Two Lenses of Talent Management

The Two Lenses of Talent Management

By: - Stuart Crandell, Ph.D.

Talent management should be managed through two lenses: one for the organization and one for the individual focused on career development. The economy has led many organizations to neglect the individual lens. This is a mistake, as development options are key to retention and growth.

The economic crisis made it more tempting for organizations to focus on organizational needs rather than those of individual employees. With layoffs, diminished resources, cuts and contraction, the trend is to put the organization first and feel a false sense of security with regard to talent. After all, with widespread job insecurity, who's going to quit at a time like this? Not many. At least, not yet. Right now many organizations are distracted by the effort to survive. But if leaders don't pay attention to individuals' career development needs, they may be putting the business at risk.

The benefits of talent management are widely known and appreciated. Talent management allows the organization to make the best decisions about talent to optimize the business, mitigate risk, increase talent availability and improve strategy. Organizations focus on analyzing supply and demand, workforce planning and the core areas of talent management: selection, performance, development and succession. But without a dual focus on the individual, these same organizations run the risk of not fully engaging the hearts and minds of the very people they need to accomplish business goals.

What's in It for the Individual?

To be most effective, talent management needs to be seen and managed through two lenses: the organization and the individual. It comes down to aligning talent management with individual career development, which is the hallmark of truly effective talent management systems.

Many organizations suffer from a one-lens organizational perspective on talent management. Typically, these organizations experience high turnover of their top talent and find that high-potential individuals often turn down roles. There may be a lack of development opportunity and rigid, narrowly defined career paths. Rather than seek out people with diverse experience, organizations have unwritten rules about what backgrounds are needed. For example, all general managers need to come through sales and marketing. As a result, key leadership roles end up with small feeder pools, people remain in their own silos, and there is limited cross-organization movement.

These symptoms arise because the organization is not asking questions of its talent management system from the individual's perspective. These include: Does our talent know what roles are available and what is required to fill those roles? What motivates people? What kind of development do people need to achieve their career goals? What diverse experiences do people need to move into roles they want, roles they will find rewarding, inspirational and challenging?

A two-lens approach focused equally on individual career development and enterprise concerns will create a dynamic talent management system that increases an organization's ability to engage and retain the best talent and ensure they are in rewarding roles that meet the company's needs. The dual-lens approach will give talent leaders greater assurance that talent needs are aligned with the right people - those who will fill open roles, have a deeper commitment to the organization and will enjoy their work. When people know their career goals are important, understood and relevant to the organization, they are more likely to remain engaged. Further, people need to be able to envision themselves achieving their career goals within their current organization, or they will leave when the opportunity arises.

Six Key Factors to Create a Dual-Lens Approach

PDI Ninth House has developed an outline of the factors needed to achieve a dual-lens talent management system. These are based on extensive research in what works in real-world business and more than 40 years of working with organizations to help them improve their talent management processes. Included are six key areas with considerations for both the organization and the individual:

a) Knowledge of roles and requirements.
b) Knowledge of the people and their capabilities.
c) Motivation.
d) Access.
e) Assignment of people to roles.
f) Development.

1. Knowledge of roles and requirements:
What jobs and roles are available, and what do they require? Note this may include roles that do not yet exist, such as roles the person or organization may design to meet various needs, including how to attract certain types of people to fill them. For the organization, this includes identifying key roles to be filled and the requirements needed to be successful. Organizations need to have clearly defined success profiles that align with the roles and the business strategy. For the individual, this involves gaining knowledge of the positions, roles and career paths within the organization.

2. Knowledge of the people and their capabilities:
What do people bring to the table? What people are out there and what are their characteristics? For the organization, this requires knowledge of their current talent. This can be accomplished with assessment centers, 360-degree feedback, boss evaluations and various assessment tools. For the individual, this requires honing a self-awareness of one's own qualifications, motivators, values, style, competencies, interests and constraints to create a deeper understanding of what roles and positions would be most suitable and enjoyable.

3. Motivation:
Why should people engage? What drives them, inspires them and creates job satisfaction? For the organization, this involves creating a meaningful reward and reinforcement system. For the individual, it means knowing what motivates one to seek and accept a given role or job. Understanding motivation is most effectively achieved by solid observation, development planning and coaching.

4. Access:
How are people recruited? For the organization, this involves gaining access to potential talent and understanding the internal and external supply of potential talent for a given role. For the individual, it requires access to decision makers. People must have the ability to get their names and qualifications in front of the senior leaders who make talent decisions. One of the explicit goals of many programs for high potentials is to increase the talent visibility with top management.

5. Assignment of people to roles:
How are people matched to jobs? Organizations need to provide a fair and transparent process to match talent to roles. Individuals need to understand the process and see it as fair so they are willing to engage. Solid success profiles based on effective competencies as well as objective promotion processes can make this easier to achieve.

6. Development:
How does the organization develop people for new roles? Organizations need to provide diverse methods to develop the skills and capabilities needed for new roles. Individuals need to be willing to develop, seek out development opportunities and communicate with their manager that they want to develop their skills.

When these six factors are played out, they create a dual-lens talent management system that benefits both the organization and the individual. Individuals gain a better understanding of the roles available and how to fit in, have better opportunities to decide what their career path should be, make conscious choices about their careers and make informed commitments to a certain career path. Further, individuals are more likely to want the roles the organization has to offer.

Without the Individual's Lens

Organizational leaders who do not create a dual-lens approach often suffer from talent constraints. When a company fails to see talent management from the individual's perspective, it may miss placing talented people because they simply never knew of the opportunities available. Talented people often leave because they are in roles they do not find rewarding, when a fairly simple job redesign can make the roles more attractive. And they may be stuck in dead-end jobs because they never considered the career paths available to them.

Poor talent management ultimately leads to poor business results. With the wrong people in key roles, organizations experience subpar performance and high turnover. The business may experience unnecessary risk - something no organization wants when the economy has already created a high-risk environment. Alternatively, a dual-lens approach leads to decreased turnover, a more engaged workforce, more readily available talent, a bigger pool of talent with greater flexibility and versatility, and a positive effect on organizational performance.

Due to the economy, there are fewer opportunities for people, career paths are limited, and there is less movement within organizations. However, this doesn't mean talent leaders can afford to take their eyes off career development. How else can they engage talent when there are fewer career development opportunities available? Talent leaders should take extra steps to engage employees in the process right now. Provide insight. Find out what motivates people. Make them visible. Even in a tough economy with fewer resources, do as much development as possible. Foster action learning assignments where people can learn on the job. Use technology to leverage distance learning. Get creative to engage people in ways that will reinforce that their careers matter to the organization. Make it clear that even though career paths may be on hold, the situation will eventually change and you, the talent leader, are doing whatever you can to make sure they are ready to move forward when it does.

It's critical that talent management systems engage people at the career development level. Organizations may not be aware of it, but people are watching and making decisions about their careers right now. If all they see during this economic crisis is a focus on the organization and not the individual, they will leave when the crisis is over. Now is the time to take measures to retain employees. You can't afford to wait.

[About the Author: Stuart Crandell, Ph.D., is a senior vice president for PDI Ninth House.]