Why You Need a Talent Strategy

Talent leaders can't change global work trends or today's economic reality, but they can change people strategies to respond to those trends and position a company to gear up for growth.

Led by the senior leadership team, organizations must apply the same rigor they use to create an overall business strategy to create workforce strategy - not just a workforce plan. This strategy requires a comprehensive understanding of how complex trends and shifting business realities will impact business now and in the future. The resulting strategic blueprint provides line of sight into the talent choices available today that impact an organization's ability to deliver on objectives.

The talent organization has emerged as the single most important element of sustainable differentiation. An organization's products, services, business model and marketing campaigns all can be replicated quickly by any competitor, which leaves an organization's talent and talent potential as the last true differentiator. Further, to ensure growth and competitiveness companies must invest specifically in leadership talent.

A new era is upon business: the human age. Previous eras were defined first by the raw materials that transformed them: stone, iron and bronze. Then they were characterized by the domains people conquered with technology: industry, space and information. Now, human potential will be the catalyst for change and the global force driving economic, political and social developments. Talentism is the new capitalism.

Workforce demands and composition are shifting in response to economic, social and demographic trends. The need for more specific skills is creating a growing talent mismatch and scarcity of leadership talent. Multiple generations and cultures in the workplace have resulted in changes in motivations and preferences, which impact individual choice. Technological developments allow new ways of getting work done. These trends have created workforce and workplace dynamics that make it more challenging to identify, access and manage talent.

Despite their varied implications, these trends revolve around one central theme - the need to empower the right people, in the right places, in the right ways to create business impact. This requires a sustained commitment to, and a strategic investment in, talent, and an alignment of talent strategy with business goals. Talent is the No. 1 impediment to or success factor in executing the business plan. Led by the CEO, a talent strategy must:

1. Articulate comprehensive vision of where the company wants to go, what unique value it delivers and what effects it wants to have.

2. Organize work structures to unleash the knowledge, innovation and creativity of every employee to achieve that vision.

3. Examine, understand and deliver what employees want from their employer and work environment.

There are many options for talent acquisition, retention, development, redeployment and transition. The key is to align the right talent approaches specifically for the business strategy. What follows are five practical components of an integrated talent management plan that will help build the workforce needed to execute on business strategy.

Components of an Integrated Talent Management Plan

When implemented rigorously, each of the following five integrated components will drive a comprehensive approach to talent management.

1. Assess talent.

The workforce is critical to deliver and sustain competitive advantage. The ability to strategically assess talent available now - and the talent needed in the future - underpins the talent leaders' ability to meet and exceed the organization's goals. With the right workforce in place, brand building is more effective, goal achievement is more consistent and delivery of higher competitive value to customers and stakeholders is sustained.

From a CEO's perspective, it is important to assess the organizational state today as well as the desired future state before starting to build the bridge between the talent strategy and the business strategy. Assessing talent can provide a gap analysis that roadmaps how to source, on-board, develop and accelerate talent, and align performance with business direction.

Assessing talent includes a number of different components:

a) Competency modeling identifies the knowledge, skills, abilities, experiences, motivations and personality traits an organization's workforce must develop to realize present and future strategic goals and enhance company agility, innovation, engagement and retention. Well-designed competency models provide organizations with accurate criteria to optimize performance management as well as talent assessment, hiring, development, redeployment, succession management and promotion systems.

b) Organizational, individual and team assessments provide a clear understanding of how factors such as an organization's strategy, communications, leadership skills, employee processes, engagement levels, retention rates and cultural alignment drive productivity and evaluate the capabilities of individuals, teams and their potential fit within the organizational culture and climate.

2. Develop leaders.

To build global leadership capacity that is deep and wide, one must continually identify, develop, nurture and retain leaders as part of an ongoing talent development strategy. Building a pipeline creates the bench strength to fill leadership positions throughout the organization. Development is the first step to ensure a steady flow of leaders will be available to grow the company over time.

