The Best Way To Put Talent Management To Work

An old friend is leaving his company for one of its rivals.  The decision to leave he says, was tough, since he has spent the whole of his 18-year career to date with the company that recruited him as a graduate.

Now working in a mid-career middle-to-senior management role, he is well regarded by his existing employer who, no doubt, expected him to move on to bigger things in due course.  Instead he has resigned.  Next week he is having lunch with the director of human resources who is anxious to discover why such a talented, and – up to now – committed individual should want to go elsewhere.  “I’ve a good mind to tell her everything”, he says.  Whether he will or not is another question.  Those who have become hardened to the rigours of office politics find it difficult to let down their guard at any time, even when leaving.  They worry, not unreasonably, about burning bridges.  I dare say this manager will employ the kind of tact that protected his interests in his earlier career.  On the other hand, I hope he will trust his instincts and tell the HR director the same story he told me. 

This story has nothing to do with pay.  It has everything to do with what he calls “the dead hand of management” among a “serially grey” senior management team who, he says, find it much easier to criticise and to nit-pick than to praise.  “They worry that if they give people too much recognition it will create pressure for pay rises.  But the problem goes much deeper than that.  Quality of work matters to the top management but rather than look at the whole job, they will pick on a detail that needs putting right.  “This means that instead of enjoying their work, people are terrified of making mistakes so our most talent people are reigning in their creativity, rather than pushing the boundaries of their abilities.  “Morale is at rock bottom because the company is seeking extra performance constantly while, at the same time, making staff cuts.  The production teams have lost that sense of vibrancy that made this place such a great place to work when I joined it.” 

These are his general points but there are specifics too.  He loathed his boss with a venom.  The boss, he said, was always interfering with his decisions.  “I felt undermined all the time.  It doesn’t help when you don’t rate the management skills of the person above you.  The trouble with this place is that the wrong people have been promoted in too many cases and the best and brightest have been allowed to leave.”

This is one company, but I know from conversations I have with HR professionals in other companies, that these issues are widespread and, too often, entrenched.  Getting the best out of people is intrinsic to effective talent management. 
Now recruitment and search companies are identifying openings for their services in corporate talent management.  One of these talent management/search businesses, Jackson Samuel, recently produced a report, “From compliance to commitment: bringing talent management practices to life”, suggesting that companies that are prepared to invest time and energy into identifying, developing and rewarding their best people are going to give themselves a competitive advantage.  The report looked in detail at talent management within 58 large employers. 

Lesley Uren, chief executive of Jackson Samuel, who wrote the report, says that very few of the companies questioned in the report were pursuing anything that resembled the kind of “rank and yank” approaches pioneered at General Electric during Jack Welch’s tenure.  “It’s not about eliminating people at the bottom of the food chain but about investing more in those who can achieve better results in the longer term,” she says. 

The report, she says, shows that those companies that had embedded effective talent management systems were producing better shareholder returns.  The best systems, she says, are simple and transparent.  One conclusion of the latest report is that companies should concentrate their efforts on the good, rather than the poor, performers.  I would go along with this if it extends to working out why a good employee has stopped performing.  Sometimes, people make the wrong moves with the best of intentions.  Sometimes, they give their all and their health suffers.  Sometimes, they need support that simply is not there.  None of these issues should be regarded as a cause for punishment.  Talent management should concentrate on getting the best out of people and ensuring the right people are in place to do a particular job.  As Ms Uren points out: “If someone does not make the top 5 per cent of one company it should not mean they cannot achieve that in another business where their skills may have a better fit.  So much of this is about context.”

The full article By Richard Donkin was originally published in The Financial Times on January 18, 2007.