The talent crisis: how prepared are you?
| Date | 01 July 2005 |
| Published date | 01 July 2005 |
| Pages | 3-3 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390580000807 |
| Author | Robin Athey |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
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Volume 4 Issue 5 July/August 2005
STRATEGIC COMMENTARY
,
Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and
its direction for the future
DEPARTMENTS AT A GLANCE
STRATEGIC COMMENTARY
,
e-HR
,
HOW TO…
,
PRACTITIONER PROFILE
METRICS
HR AT WORK
REWARDS
,
RESEARCH AND RESULTS
,
,
,
,
D
espite millions of unemployed
workers, there is an acute shortage
of talent. Resumés abound, yet
companies across sectors feverishly search
for the people who make the difference
between 5 and 15 percent annual
growth, or between profit and loss. HR
professionals may feel frustrated today,
but the scarcity of critical talent is about
to become much worse.
As waves of the workforce begin
retiring in the next few years, the pace of
turnover will send many businesses and
HR functions into tailspins. This trend will
last for decades and will be complicated
by other factors such as declining
educational standards, shifting
expectations, increasing workforce
diversity and growing discontent.
The acquisition and retention obsession
Many companies are woefully
unprepared. Since the 1990s, the focus in
most organizations has been to bolster
acquisition and retention strategies when
the going gets tough. Yet such strategies
fall short in many ways. The typical US
company spends nearly 50 times more to
acquire a US$100,000 professional than it
will invest in her annual training once
she comes aboard. This obsession with
acquisition sets organizations up for
inevitable churn.
Common retention practices are also
problematic. While employee turnover
at a company may fall by a few percent,
this may hide the fact that critical
people are pouring out the door.
Furthermore, turnover doesn’t measure
people’s commitment to a company, nor
the level of engagement in their jobs.
Talent management strategies must be
built around the things that generate
value and matter most to employees –
the “customers” of this process. What
matters most to employees? Decades of
research on motivation and commitment
suggests three things: their development
in ways that foster personal and
professional growth, their deployment
onto jobs and projects that tap into their
skills and fuel their passions, and their
connection to one another.
First steps: Identify your key talent
So where do you begin? The first step is
defining the talent that’s critical to your
current and future growth. In
pharmaceuticals, for example, the
researchers and clinicians in R&D
responsible for creating “blockbuster
drugs” create a greater share of growth
than people in other parts of the business.
HR leaders need to have a clear
understanding of the skills, knowledge
and insights that such workforce segments
bring to the table – and a clear strategy
for feeding their future performance.
Once leaders identify their company’s
critical talent, they must match people,
skills and knowledge to strategies and
growth plans. Decisions to redeploy,
Robin Athey
leads Deloitte’s research on
organizational performance.
She is currently writing a series on the workforce
implications of the demographic crisis titled It’s
2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is?
develop and stimulate connections
evolve from this analysis. But this cannot
be a top-down process. Employees must
be equal partners in the process: aware
of strategic goals, coached to understand
their current and potential roles, heard
as they express their own interests, and
granted the gift of informed choice as
they carve their own paths.
Put yourself to the test
Following is a list of questions to help
you examine your current talent strategy:
1.Which segments of the workforce
create the value for which you are
most rewarded in the marketplace?
2.Which areas of the business will be
most impacted by impending waves
of retirement? What are you doing to
prepare successors?
3.In what areas is the talent market
heating up, such that demand will
outpace supply? What could be the
top-line and bottom-line implications?
4.What skills will you need in the next
five years that you don’t have now?
How will you create that capacity?
5.What is your turnover in critical
areas? How much is it costing you – in
customers, productivity, innovation
and quality? What are you doing to
resolve the root cause?
6.Are you actively developing plans to
understand and communicate the
financial consequences of talent
decisions?
The talent crisis: how
prepared are you?
Robin Athey explains why current acquisition and retention strategies
will fall short in light of the impending talent crisis.
19096 SHRR run 30/6/05 3:01 pm Page 3
© Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2005 For more information visit www.melcrum.com or e-mail info@melcrum.com
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