Coaching as part of leadership development is essential. The best coaching integrates the unique needs of the leader, his or her manager or sponsor and the organization to achieve the desired performance outcomes. Coaching can accelerate leader development and deliver performance improvements that lift the entire organization.

Consider, for example, a U.S. sales and distribution division of a global automotive company that is concerned about sustainability and effectiveness of its leadership development initiatives. With 30,000 employees and a competitive marketplace, the company needs to identify and develop near-future leaders at a faster rate to outpace the competition. The firm invests in leadership coaching, and this enables nearly 40 percent of program participants to be promoted at or near the end of the program. Further, more than 70 percent of participants achieve or exceed their individual goals, and the return on investment is estimated to exceed five to one.

3. Implement and align strategy.

Winning organizations create sustainable competitive advantage by aligning the workforce with business strategies. These companies pursue a well-articulated strategic direction in terms of execution, performance and workforce management. Having a strategy is only half the challenge: Strategy implementation requires a sustainable, proactive process to effect a smooth transition that will ensure employees understand and execute strategic imperatives and have operational support when doing their jobs.

There are three main components to implement and align a workforce with the organization's strategy:

a) Implement strategy effectively by first understanding the complexities of change and issues, analyze root causes of performance inhibitors and identify capability gaps. Once strategy has been clearly articulated and agreed upon, clarify fit-for-purpose structures and roles, deploy people systems and processes, communicate with authenticity and regularity and assign capable leadership at all levels.

b) Put strategy to work by identifying employee and workforce issues impeding strategy implementation. Prioritize workforce management strategies and align them with broader strategic goals. Use diagnostic tools to build executive team alignment around the organization's greatest strengths and needs. Identify top priorities, gain team consensus around priorities, analyze gaps between the organization's current state and the state of benchmark organizations, and build collaborative approaches with the workforce to get the job done.

c) Manage change effectively by having talent managers and leaders take a greater role to ensure change is communicated and implemented effectively. Communicate openly and honestly, keep employees informed, solicit feedback from those impacted by change, and commit to meeting expectations. From the senior leader on down, the messaging must be consistent.

4. Engage employees.

Talent managers can play a role by clearly and effectively articulating the business strategy, vision, mission and purpose to the entire workforce.

First, create a communications plan. A workforce that understands the strategy is better able to execute it. Equip senior leaders and managers to convey clear, consistent messaging that links every employee to strategy and drives engagement, productivity and success.

Invest in methods to engage and retain the workforce. Employees need to feel they have a stake in the company's success. Help employees understand the significance of their role and how they directly participate in achieving the company's business objectives and performance goals today and in the future. In a competitive environment, engagement can make the difference between an organization that thrives and one that barely survives.

5. Align the workforce with business needs.

Competitive market conditions and changing business objectives often require talent leaders to reassess workforce needs. It is about strategically mobilizing and sizing the workforce to meet business needs, minimize turnover and maintain employee productivity. Assisting employees affected by organizational change to make the transition to a successful career outcome also delivers real business value. Provide outplacement support to departing employees. Organizations offering effective outplacement support solidify their reputation for valuing employees and enhance the morale, engagement and productivity of employees who remain.

Also consider redeployment before executing layoffs. Sooner or later, every business has to reinvent itself. Consequently, every workforce has to adapt. Organizations that manage workforce transition successfully retain top talent, sustain productivity and employee engagement, and align workforce competencies with new organizational needs. Redeployment contributes to successful transitions by helping talent managers identify and reassign talented individuals to new roles or departments.

Invest in ongoing career development. Encourage employees to develop skills and competencies aligned with organizational needs. Provide assessments and coaching to help employees create a detailed career map and action plan to take control of their careers. Helping high-potential employees develop their careers offers the organization a powerful engine to drive workforce engagement, retention and productivity.

Global workforce and workplace trends have forced organizations to conceive competitive advantage more in terms of the talent they can identify, develop and retain and less in terms of what used to create a more traditional competitive advantage. The organizations that proactively align talent with business strategy by creating and implementing a workforce strategy will be the winners.

