going to be in for a rude shock when the upturn finally arrives.

Rather than just clipping the wings of older "snow bird" workers, managers should use them as mentors, give them access to learning and be more flexible about how they work

Just because we're deep in a recession doesn't mean the war for talent has gone away. As we'll see when the recovery starts, the stories of its demise are greatly exaggerated.

I'm not normally one of those people who slams HR. Not this time, though. I can forgive a lot, but there's a special place in hell for the HR person who ruined my kid's introduction to the workplace.

Surviving the recession requires creativity, flexibility and making the most of the talent in your workplace. So it's a shame that so many managers prefer rules, bureaucracy and silo working.

Getting to the top can be hard enough for any women. But it's made all the harder because many talent management programmes are inherently biased against them.

There's no mystery or silver bullet to assessing the value and potential of your organisation's human assets. It's simply a case of how interested you are to find out and how much you care.

With the news full of yet more job losses, it's not surprising that worries about job security are having a significant impact on productivity, engagement and the general working environment.

Reducing your workforce is never a pleasant task. But failing to take account of the needs of those left behind can turn an already difficult situation into a disaster.

Instead of making the sort of mass job cuts that characterised previous recessions, many organizations are now taking a more intelligent approach to cutting their costs.

In the current climate, you might have thought that organisations would focus on containing costs and managing employees out of the door. In fact the opposite is the case.

HR pros might love the phrase "human capital", but most of their colleagues think it's just another piece of jargon which undermines HR's chances of getting the high-level management support it needs.

With businesses facing a critical shortage of experienced managers, now's the time for HR finally to stop being an "outrider" and become a valued, strategic business partner.

If, like me, the phrase "Our people are our most important asset..." makes you cringe because you know just how empty, meaningless and normally downright untrue it is, then bookmark (or frame) this post from Roberta Matuson's excellent new blog, Generation Integration.

HR may tell you that effective talent management is about managing your top talent. But in a rapidly-changing working world, that's about as wrong an approach as you can get.

HR is still thought of as a "necessary evil" in many organisations. But its hardly a surprise when just a fifth are considered to be any good at what are meant to be their basic tasks.

Why do organizations have so much trouble hanging onto talented people? At the heart of the problem is the fact that talent and their managers are often competitors who are each striving to climb the same ladder to higher levels of the organization.

CEOs believe most of their problems boil down to a lack of good people. But don't expect them to trust their HR departments to do anything about it.

With skilled workers increasing happy to cross continents to find work, how to manage talent shortages across the globe is set to be the key challenge facing HR for years to come.

A global shortage of skilled workers is severely hampering the ability of companies to grow and expand and could, in time, become an even greater threat than the financial credit crunch.

The chronic shortage of skilled workers is now the number one concern for American HR managers, causing them even more sleepless nights than the ever-rising cost of healthcare.

Organisations throughout the developed world face two key challenges. How do they keep their best, most experienced and knowledgeable people? And how can they make better use of those who are considering retirement?

If you are unhappy with someone's performance then you need to do something about it. Ignoring the problem isn't going to make it go away.

If you are unhappy with someone's performance then you need to do something about it. Ignoring the problem isn't going to make it go away.

Traditionally, experience and expertise have tended to trump talent. But in today's work environment, aptitude for a particular type of work may be more important. But how do you decide the balance between the two?

Business leaders love to rant and rage at how poor HR is at grooming future talent. But the real problem might be closer to home – staring them in the mirror, in fact.

More evidence has emerged that good talent management boosts job satisfaction, improves retention and even affects how employees view the capabilities of their managers.

A new study has suggested that those firms which adopt a comprehensive and consistent approach to people management perform better.

If the top of an organisation is full of people with business or technical skills but little grasp of how to manage people, problems can quickly ensue. Because running a business is not just about the balance sheet.

With the search for talent such a priority for today's businesses, why is it that so many managers sill have such a negative view of human resources departments? Ross Bentley investigates.

Unloved and unappreciated, HR departments regularly come under fire from their management colleagues for failing to deliver. And this week has been no different.

It is not only the dark clouds of global recession keeping senior managers awake at night. The chronic lack of talent coming through at the top is becoming an ever more pressing concern.

Amid turmoil in the global financial markets, business confidence is on the decline and fear of recession has topped the list of worries that keep CEOs awake at night.

With the rapidly darkening economic picture and a chronic shortage of talent, perhaps 2008 looks set to be a tough year in the workplace.

Across America, organizations need to find and retaining the best talent, particularly for leadership positions. But in many cases, that talent simply isn't out there.

It's the start of the appraisal season. But many of us view this annual ritual as a dishonest waste of time conducted by managers who couldn't care less.

China's economy may be booming, but its managers are increasingly dissatisfied with their lot and ready to jump ship if they don't get what they want.

Who are the first people American managers turn to when they have a workforce problem to solve? Not HR, that's for sure.

Many American chief executives are looking over their shoulders at the generation of managers coming up below them and not liking what they see.

Only a minority of American employers go the extra mile to help recruits settle in to their new jobs, meaning many walk out the door within a year.

Employers around the world are facing a talent crisis in their finance departments, yet many chief finance officers are too busy studying their spreadsheets to have worked out what to do about it.

Employers struggling to recruit and hold on to top performers are making life hard for themselves by taking a timid approach to pay, incentives and performance management.

Name me one CEO of a leading FTSE or Fortune-500 company who comes from a people-related background. I can't and I bet you can't either.

HR departments have come under fire from both their management colleagues and their own HR directors for failing to address the strategic or people challenges facing their organisations.

A successful merger is all about cost savings, right? Wrong. The most important thing is making sure that the valuable talent from both companies doesn't simply march out the door.

Organisations can talk about talent management until they are blue in the face, but the fact is that fewer than a third of American companies are actually any good at it.

They might claim that talent management is a top priority, but British management simply isn't doing what it takes to nurture their people and could be facing a critical shortage of star performers within three to five years.

Faced with the twin challenges of an ageing workforce and rampant skills shortages, how to keep, manage and attract the best talent will be the most critical HR challenge facing European businesses over the next eight years.

If you've long suspected that performance appraisals are either an unscientific lottery or just a measure of your popularity with the boss, there is new evidence to back your hunch.

While having better HR professionals has a measurable effect on performance, the effectiveness of a company's HR department as a whole has a far greater impact on the business than the skill of individuals.