The Wadenhoe Consultancy Ltd

Talent Troubles - Can HR Fill The Gaps?

This is the headline in a recent CIPD Newsletter, which goes on to say:

"Over half (53%) of CEOs see talent shortages as the top threat to business expansion. This is one of the key findings from PwC's Annual Global CEO Survey. What are the implications of the survey's findings for HR?"

The headline comes as no surprise to us and probably no surprise to you.

The big question is: "What talent issues are keeping your stakeholders awake at night?

The even bigger question is: "What talent issues are keeping your stakeholders awake at night that you don't know about?

Leading sustainable talent development - passion or procedures?

Ten years ago, Wadenhoe carried out detailed research into: "Identifying and Developing People with Potential". The key conclusion was that organisations with a successful track record in talent development, combined excellent procedures with outstanding passion. They were proactive rather than reactive and had a very clear view about future resourcing requirements.

The results were published in our workbook with the snappy title: "An Audit Checklist and Toolkit for Identifying and Developing Talented People" which has remained one of our core activities, with research updates ever since.

HR engagement with the talent agenda

Six questions emerged from this research, all of which HR need to address:

Commitment - how do we get buy-in for talent development from all the Key Players?
Clarity - how do we ensure that we can always answer the question: talent for what?
Exploration - How do we ensure that we are finding talent everywhere?
Transfer - How do we break down the artificial boundaries that stifle the movement of talent?
Impact - How do we strengthen the business case for Talent Development with clear "bottom-line" measures?
Engagement - How do we energise, engage and nurture talent.

HR Solutions start here

It's not our style to pose questions without providing an indication of how we can help address them. So here is an overview of some of the activities we have experience of facilitating with HR developers:

Commitment - getting buy-in from all Key Players

Creative approaches to working with Key Players in developing a business case for Talent Development that generates energy, engagement and confidence.

Clarity - answering the question: talent for what?

Focused processes for cutting through complicated competence frameworks, in order to establish one single organisation-wide language of Core Transferable Qualities, that takes account of context changes.

Exploration - finding talent everywhere

Simplified processes that focus on the Line Managers role as "eyes and ears" of the organisation, with a thorough understanding of Core Transferable Qualities and the step changes involved.

Transfer - breaking down artificial boundaries to movement

Checks on whether "islands of talent" divided by geography, function, structure, culture etc. exist in the organisation and the formal/informal mechanisms that can be used for breaking these down.

Impact - identifying bottom-line measures

Methods for measuring the impact of effective talent resourcing on every aspect of the organisation in terms of "live" business performance issues.

Engagement - energising, engaging and nurturing talent

Simple, fast and rigorous methods for monitoring five aspects of engagement: how they capitalise on self-directed learning; how they feel and talk about the organisation; how much discretionary effort they put into their job; whether they see rewards and opportunities that match their ambitions; whether they buy into the values and direction of the business.

Next steps for filling the gaps

This article deliberately focuses on the role of HR in filling the talent gaps. It is, of course an organisation-wide challenge. However this is one of the key areas where HR must take the lead and move beyond "technical" processes by ensuring that the Talent Development Strategy is fully integrated with the organisational vision, mission and strategy.

Here we have provided an overview of some of the actions contained in our "Audit Checklist and Toolkit for Identifying and Developing Talented People", which is the basis for all of our workshops on this topic. We understand talent leadership, so we can help you in evaluating where you are now - the size of the gap; getting started, or accelerating work that has already started.

To find out more about our research and share a summary of its findings and the workshops that we have developed, please contact: sue@wadenhoeconsultancy.com.