Many options for talent acquisition, retention, development, redeployment and transition exist. To promote a culture of success, the key is to align the right talent management approaches with the business strategy and create a continuing advantage by linking the workforce strategy to the business planning cycle.


[By Michael Haid | Talent Management - senior vice president of talent management for Right Management, the workforce solutions group within Manpower Group.]

The 6 Passages of Leadership and Management

Unless you are an heir to a throne, people usually don’t begin their careers leading a large organization. There’s a progression of passages, or at least there should be.

Charan, Drotter, and Noel wrote about six leadership passages in their classic book The Leadership Pipeline. However, they use the terms “leadership” and “management” interchangeably. There’s a big difference, right?

What if we took a simplified version of the Pipeline model, and mash it with a distinction between leadership and management? 

We’ll call it The Great Leadership & Management Passages Model (OK, so we need a catchier name):

Posted by Dan McCarthy 

Here are the six passages:

Passage #1: Managing Yourself

Managing yourself means learning how to show up to work on time and dressed appropriately, get along with your co-workers, manage your time and priorities, keep your boss happy, and follow basic workplace adequate, i.e., no microwaving fish in the break room. It also means learning how to solve problems, make decisions, use good judgment, and control your emotions. 

Passage #2: Leading Yourself

Leading yourself involves figuring out what really inspires you and doing whatever it is you do with a sense of purpose and passion. It includes having a clear set of values and principles that guide your day-to-day behavior and decisions, a compelling vision, and goals. It requires the ability to handle ambiguity, paradox, and change.

Passage #3: Managing Others and Teams

Managing others and teams involves learning out to hire, train, establish performance measures, reward, and punish. It’s about figuring out what and how the work needs to be done, and lining up the right resources needed to get the work done. 

Passage #4: Leading Others and Teams

In order to lead others and teams, you have to learn about and tap into each individuals values, goals, hopes, dreams, and fears. It involves getting to know each team member and learning how to inspire commitment, energize, and harness the individual and collective passion of the team. At the risk of stating the obvious – to lead others and teams requires transforming yourself into a leader.

Passage #5: Managing Organizations

Managing organizations involves optimizing a number of different functions in order to create a product or service and archive measurable organizational outcomes. It requires having a solid grasp of all aspects of the organization, including strategy, sales, marketing, human resources, manufacturing, research, legal, etc…. 
Goals need to be set at a high level and then cascaded throughout the organization with a performance management system in place to achieve those goals. Managing organizations also means being responsive to multiple stakeholders, including employees, customers, investors, government, and the community. 

Passage #6: Leading Organizations

Leading organizations requires learning how to establish a compelling vision and inspire large groups of people to act from afar. An organizational leader can no longer rely on the ability tap into each individual’s passion – they need to figure out how to manage culture and engage the entire organization in order to mobilize shared commitment.

Leading organizations requires learning how to identify and develop other leaders, because no one leader can create and sustain extraordinary performance on their own.

The passages are developmentally progressive and build upon each other. An individual can technically jump right into passages #5 and #6, Managing and Leading Organizations, they won’t be successful in the long run if they haven’t learned how to lead and manage themselves, other individuals, and teams have’ve seen this happen over and over – the brilliant, young entrepreneur or the star performer who is put in charge of an organization with undeveloped emotional intelligence and no actual experience managing others. Unfortunately, sometimes they never do learn – or even try to – and it ends up being their downfall. 
The model is in a way overly simplified – we couldn’t possibly describe everything it takes to lead and manage in less than 1000 words. But then again, when it comes to models, simple is good. If you can’t explain it to a 12-year old (or a CEO), then it’s too complicated. 


By, Hari Das Nair

The Nine C's of Engagement and Why EVERYTHING is Communication

The nine C's of engagement, which are worth our consideration as we strive to craft the right employee reward experience.

