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Управление талантами в организации: современные вызовы Global talent management challenges
Терников Андрей Адександрович
Магистр по направлению Финансы Санкт-Петербургская школа экономики и менеджмента, НИУ ВШЭ
Санкт-Петербург, Россия e-mail: [email protected]
Ternikov Andrei Aleksandrovich
Master in Finance
Saint-Petersburg School of Economics and Management, NRU HSE
Saint-Petersburg, Russia e-mail: [email protected]
Лапов Иван Сергеевич
Магистр по направлению Государственный менеджмент Высшая Школа Менеджмента, СПбГУ Санкт-Петербург, Россия e-mail: st011813@student. spbu. ru
Lapov Ivan Sergeevich
Master in Public management Graduate School of Management, SPbU Saint-Petersburg, Russia e-mail: st011813@student. spbu. ru
Аннотация.
Эта статья содержит исследование по вопросу о текущих глобальных задачах управления талантами, начиная с краткого введения основных аспектов управления талантами в качестве концепции, а затем перехода к краткому определению формы текущих задач, за которым следует обзор литературы. В результате анализа исследований, посвященных глобальным задачам управления талантами, и авторским исследованием практических аспектов HR менеджмента, было определено несколько задач, стоящих сегодня перед специалистами по кадрам в области управления талантами
Annotation.
This article contains a research on the matter of current global talent management challenges, starting with a brief introduction of the basic aspects of talent management itself as a concept, later on moving to short definition of the form of current challenges, followed by the literature review on the topic. As a result of publications observation on global talent management challenges, added by author's research on practical aspects of the matter and analytical outcomes there were defined several challenges met by HR specialist in the field of talent management today.
Ключевые слова: управление талантами, HR менеджмент, организационное поведение.
Key words: talent management, human resource management, organizational behavior.
Introduction
It is not a secret that employees of the company have a special and significant position in any business and is among key success factors for any company nowadays. More than that, professional business achievements are also inextricably linked to talent management, which is an integration of staff governance and administration techniques helping companies to attract, effectively use, reproduce personnel qualities giving the possibility to participate in the process of corporate development [8]. The term "talent management" itself emerged in the last decade of 20th century and basically is related with variety of activities regarding HR management with a clear intention to involve the staff to corporate innovation process alongside with dealing with development of personnel creative potential [9]. The term was developed by David Watkins: he was the first to use talent management term in an article published in 1998 and later continued to work with the phenomenon in his book "Talent Management Systems", which was
published by the year 2004. As well it is not a secret that correlation between HR development the effectiveness of the organizational structure was recognized already in 1970s.
In the late 1990s, the international consulting company McKinsey published the "War for Talents" report, which was the subject of discussion at corporate meetings. Key persons of corporate giants such as "General Electric", "Procter Gamble" has thought about how their corporations are to deal with talents. Later on, in 1990s, the most popular tool for encouraging staff instead of cash was shares and options. This lead to the emergence of very rich employees, and the question of how to stick them to their company not only by financial issues has appeared.
In the last decade the matter of correct talent management systems has gained significant popularity, being a key issue of a variety of articles, books and researches. The system of talent managements itself can be imaged as a special integrated software product which provides methods to deal with recruitment, compensative issues, education and development and efficiency management. The key difference of talent management from traditional HR practices lies in the focus: traditional human resource management approaches are oriented at solving rather administrative issues, such as salary issues, motivation issues, search and management of staff, development caused by educational programs and rather equal attitude towards all employees. On the other hand, talent management is a long-term approach to solve corporate issues through human capital issues, which is related to team building responsibility of all staff members, differing attitude towards employees and focus on competence development for gaining strategically set corporate development [2].
In a well-organized team, talent acts as a sort of a leader on which other employees try to resemble, moreover it is able to ignite colleagues with their enthusiasm and atypical approach to solving problems [4]. In theory this sounds like a perfect corporate picture, but in practice everything is not that much simple. Firstly, talent must be "inside" in the team, otherwise instead of giving stimulation disruption of the whole work can be caused. Secondly, talented employees differ in a number of qualities that make managing them a very difficult task. The management of talent is an attempt to predict which human resources company will require and create conditions for their involvement.
As it has already been mentioned, the main motivation for work used to rely on increased wages and social benefits. For top management attractive opportunities were in the form of social packages, expenses coverage, possible participation in the capital of the company, inclusion in the contract of "golden parachute". But corporate attempts to diversify the types of bonus payments are not efficient any longer. Many firms, on the contrary, decide to lower salaries. Thus, it is time to develop human capital, which is the main factor of corporate success. Current century changes the whole idea of talent, moving the trend from "struggle" with them to their generation.
Related Works
The fact that talent management is currently being one of the most popular trends in the HR approaches worldwide adds a very specific issue to the term and phenomenon itself: since talent management is rather young concept, and currently in the times when talent management is being applied in many organizations different approaches to the concept emerge, giving some challenges and different perspectives of its development. The authors writing on the topic of talent management observe current trends and challenges obviously. For instance, [7] tries to define common features, which are to structure the whole discussion and support practically talent management. Among of these things are the following:
• definition of human capital management and different points of view on this matter;
• issues related to spread of talent differences between human resource management and talent management and the points of view, which can be considered as a contemporary challenge for the phenomenon in the matter of defining the decision takers of talent management.
In this paper is as well reviewed the challenge of organizations trying to define where they can find significant talents: not good enough, but really significant employees for providing a competitor advantage. Also the paper focuses on the different definitions of the talent itself: for different organizations the talents differ respectively this issue makes talent search and talent
management quite a complicated task nowadays, moreover the author suggests focusing on considering all related processes, which support development of talents for creation more efficient business opportunities, since the decisions on talent management are carried by leaders, and this decision making process should be unified and should gain some logic.
