Recipe For Holding On To Talent

With fewer high calibre recruits to go round, firms need to nurture the good staff they have.  

There was a time when talent management didn’t matter so much.  Fresh blood could always be bought in when dissatisfied staff drifted out of the door.  Now, however, demographics and the shrinking pool of high calibre recruits are forcing more companies to cherish and retain the talent they have.

At the end of last year, a survey of 58 of Britain’s top organisations by the talent management specialist Jackson Samuel claimed that British boardrooms have failed to invest in this area for many years and that this failure was costing businesses and shareholders a great deal of money.  

Comparing total shareholder return, Jackson Samuel’s research found that companies that had fixed talent management into their organisational culture outperformed those that had not by more than two-thirds.  “It was clear that those companies whose chief executives were taking a lead in talent management were returning significantly better value to shareholders,” said Jackson Samuel’s chief executive, Lesley Uren.  

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

Lesley Uren, chief executive of the talent management specialist Jackson Samuel.

Our study, which revealed that boardrooms were failing to invest enough in talent management, was done because HR directors were telling us their firms were not showing commitment to talent management.  The study showed that in businesses where talent management was well embedded, there was much better performance.  

The question is really how to get firms to practise what they preach.  Talent management is often no more than a once-a-year audit of staff.  Few firms could say hand on heart that they have enough succession cover, which is vital because firms don’t stand still.  They change all the time through buyouts, mergers and moves into new markets.  But talent management is a long-term commitment and investment.  You can’t create it overnight.  

The full article by Mary Braid was originally published in The Sunday Times on May 27, 2007.