The Three C's of people centric values

• Culture - norms and preferences
• Community - internal and external stakeholders
• Credibility - trust earned through actions

The Three C's of delivery and communication

• Channel - means of communication
• Content - topic or information being covered
• Cadence - frequency of delivery (ad hoc, scheduled or continuous)

The Three C's of right time drivers

• Context - roles, relationships, timing; factors impacting how communication is absorbed and interpreted
• Catalyst - what inspires action and/or response
• Currencies - things that influence behavior through the exchange of value (important for us to keep in mind that these extend beyond the obvious cash elements to things like recognition, access and influence)

By, Ann Bares - Managing Partner of Altura Consulting Group

10 Jobs That Didn't Exist 10 Years Ago

App Developer

The iPhone was introduced in 2007, the Android shortly after. Since then, more than a million apps have been put up for sale in Apples App Storeand Android’sGoogle Play. Consider this: in 2011, Applepulled in more than $15 billion in revenues from mobile applications, which shrink  programs that used to run only on desktop computers to make them work on mobile devices.

As demand surges for apps to run on iOS, Android and whatever operating system is waiting in the wings, companies are faced with a dearth of talent with the skills to develop for mobile. This means fresh opportunity for programmers and developers to break into a booming market. Currently more than 16,000 listings for mobile app developers are listed on job site indeed.com.

Market Research Data Miner

As customer information becomes more and more vital to the retail experience, businesses are compiling data in droves—and hiring experts to make sense of it. From different datasets including structured (transaction), semi-structured (user behavior) and unstructured (text) information, data analysts and scientists look for behavioral patterns to help retailers and businesses predict future trends or to build recommendation engines or personalized advertising.

“Library science is a really hot degree right now,” says Purdy, “And data-mining could be one of the reasons. It’s a helpful knowledge set for someone hoping to manage large amounts of data” Hopeful data-minded candidates can include library science majors, researchers, engineers or applied scientists.

Educational or Admissions Consultants

When a certain set of affluent parents watch their toddler stack his or her first set of blocks, they’re not lost in a moment of cute, they’re strategizing their child’s likeliness of getting into the right pre-school. These moms and dads will stop at nothing to secure the best education for their kids—which for many includes hiring an educational or admissions consultant to help ease the process of interviewing and testing into schools from preschool to college. Admissions consultants can be paid thousands of dollars for their skills—which often include personal connections with school administrators.

Millennial Generational Expert

Generational consultants help companies better understand the changing workforce—and who better to explain the Millennialsthan a living, breathing member of Generation Y? Companies in every sector and of every size face the challenge of recruiting and developing young professionals to prepare them to be future executives.  Companies can build loyalty in their workforce by engaging in practices that connect directly with their younger employees. All-hands happy hour, anyone?

But this isn’t a role that’s strictly for the young ones. Many generational experts are older employees, who’ve turned their experience with young people into an ability to advise companies on how best to engage, motivate and, yes, placate this often fickle workforce.

Social MediaManager

Making the most of online communities– what we generally call “social” networks–has become an integral part of businesses from small-town coffee shops to behemoths like Amazon andMicrosoft, which both employ social media managers in their marketing and advertising departments. “There has been a great big shift in how companies communicate with their customers ,” Purdy says. On job site indeed, for example, there are currently over 11,000 listings for the title. But the term “social media managers” really covers all manner of tasks–from the social-savvy recent grad who mans theTwitter feed to the new wave of marketing strategists who help companies to leverage their social audiences through targeted marketing.

But don’t be fooled that your 10,000 Twitter friends are going to land you a job. “Young people may be more technologically savvy than their older colleagues,” says Purdy, “But technology in the workplace is evolving so quickly that a person can’t think that just because they’re great at Twitter will make them a desirable commodity long-term.”

Chief Listening Officer

One step up from a “social media manager,” (more on that later) the Chief Listening Officer keeps her ears (and eyes) on social channels and real life conversations to keep the company up to speed on what their customers are saying. “Before social media, business was a one way channel of communication. The company talked, we listened,” Purdy says. “Now we’ve become accustomed to two-way conversations. We expect them to listen, and so we see these kinds of roles.”

