Unleashing the Right Talent for Critical Growth Initiatives

White Paper Unleashing the Right Talent for Critical Growth Initiatives Access and Retention of Key Talent Is the Number-One Driver for Business Growth! Marking pivotal talent as a long-term corporate asset and developing the right employees with informal means such as coaching and mentoring are becoming critical for companies to develop leaders internally and make the right talent available to tackle the most critical business initiatives. White Paper n Unleashing the Right Talent for Critical Growth Initiatives Organizations that have a clear visibility into their critical Talent Mobility for Solving Most Critical positions and pivotal talent are able to mobilize the right people Business Problems in the right roles to tackle the most critical business problems. The ability to move talent and make it available to tackle the Jim Collins, author of bestseller Good to Great, describes this most important business opportunity is critical for building concept it very succinctly — “People are not your most critical an agile, resilient, and built-to-last organization. Following assets, right people are! The ultimate throttle on a growth for are several examples of how companies are hurting due to any great company is not markets, technology, competition, shortage of pivotal talent: or products. It is the ability to get and keep enough of the right ƒ Many companies are unable to expand globally since they people within the company.” are unable to identify and tap key talent that has expertise in leading international operations ƒ Several companies are unable to move key talent into hurting business units while the pivotal talent is fleeing elsewhere due to lack of career growth within their business units “ 97% of CEOs indicate that access and retention of key talent as the number- ƒ In many emerging markets such as China and India, the shortage of leadership and middle management talent is hampering growth for many companies one challenge for business growth. ” ƒ The rapidly retiring senior leadership in several countries is creating a nightmare for CEOs and HR professionals — 12th Annual CEO Survey ƒ The new generation of workforce is looking for instant PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) gratification and clear career growth and is willing to quickly move on if they are unable to get right opportunities To tackle these challenges and to gain adaptability to changing business dynamics, organizations are looking to implement However, most companies have very primitive succession- talent mobility. However, companies are facing challenges in planning processes. These primitive processes often lock getting there since talent management processes and not talent within the business units and the pivotal talent is not unified and hence they do not have visibility into their critical shared for the most critical projects that can serve greater positions, bench strength, flight risk of high potentials, and good for the organization. Rapidly changing composition of supply and demand of talent based on expected business the global workforce does not make it any easier for CEOs growth. In addition, companies are also realizing that without to find the right talent for their growth initiatives. A large change in the processes and culture, technologies will not segment of senior and middle management is approaching deliver expected results and agility. retirement, leaving many critical positions exposed to huge business disruptions. Companies have realized that they can’t Best Practices to Implement Talent Mobility recruit their way out of this problem. They have to identify and Talent mobility is a dynamic process for moving talent from develop leaders internally. across roles, functions, and business units for solving the most The results? Inability of companies to tap key talent for critical business problems. While technology is an enabler, new growth initiatives, layoff of top performers or high organizations need new ways of thinking about and managing potentials since they are not exposed to other companywide people so that they can effectively implement talent mobility. opportunities, weak leadership pipeline, turnover of pivotal This requires managers to become more transparent when talent since they are unable to find a challenging position in speaking about talent and it requires employees to become other business units, and lost business opportunities that hurt more actively engaged about their career aspirations and revenues and profitability. 2 development goals. During the first phase of implementing These steps usually realize relatively quick results and start talent mobility effectively, most transformational organizations showing impact in terms of fewer disruptions in critical start adopting the following best practices: positions and higher retention and engagement of pivotal 1. Get visibility into pivotal talent within the organization by talent. However, to achieve true talent mobility, you need unifying people processes to offer greater opportunities for key talent and be willing to share your top talent with the organization. Companies 2. Make information about employees’ skills and career can achieve greater results and workforce adaptability by aspirations available in talent profiles leveraging talent pool–based succession plans, by making 3. Perform annual talent reviews to understand the strength talent reviews an integral part of the business-planning and gaps of company’s workforce process, and by making talent decisions dynamically based on changing business needs. Fostering social collaboration 4. Map critical organizational talent with top business to gain visibility of key talent across business units, creating imperatives a culture of sharing talent, and developing talent so that key 5. Identify critical positions within the organization that employees can be moved from one job across functional dramatically affect performance and business unit boundaries dramatically improve business 6. Implement succession plans for all critical positions results and agility. 7. Conduct transparent discussions about career aspirations Avoiding Mistakes of Developing the Wrong Talent of your key talent and map those with business The afore-mentioned research warns about avoiding the opportunities following key mistakes while developing talent: 8. Identify top performers and high potentials and make ƒ Delegate management of high potentials to line managers them available for internal mobility and business units. Pivotal talent is a long-term corporate asset and should not be confined within the business units. 9. Help high potentials with development plans to make them ready at the next levels ƒ Simply focus on recent performance while developing tomorrow’s leader without taking into account their ability, 10. Develop leadership talent with coaching, mentoring, and aspiration, and engagement. informal development methods ƒ Offer narrow development plans within the scope of the business unit’s requirements.