feature
Talent management
In the last of a three-part series on talent management,
Sarah Cook and Steve Macaulay look at implementation
I
n the face of the recession,
implementing a costeffective talent strategy is
vital for every organisation.
In the short and medium
term, organisations face
particular challenges in retaining
and motivating the key people
they will need in the future. In
the long term, the talent pool is
the future.
The foundations of a successful
talent growth strategy extend
well beyond the boundaries of a
single initiative. They include a
firmly embedded learning culture
with emphasis on a partnership
approach to development and
career management, an effective
performance management
process that identifies and
develops potential and feeds into
organisational strategy, and line
management actively involved
in planning and building for
the future. This means that a
climate in which talent thrives has
implications not just for L&D
but for engagement, recruitment,
reward and pay, and organisational
culture and design.
involve influential groups in
open debate and gain their
commitment, or at least defuse
any obstruction.
• Short-term and parochial
thinking This can undermine
organisation-wide strategic
initiatives. By mixing different
groups, for example via
development programmes,
introducing individuals to
networks and mentoring,
barriers can come down.
Developing line managers’ skills
can increase their confidence
in being involved in identifying
and developing talent.
• Geographical and cultural
distances The costs and time
involved in meeting face-to-face
often restrict full understanding
and communication across
the organisation. Despite the
growth of e-mail and video
conferencing, there seems
to be no substitute for faceto-face working to cement
relationships and appreciate
diversity. Exposing task groups
to organisation-wide issues
and cross-functional working
effectively widens their
horizons.
Major barriers to
talent management
L&D professionals often have to
contend with blocks and barriers
that reduce or negate their good
intentions, but there are means of
overcoming these issues:
• Silo mentalities Sometimes
short-sighted and insecure
managers can seek to protect
their territorial boundaries.
It is therefore essential to
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Developing line managers’
skills can increase their
confidence in being
involved in identifying
and developing talent
September 2009 www.trainingjournal.com
Aetna: shifting a local mindset to
thinking company-wide
Aetna is a diversified US company
offering healthcare, dental,
pharmacy, group life, disability
and long-care insurance and
employee benefits. As a result
of employee surveys, one area it
identified for improvement was
talent management. Its vision was
to build talent that was not only
deep but also broad, so everyone
in the company could develop.
It realised that this new
approach to talent management
represented a significant cultural
shift. Part of the challenge in
making the new system work was
shifting the mindset to Aetna
talent, rather than the talent in
specific areas.
As one approach, Aetna set up
a talent management system that
can be accessed online across the
company. This allowed any part
of the business to draw on the
central talent pool, and this came
to be seen as a practical benefit of
a company-wide strategy.
Building blocks for successful
talent management
Establish competency benchmarks
As a starting point, it is important
to spend time identifying the
right competencies to develop in
your organisation for the future.
As an illustration, one panEuropean international aerospace
company we have worked with
used the following core leadership
competencies as a strategic
leadership benchmark.
The company saw it needed to
adopt a much more responsive
and international outlook and,
therefore, its future managers
needed to move away from
the structured, inward-looking
feature
engineering roots that had served
them well in the past.
The implications were that
its leaders needed to develop
stronger personal influence, not
rely on formal authority, increase
their awareness of cultural and
interpersonal issues and draw on
a wider repertoire of approaches
to get things done. They needed
to be more tolerant of ambiguity
and, at the same time, push harder
to get things moving and put their
undoubted knowledge into action,
as they engaged more with their
customers, partners and suppliers.
Such substantial change required
a comprehensive strategy of
development on many levels but, as
in this case, competencies can serve
as a basis for a talent assessment
and development agenda to move
the organisation ahead.
Personal responsibility The
success of talent programmes can
often centre on giving individuals
responsibility for their own
development. Rather than rigid
central control, best practice
talent management programmes
often provide opportunities
for individuals to select their
development path via a series of
blended learning solutions.
PwC: talent management through
an active pipeline
PwC, a huge global organisation
employing more than 140,000
people in 149 countries, takes
talent management very seriously.
As a consultancy that stands or
falls by the quality of its people, it
takes a proactive stance.
