Superior talent management needed for business in 2011
The 2011 business environment finds innovation, globalisation and expansion topping the list of challenges for most organisations, according to new research by leading industry research and consult
The 2011 business environment finds innovation, globalisation and expansion topping the list of challenges for most organisations, according to new research by leading industry research and consulting firm Bersin & Associates.
At the same time, the new workforce operating in today’s “borderless workplace” are multi-generational, global, interconnected, mobile, transient, and are creating and pursuing new models of career.
The workplace itself is interconnected, dynamic, performance driven, with new leadership, and features new human resources models.
Bersin: develop critical job roles
Against this backdrop, organisations with superior talent management demonstrate significant advantages in a highly competitive business environment over those who do not - from generating higher revenue per employee to greater ability to hire the best people, Josh Bersin, chief executive of Bersin & Associates, told a London audience last week.
Speaking at the StepStone Solutions’ international summit, Bersin said that requiring employees to manage their own careers damages organisational performance.
On the other hand, building talent mobility into an organisation fosters its ability to develop deep specialisation and expertise, which in turn drives competitive advantage.
A talent mobility framework allows high performers and high potentials to transit between promotions and ’stretch, lateral and developmental assignments’, building the deep skills that come from a wide range of developmental experiences. “You don’t just go to training to become an expert,” Bersin said, “High-performing companies develop expertise with the same rigour that they develop leadership. We need career development for all critical job roles.”
Too many businesses take “a random approach” to talent mobility similar to playing pinball, Bersin said: “You shoot them in, they bounce around and hopefully they bounce around into the right places,” he said.
Integrated talent management itself is thinking about human resources in a new way and connecting HR’s various silos. “It’s not about software”, Bersin said. “That’s just a tool.”