Beth LaPierre became the first ever Chief Listening Officer in 2010, and while she’s since moved on to other gigs, she spent her time monitoring the more than 300,000 mentions of Kodak on Facebook, Twitter, message forums, YouTube, blogs, and elsewhere on the Web each day, using software from Radian6 and PeopleBrowsr. Then she moved that information to the relevant department. As more and more companies rely on social streams and online exchanges for customer service reasons, the role of the listener will only increase.

Cloud Computing Services

In August 2006 Google’s Eric Schmidt described the company’s approach to software as a service as “cloud computing” at a search engine conference, possibly the first high profile usage of the term. Because it was used in the context of describing Google properties (Gmail, etc. etc.), it became synonymous with online storage and sharing of data. These days, the term has adopted by everyone from Microsoft to start-ups that help moms access coupons in the check-out line. Companies are looking for database managers, engineers and strategists for storing and indexing massive amounts of data—we’re talking petrabytes (one quadrillion bytes) of information.

Elder Care

As the population ages and baby boomers become grandparents, an increasing amount of attention is being turned to the care of the elderly. Between legal concerns, staffing at residential facilities or consultants hired to facilitate end-of-life issues, jobs in this area are expected to increase. People who have an understanding of the increasingly complex healthcare system in addition to an interest in comfort care are well suited for these roles.  Communication skills are also paramount—as elder care service providers are often tasked with communicating end-of-life issues to their client and his or her family members.

Sustainability Expert

“There are obviously some very concrete reasons that companies00even those who aren’t in the green or alternative energy space—would be interested in sustainable practices,” says Purdy. Oftentimes hiring someone into an environmentally-conscious role could be a cost-savings issue, he says, both in terms of lowering power bills or to take advantage of increasing tax rebates for companies committing to sustainability.

A degree in environmental science or business management major would prove useful in these new “green” roles as they often require developing new workflows to increase productivity while lowering the carbon footprint of a business, but specific environmental leadership majors are on the rise.  Projects can include: recycling and waste reduction, supplier sustainability evaluation. Purdy thinks Millennials are a shoe-in: “Look at the next gen of managers and leaders,” he says. “These young people grew up in a culture that valued recycling, valued being green. They’re far more driven by those concerns because they’ve been hearing about it since they were babies. I think we’ll continue to see growth in this area for young employees.”

User Experience Design

What is user experience design? Quite simply, experiences created and shaped through technology and how to make them happen. Case in point: the experience of waking up to an alarm clock is very different from the experience created by the rising sun and chirping birds. A user experience designer’s concern is how to mimic the birds-sun experience through technology (see the variety of alarm clocks on the market that grow louder and brighter to wake you gently). Would-be designers should be fluent in Photoshop, understand programming languages like CSS and HTML and feel comfortable taking an idea from sketch to prototype. As far as demand goes, things are looking bright: a recent indeed.com search returned 168,219 job listings.

By 

Meghan Casserly, Forbes Staff(Forbes.com)

Corporate Story

Every day, a small ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately.

She produces a lot and she was happy.

The Chief,a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision.

He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce even more if she had a supervisor!

So he recruited a cockroach who had extensive experience as supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports.

The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system.

He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports and...he recruited a spider, who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.
The lion was delighted with the cockroach's reports and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and to analyse trends, so that he could use them for presentations at Board‘s meetings.

So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and...recruited a fly to manage the IT department.

The ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time…!

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked.

The position was given to the cicada, whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.

The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant ,who he brought from his previous department, to help him prepare a Work and Budget Control Strategic Optimisation Plan …

The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset...

It was at that time that the cicada convinced the boss , the lion, of the absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment .

Having reviewed the charges for running the ant’s department , the lion found out that the production was much less than before.

So he recruited the owl , a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions.

The owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous report , in several volumes, that concluded : “ The department is overstaffed ...”
Guess who the lion fires first?

The ant, of course, because she “showed lack of motivation and had a negative attitude".