Tim Richardson, head of
leadership development and talent
management, said in a podcast
in 2007: “We’ve got an active
pipeline management going on,
so we’re looking at them and
tracking them through their
career from a manager, through
to senior manager, director and
partner. We’re looking at trying
to accelerate people quickly,
so we do offer benchmarking
opportunities, benchmarking
events, development centres,
where people can test themselves
against the capabilities that we’re
looking for, get feedback and
really work on key development
plans. We’ve also got some
emerging leader programmes
which we’re running, both in the
UK and around the world, where
we’re trying to create networks of
emerging leaders, which is what
we’re looking for in the future.”
Coaching Coaching has a
valuable role in extending a
person’s capabilities, particularly
in their current role, which
will also form a foundation for
future roles. Effective coaches
pay close attention to differing
learning styles and the coachee’s
best learning pace. Support and
openness are key ingredients in
the relationship.
The coach must be able to:
• Ask questions rather than tell
people what to do
• Actively listen
• Understand the tools of
facilitating and problem analysis
and solving
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• Giving feedback
• Knowing when to challenge and
when to support.
Most learning professionals
know Whitmore’s GROW model
– Goal, current Reality, Options
and Wrap-up. Whether or not you
choose this model, a commonlyagreed framework for the aims
and conduct of a coaching
session is important. The primary
responsibility for actions should lie
with the coachee.
Setting up a viable coaching
culture requires thought to be
given to how it will sit within the
management and cultural norms,
and how much support will be
required.
Consideration should be given
to who should undertake this role:
whether to use internal coaches
to help develop your talent pool
– they know the organisation – or
bring in external expertise – they
provide an external perspective but
at a financial cost.
Mentoring Mentoring is well
suited to talent management,
with its emphasis on developing
a person’s potential for the future.
This one-to-one process helps
individuals learn and develop
with a longer-term perspective. It
focuses primarily on the person’s
career and development, not the
immediate task. The mentee
benefits from having access to
a sounding board to challenge
assumptions and encourage wider
thinking.
Organisations employing
mentoring for talent management
may find it raises organisational
issues. For example, some
organisations find power
relationships disturbed by mentors
who can cut across the manageremployee relationship.
Our experience indicates that
effective mentoring requires
attention to four key factors:
• A clear, agreed set of objectives
• Communications and
development for all those
involved
• Careful matching of mentors
and mentees
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• Periodic evaluation and
review of the effectiveness of
mentoring.
Sony Europe:
mentoring on strengths
Sony Europe developed a
programme called ‘The Strengths
Way’, reflecting its philosophy
towards development, which is
to focus on people’s strengths.
The organisation has developed a
mentoring scheme for graduates,
high-potential employees,
executives and executive successors.
This scheme has been
designed to focus on strengths
and how they can be applied in
the workplace. Its success has
been that each group becomes a
mentor to the next. In addition,
the business has established
mentoring arrangements with
char­ities, which develops
mentoring skills.
Planned development through
assigning responsibility A cost-
effective development approach
is using stretching responsibilities
feature
talent motivation should be
given careful thought. Any
financial reward must be part
of a total approach to reward
and recognition. The building
society Nationwide has made it
easy for managers to recognise
its employees, through an online
recognition system that allows
employees to choose rewards from
holidays to shopping vouchers.
Executive development
programmes Traditionally, talent
The success of
talent programmes
can often centre on
giving individuals
responsibility for their
own development
within the organisation for
development as well as for business
purposes. Examples might be
high-visibility improvement
projects, taking on a new business
area to develop multi-disciplinary
contacts and knowledge, leadership
of strategic initiatives, giving
specialists generalist roles, or crossfunctional roles.
Other aspects of
talent management
Recruitment All organisations
need to mindful of their place in
the wider recruitment market.
Recruitment is part of the
chain of development; those
organisations in which career
advancement is based on talent
development will be attractive
to join and will retain more
employees. Careful induction
will help in setting the right
expectations. Some organisations
are using the current recession to
make targeted appointments to
strengthen their talent pool.
Reward The important role of
reward in securing and fostering
development has often involved
a visit to a business school. Many
blue-chip organisations build a
high-potential talent programme
linked to input from business
schools, perhaps supplemented by
company projects and input.
Some people criticise overemphasis on external input as
“too much training, too little
development”. However, the
ability to mix academic input
and exchange with other people
from different organisations can
add a valuable new perspective.
