CEE Talent Management Consulting Services Page 1

OVERVIEW OF CEE TALENT MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

WINNING THE WAR ON TALENT 2.0 In today’s tight labor market, companies are facing intense competition for talent – and are giving increased attention to ways to retain talent rather than rely on costly replacement and retraining. Retention of talent with critical skill sets is vital for achievement of business growth and to build organizational competencies, which represent a competitive advantage. The loss of needed talent is costly because of the resultant bidding up of market salaries for experienced hires to replace them, the costs of recruiting and assimilating new talent, the lost investment in talent development, and the hidden costs of lost productivity, lost sales opportunities, and strained customer relationships. Can companies win the “war for talent”? Will we be able to define and implement a retention strategy that will give us the stable, committed, capable workforce required to achieve a competitive business advantage? Consulting firm and research organization reports, published books and articles, and internal company retention studies suggest that everyone is following the same overall plan. How will this approach give a company an edge?

The supply of leadership talent is critical to any organization’s prosperity and is, therefore, a

central element of talent management. The increasing trend of growing leaders from within is

based on a dawning realization that a popular alternative for acquiring talent—poaching key

people from competitors—ultimately leads to frustration. Outstanding leaders who can ‘ramp

up’ quickly are hard to find, increasingly expensive, and even when successfully recruited,

tend to move from company to company. So the best approach, usually, is to develop

systems and processes to identify available leadership talent.

Many studies have shown that an important factor for commitment and retention is the

effectiveness of immediate management. Employees say it is an important element of the work

environment; research shows it highly correlated with commitment and retention scores, and

employees cite poor management as a key reason for leaving a company. Accordingly, there

have been many books focused on manager effectiveness. One big seller was First, Break all

the Rules, reporting on the Gallup Organization’s findings and recommendations for better

management of people.

So, what do we mean by talent management? In the broadest possible terms, it is the

strategic and tactical management of the flow of talent through an organization. Its purpose

is to assure that the supply of talent is available to align the right people with the right jobs at

the right time based on strategic business objectives. The term “talent management” is often

used to denote e-recruitment and automated applicant tracking systems. This emphasis on

staffing and recruiting is more appropriately called the talent acquisition phase of the talent

management cycle (see Figure 1), an important but preliminary step in the overall process.

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Figure 1: Talent Management Cycle

The Talent Management Cycle includes the proactive analysis and planning to assure long-term strategic development and deployment of critical leadership and other resources

through systematic identification, assessment, planning, and developmental action.

Succession Planning

Talent Acquisition Organisational Results

Vision, Mission, Strategy and Values Talent Management Strategy

Competency Framework

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Organisational Climate Results and Values Driven Leadership

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Talent Management Cycle is composed of several essential elements:

1. Talent Acquisition: Proactively recruiting world-class, diverse leadership talent and

providing on-boarding support for them to accelerate their assimilation into their roles. 2. Talent Development: Developing and executing learning and development programs,

processes & assessment tools to grow current and future leaders

3. Performance Management: The process of creating a work environment in which people can perform to the best of their abilities.

4. Succession Planning: This is critical towards developing a leadership pipeline or assuring

near-term leadership continuity by thoughtful consideration of the availability, readiness, and development of internal talent (including High Potentials) to assume critical “priority” leadership roles.

5. Organizational Climate: The flow of effective communication and the systems of

recognition and rewards are integral part of the climate which influences the talent’s performance effecting productivity, creativity and in driving results with the right impact. The climate is impacted by a values-driven leadership team.

Best Practice Approaches to Talent Management

From our experience in partnering with clients across diverse industries globally, we have found the following are common "best practices" used by companies to develop executives and leaders. These are what we hear from our clients:

1. Linked to Strategy: “Our executive development efforts are directly linked to our organization's strategy. It's clear how these efforts help address our marketplace challenges and/or achieve our strategic objectives”.

2. Top Management Driven: “Our top executives champion our executive development efforts. We have a senior, line executive advisory board. Our top executives attend the programs as participants and also teach when appropriate”.

3. Strategy & System: “We have a strategy and long-term plan for executive development. Our programs and practices are part of a continuous system and process rather than stand-alone, ad hoc events”.

4. Leadership Profile, Feedback and Individual Development Plans: “We use a custom-designed [linked to our vision, values, and strategies], multi-rater leadership instrument/inventory to provide confidential development feedback to our executives. Our executives have individual development plans based on that feedback”.

5. Top-Down Implementation: “Whenever our executive and leadership development efforts are aimed at organizational change, our top management attends the programs first as participants. Then the programs are cascaded down throughout the organization”.

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6. Action-Oriented Learning: “Our executive learning experiences are action oriented. Whenever feasible, we use some form of "action learning" where participants apply what they are learning to real, current business problems and opportunities”.

7. Succession Management: “We have an effective succession management system that ensures we have the right executive, in the right job, at the right time. We seldom are forced to hire from outside the organization to fill a key executive job opening as a result of not having a qualified internal candidate prepared”.

8. Integrated Talent Management System: “We have a well-integrated talent management system (succession management, external and internal executive education, on-the-job development, coaching/mentoring, etc.) rather than independent stand-alone processes”.

9. Measurement: “We set clear, measurable objectives when we create new executive development strategies, systems, processes, and programs. Then we measure the business impact using metrics that matter to senior management, and communicate the results effectively”.

10. High Potential Identification and Development: “Our organization has an effective process for identifying "high potential" talent and accelerating their development”.

What has been your experience? What are your ideas? We would love to hear from you.

Call or email us for a no obligation discussion on how CEE could partner with your

organisation to develop a sustainable Talent Management Strategy.

For further information contact:

CENTRE FOR EXECUTIVE EDUCATION PTE LTD

259 Tampines Central Singapore 915209 Tel: (65) 6789 0977 Fax: (65) 6789 0911 Email: enquiry@cee-global.com Homepage: www.cee-global.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/ceeglobal