MIA: Talent Management
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Seventy-two percent of senior business executives "believe people and talent are critical to their company's results", yet an amazingly low 8 percent of senior business executives "are confident in how their company currently manages talent." So why isn't corporate talent management one of your top business priorities? |
The reason, judging by a new survey of over 150 large global companies from Deloitte LLP, is that while HR executives are busy "transforming" their organization, few are focusing on what I consider the most strategic of all HR roles: retaining, recruiting and maximizing the return on talent.
Here's the key data from Deloitte's "HR Transformation Survey". (Note: The data comes from a report focusing on the technology and media industries, but includes data from all industries.)
Eighty-four percent have attempted to improve their HR operations in the past three years; of these, 76 percent are "still transforming," and 12 percent have completed it. But what does that transformation involve, for those that aren't outsourcing HR?
Fifty-eight percent say implementing an IT platform is a goal of the transformation effort. (That's the second most cited "transformation" goal, after standardizing HR.)
What does that platform they are implementing include?
HR information system 49 percent
Payroll 38 percent
Enterprise HR portal 32 percent
Learning management system 35 percent
HR data warehouse 25 percent
.. and last on the list...
Talent management system 17 percent
The low priority being given to talent management is a casebook example of misalignment. As the authors of Deloitte's report conclude:
"Most respondents have a very modest and traditional view of what HR transformation means. We find that to be alarming. At most respondents, HR transformation is still about systems and processes. The business drivers are still cost savings and effectiveness. These are not "bad" or unimportant drivers; they are merely solutions in a vacuum. Transformation despite the urgency, the competitive imperative, or the call to action from the C-suite is still occurring slowly and is not occurring in the context of supporting a business strategy or helping a company meet its business objectives."
Comments (1)
All too often, HR is preventing companies from hiring quality talent. We've all heard the stories of companies demanding 5 years of experience on a technology that is only 2 years old. Or job requirements of 30 or so skills that they MUST have. I've even seen ads requesting applicants who have experience in a (non-software manufacturer) company's internal proprietary systems.
This tends to be a disconnect between the hiring manager and the HR department. The hiring manager comes up with a laundry list of skills that they would like to have, and HR interprets it as a list of skills they MUST have. Years ago I worked as a systems programmer at a Fortune 100 company which needed to hire more systems programmers. They passed around the copy of the newspaper ad they were planning to run. We all got a good laugh at it because according to the ad, not one of us was qualified to apply, even though we had been doing the same job for years.
And of course when the company cannot find any "qualified" applicants, they start looking for foreign applicants who are close enough. If there was really a skills shortage, companies would be looking at applicants who have a subset of their desired skills, and train them in the remainder.
In the past several months, I have yet to see any job ad for a manager with any less than 5 years experience as a manager. Or any job involving Windows servers that did not require at least 5 years using Windows servers. I guess that if you want to get into server administration, you need to buy your own copy (for several thousand dollars) because no company seems willing to train anyone.
Posted by Lee | February 12, 2008 11:37 AM