Former BBC Director-General
Greg Dyke once commented:
“If you run organisations, every
so often you need to get out of
those organisations and meet
people who work in a different
world and understand the issues,
the problems and what’s going to
happen going forward because this
world changes so fast.”
Talent management
in the recession
According to the CIPD survey
Fighting Back Through Talent
Innovation, published in July, the
recession has caused some changes
of emphasis in developing talent,
though few organisations have
gone as far as putting their whole
programme on hold.
More in-house talent
development is taking place and
many organisations are focusing
their development on essential
people and groups. This is in
line with a closer scrutiny of the
efficiency and value for money of
talent management systems and
processes.
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Also, there has been greater
emphasis on the role of the
line manager, for example in
coaching and mentoring and the
development of key performance
areas.
Organisational examples
We have chosen two case
studies to describe how talent
management has been put into
practice. They are set out in more
detail in UK Talent Report by
Shaun Tyson and Emma Parry of
Cranfield School of Management,
July 2007.
Some organisations
find power relationships
disturbed by mentors
who can cut across
the manager-employee
relationship
Britvic: Using a talent toolkit,
then targeting development
In line with global business plans,
Britvic’s head of organisation
development worked with its
operational board to develop a
comprehensive talent management
strategy. Starting with a selfdevelopment toolkit for 2,000
people, the top 500 managers also
attended structured development
workshops.
The talent strategy includes
both internal and external
elements: employer branding,
plus a management development
programme for external recruits,
using career management and
development as an attractive
proposition for recruits. Rigorous
talent demand and supply
planning is carried out through
talent forums.
The Accelerate programme is a
successor development programme
comprising a director-level
mentor, use of cross-functional
moves, strategic projects, external
development programmes
where appropriate, networking
sessions, and career aspirations
and planning sessions. Planned
development opportunities
foster business performance and
individual engagement.
At the most senior level, the
operational board discusses and
endorses the talent pool for
the total organisation and the
very senior board successors are
discussed at PLC level.
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Cobham: Clarifying talent and
systematically developing it
Cobham plc is a high-tech
international company. It devised
its talent management strategy
over 18 months, with the HR
director and senior management
examining what already existed
and what needed to be developed.
It has defined ‘talent’ according
to its three most important
areas of impact and need. Firstly,
those individuals with divisional
leadership potential; secondly,
graduates with high potential;
thirdly, key technical skills groups –
its “mission critical workforce”.
1. Divisional leadership
People are identified that have high
potential for management and
have developed their leadership
skills. There are three groups of
individuals: a divisional highpotential pool, those with potential
to be a divisional president or
a direct report to divisional
president level within five years,
and those who will be in the top
16 in five years. Every member
of the workforce above manager
level undertakes a formal talent
assessment twice a year. High
potentials are those employees that
fall into boxes one, two or four on
their nine-box matrix.
2. Graduates
Graduates are recruited from local
universities to be part of a twoyear, company-wide programme,
with each graduate undertaking a
substantial six-month assignment
in each division.
3. ‘Mission critical’ technical
workforce
Those with important technical
skills are developed using a faculty
system, with heads of faculty
responsible for devising a technical
curriculum and career paths. Highpotential individuals are identified
and developed under their auspices.
Conclusion
A typical feature of the
organisations we have highlighted
is the degree of thought given
to making talent management
effective against a clear
organisational strategy, with
processes and practices that work
in their context.
Our insights into powerful
talent management strategies
suggest that success comes from
such factors as:
• Investing time in targeting
the future talent needs of the
organi­sation as part of business
strategy, even in times of
economic downturn
• Discussing the issue of ‘talent’
openly. Our examples include
targeted groups at all levels, not
just management. Employers
with strong talent management
practices and who commu­nicate
openly are perceived by their
employees as having stronger
and more effective leadership
• Selectively and consistently
investing in talent development
and sticking with it, not turning
the tap off
• Business and organisational
leaders, not just HR or L&D
professionals, devoting time
to talent management issues,
spending quality time with highperforming people and actively
participating in any planned
activities. 
Sarah Cook is MD of strategic leadership
and customer management specialist
The Stairway Consultancy. She can be
contacted on +44 (0)1628 526535 or at
sarah@thestairway.co.uk. Steve Macaulay
is a learning development consultant at
Cranfield School of Management. He can
be contacted on +44 (0)1234 751122 or at
s.macaulay@cranfield.ac.uk.