Wouldn't if be great if the COOs and CEOs of all organisations were confident that their work in leading talent management efforts was, in fact, adding lots of value?!
The Economist Intelligence Unit recently published a paper reporting that of CEOs and COOs interviewed in 2006, 35 percent say that they spend 30-50 percent of their time working on talent management.
The same study concludes that: "This effort is not typically guided by a formal talent strategy explicitly linked to the company's overarching goals or embedded in the business planning process. Rather, CEOs engage in supporting selected activities where they believe they add value."
The operative word in the quote above is "believe".
There are many questions a CEO would want to have answered to understand whether the significant time - not to mention dollars - invested in talent management is worthwhile. For example (and this is obviously only a partial list):
- How do our people benchmark against other industries?
- What percent of my people have an entitlement attitude?
- What are the important trends: motivation, interests, issues?
- Who should be promoted? When? Who should not?
- Where are my critical retention risks?
- Who are my top performers at all levels?
- Which practices contribute the most?
- Are leadership messages reaching everyone?
- What employee profiles are the most successful?
At this time, however, only a handful of organisations can answer questions of this nature and draw a direct connection from their investment talent to the bottom line. And that's because leaders in most organisations do not have the necessary information about their people to make the right decisions.
Leaders need organisational intelligence
Many companies collect a lot of data on their people. Obviously, they keep basic personnel records, but most track other data also, such as who attended what training course when, who has expressed an interest in an internal promotion, information on performers' ratings and salary information, etc. But the data is often stored in separate databases. Or it may be dated. Or it may not lend itself to analysis very readily.
Very few companies - even those that have been diligently collecting data for years - are able to use it to efficiently analyze, model and measure the impact their workforce has on the performance of the business. Few leaders have the essential data to make informed decisions.
What's the fix?
There are several ways this situation can be remedied.
- Leadership needs to be clear on what "people data" they need to make important business decisions now, as well as in the future.
- The organisation needs to determine how to best collect that data effectively and consistently.
- Then, the organisation needs to clarify the data analysis approach and determine who needs what data, how often, in what format, and with what level of detail.
- Involve employees. Make sure that individuals are responsible for inputting their information and updates. This makes the employee accountable for their own data and, ultimately, for their own development and career progression.
- Use the data wisely - avoid relying on subjective data, but strive for unbiased, repeatable processes that create objective results.
Only by providing leaders with the right kind of organisational intelligence can organisations impose process discipline and, most importantly, make sure that leaders use the most accurate data possible to make the right talent management decisions.