A strong understanding of existing talent, knowledge of an overall workforce plan and retention are the three critical talent issues that will shape business over the remainder of the decade, according to management expert Marcus Buckingham.
“Organisations know more about their physical assets than their people assets and without the knowledge of their abilities, desires, strengths and future plans; it is impossible to plan and grow a workforce that will not be stolen by the competition,” he said.
Knowledge of the overall workforce plan will also become increasingly important, and Buckingham said the days of opening a requisition and hiring are over.
“Organisations must create active talent pools that are ‘always working’ to bring new talent into the organisation and have a group of talent ready to on-board into the organisation at a moment’s notice,” he said.
The third critical issue is for business is “retention, retention, retention” and he said organisations cannot continue to just hope that the workforce stays with them.
“With transparency around talent with tools such as LinkedIn and others; it become simple to steal talent,” he said.
“To avoid your talent leaving, you must focus on retention which involves engagement, development and a focus on interactions to keep and grow the workforce into the future.”
The basic principle of talent management strategies must be forward looking and “now” looking; not backward looking, explained Buckingham, who serves as the founder and chairman of The Marcus Buckingham Company.
“The days of cyclical succession planning, talent planning, performance management and engagement management are dead and over,” he said.
“We must understand in real time the measure of now and act on a daily basis to deal with the talent supply/demand chain. A backward looking approach will leave an organisation dead in its tracks.”
Rethinking performance management
In response, he suggested organisations and HR leaders should adapt their approach to performance management so that it is:
- Real time and team leader based
- A combination of performance and engagement, and not two separate activities
- De-linked from compensation. “Increasing an individual’s performance driving better corporate performance has little to nothing to do with merit increases,” he said.
- Owned by the business. “HR leaders must make sure business leaders realise that the tool is theirs, not the HR function’s,” said Buckingham.
To help support this, organisations should proactively support their leaders and line managers, with a focus on coaching (and not feedback) and provision of tools that leaders use daily as well as on-demand coaching assistance.
Businesses should realise that most leaders and line managers “don’t know how to lead and need assistance”, said Buckingham, who added that leadership doesn’t match an organisational structure, as team leaders are all over the organisation.
How to improve innovation
There are five hallmarks of organisations that are innately innovative, according to Buckingham, who said these traits are associated with a corresponding competitive and commercial advantage.
The five hallmarks of such organisations is that they are agile, data driven, business focused, use “new age process design” and are future (not backward) looking.
“Every HR process should be re-examined for the world we live today to make sure it is tied to these hallmarks,” he said.
In the process, CEOs and their executive team need to understand what their teams are doing, who the best team leaders are, and focus on the things that they want to be great at, versus the things that they are okay at, he said.
Over the coming five years, Buckingham said HR professionals can also assist in the process through using data to truly drive predictive value to the business, creating processes designed for team leaders and teams (not the HR function), and providing coaching and leadership assistance to ensure that continuous improvement of leaders is achieved.
Image: supplied