By.Mr Anil Das, Managing Partner at HR India Solutions.

Top 10 Hiring Mistakes

Hiring the right people can make our world with full of flying colors and the success gives us everything we want in our business. Yet, sometimes we do not approach hiring in the right manner and often make the some repeated mistakes. Here are the most common Top 10 errors a recruiter could do:

1. Taping candidates' background.

No matter what the candidate may include on their resume, we unknowingly/knowingly skip reading the resume. If we are serious about specified candidates placement, make sure that their work history are accurate, and check at least a reference or two is available. It helps recruiters to check the basic background of the candidate. We need to conduct some due diligence for the successful closure.

2. Being overly influenced by advanced degrees.

Candidates with plenty of letters after their names have certainly worked hard to earn their degrees. But there is no substitute for real-world business experience, and people often make the mistake of overlooking candidates with track records but not degrees.

Note: this does not apply, however, to specialized fields that require advanced degrees.

3. Not having a long-range plan.

Hiring someone to fill a current need can help you through a busy time. Beyond hiring someone on a temporary basis, we need a long-range plan for that employee beyond our immediate need. Include a plan to develop the career of the candidate where he or she fits in with our company's long-range plans.

4. Making promises which cannot be Kept.

It can be a very costly mistake to make promises that are not well thought out. Know ahead of time what we can and cannot offer a prospective employee.

5. Hiring someone for all the wrong reasons.

Unfortunately, this is a common mistake. Whether we are doing our cousin a favor or are impressed by the way someone looks or talks, hiring should not be done for the wrong reasons. Our focus should always be on the best candidate for the best job.

6. Not conducting a good interview.

Conducting a good hiring interview is a skill which many people do not experience off late. It's important to ask the right questions to determine whether the candidate is right for the position and fits into the company’s goals.

7. Not looking for a good fit.

In most businesses there needs to be a rapport among employees. If we hire someone who does not fit in with the team's chemistry, we foresee our self with unnecessary problems.

8. Not giving employee offer letters.

Offer letters contains all the important details, including the starting salary, bonus structure, start date, at-will status, and benefit information. It is mandatory that the candidate signs and receives a copy before he/she joins the organization.

9. Not being prepared.

We can easily make a hiring mistake when we are not prepared for the interview and hiring process. Prepare the list of questions to be asked for the candidate and the type of employee we are looking for. Also be ready to explain the position and answer questions about the company to the candidates.

10. Expecting way too much.

A common problem these days is looking for one person to save a sinking ship. An unrealistic, lengthy list of qualifications and background requirements — as frequently seen in employment ads — creates a situation where we settle for someone whom we think can do a little of everything, but does not excel in the key areas. Narrow our focus to the most important aspects of the position.

By Mr.Vijay Anand

Ways to find a job in a tough market

Getting a new job may be tough in a glum economic environment, but that should not deter you from looking. Following some easy, yet often ignored, steps should help you sail through.

Map your Competency

"Individuals should identify the skill sets they are good at and should look for industries where they fit in," says Sunil Goel, director of executive search firm Global Hunt. Perry Madan, executive director at EWS Search, adds: "When times are hard, people should think out of the box and concentrate on the skill sets rather than limiting themselves to their industry."

List your Options

Make a list of companies you wish to work for and identify their structures and hiring cycles. "One could make two separate lists - of companies that are most desired and companies that are not high on priority, but can work as a platform for getting another posting elsewhere," says Goel.

Go Glocal

A lot of MNCs are ramping up operations across the country, and not just the metros. "Tier II, tier III cities and rural markets have plenty of opportunities and a lot of companies within the F&B and education space have ambitious plans for such areas. One should not hesitate in exploring such opportunities," says Madan.

Meet People

Get active on social networking websites and job portals, and meet people if possible. "It is always better to meet people rather than mailing or calling them, as face value has a greater recall ," says Goel.

Be Specific

Your profile should be specific and should highlight your work areas and expertise. Avoid overloading your resume with content to prevent misrepresentation.

By Mr Vijay Anand