Another work [6] focuses on functioning of the organization itself, drawing some specific attention to central role of talented employees. The challenge here is related to corporate investments into initiatives on talent development, and the challenge is in the right way of choosing these destinations of financial inputs. The research suggests the new approach to talent management and suggests as the solution to the stated challenge through increasing efficiency for methods of talent management giving an example of public sector in India. The challenge of choosing the right direction for investments into talents can be solved by the company internally via making some financial inputs into the process of development of talents of the current staff for making the reserve of internal work force to prepare them for the future.
Another research [1] focuses on defining the most important factors for managing a diversified team which is definitely a current challenge for HR due to globalization processes and "internationalization" of employees. Having set such task the author focuses on setting up the structure for managers and leaders for the best usage and implementation of teams in order to maximize the number of inner and outer skills and possibilities of team-members. This paper has a very big orientation on creating a unified opinion on diversified teams, forming as an output a concept of practical and theoretical implications for searching the maximum possible advantages of multinational teams in respect with talent management.
More than that, the paper suggests the following outcome: for better talent management all participants of the team shall understand the team itself as a unified thing with general goals, norms and principles, and the more team-members identify themselves with the team itself, the possibility of following the common corporate goals increases. All in all, the author tries to create a practical organizational scenario, based on the research of 20 CEOs dealing with such problem.
The other research [5] is focusing on the challenge of the dissent of educational flexibility in order to forecast high potential without making wrong decisions on defining the talents. The paper suggests the system of control of supervisor assessment for the employees identified as the ones having high potential on discovering talents. The outcome that the authors set is the positive influence of aggressive education in defining talented workers, more than that, the following recommendation is being given: the organizations need to focus on making specific significant efforts on increasing flexibility in educational processes. Buy this the challenge of wrong talent choice can be solved and prevent the company from making useless efforts in detecting talents and increase the effectiveness of talent management itself.
Another review on current HRM practices [10] again states the current challenge for talent management, lying in detecting talents in international enterprises. This review again focuses on the importance of the right way to integrate multinational workers in order to create an effective team and detect the talents inside this team. One more approach [3] lies in applying knowledge management techniques in order to build the bases of corporate talent management system to effectively solve the challenge of talent detection in a company.
All in all, the overview of the related to the matter works has shown the presence of four main challenges, existing currently in the system of global talent management. In this article the works of authors from different geographical areas have been revised in order to detect common trends and approaches to defining the difficult features of contemporary talent management and ongoing challenges. To sum up, the set challenges are the following:
• the challenge of correct talent definition (this issue covers the right obtain of corporate needs in order to detect what sort of talents they are looking for);
• correct way of investments into defining talents inside and outside the company;
• defining and developing talents inside multinational teams;
• consequences of wrong talent choice and ways to avoid it.
Corporate Experience
General Electric
The pioneer in the field of talent management is the company General Electric, which was founded in the late XIX century by the world-known inventor Thomas Edison. Currently, General Electric is one of the leaders in building an effective HR strategy and promotes the most gifted personnel in America. It should be noted that the personnel policy, which the corporation follows used in its practice in relation to top management positions practically throughout the whole period of its history, it can be as well called "closed", since people were appointed to their current positions in the company purposefully via training and development. A CEO Jack Welch (1981-2001) in the 1990's carried out an innovation in the development of the talent management system: the company's values have become a determining factor in assessing the potential of managers. The following values were included in the value system:
• principled and unshakable decency (personal integrity, integrity);
• striving for mastery and hatred of bureaucracy;
• openness to ideas, wherever they come from;
• creating a competitive advantage by constantly improving quality, reducing costs and increasing the speed of work;
• self-confidence, sufficient to attract others and act without paying attention to existing restrictions and barriers;
• creation of a clear, simple and realistic vision and bringing its position to the team members;
• great energy and ability to charge others;
• setting aggressive tasks and rewarding progress, but not at the expense of responsibility and compulsion;
• attitude to change as to opportunities, not threats;
• global thinking, allowing to build diversified and international teams.
General Electric actively attracts young talents to the company, which is carried by attracting students of business programs at universities. In some cases, some mid-level positions are recruited through the standard recruitment process in the labor market (with a significant resume base available in the organization). The main sources of talent attraction in General Electric are:
• bachelors (graduates of colleges and universities) without work experience;
• humanistic specialists;
• engineering specialists;
• professionals with work experience in the middle of their careers;
• masters (in the field of finance, business administration, personnel management);
• professionals who have worked for some time in leading consulting companies.
Thanks to current perception of the brand as one of best employers with best job opportunities, great attention to career and personal interests of employees, General Electric can select the most skilled and suitable employees. One of the most important elements of talent management in the corporation is the evaluation of staff, which was called "Session C". The evaluation process includes the so-called "formal session", where the company's objectives, opportunities for implementing corporate initiatives, "promotability" of subordinates are usually considered. In addition, an important aspect of "Session C" is the analysis of the results obtained by evaluated people, earlier results of "360 degrees" assessment. Particular interest is the fact that General Electric assesses employees based on performance and development potential (skills, competencies, conformity to company values, etc.), classifying into three categories: best (20%, most efficient and possessing the largest potential), valuable (70%, having good results and medium development potential) and the least effective (10% of staff having low results and low potential). The first group is the "raw material" from which the leaders are made. The second group is the foundation of the GE system, the main manufacturing resour ce; the third group is the "options" for dismissal, the weak corporate link. Information on results and job opportunities is open and accessible to every employee. The company pays special attention to such direction of talent management as development, which
includes training, rotation and mentoring. This explains the fact that GE invests in the training of managers amount that many times exceed similar investments by other large companies. GE in 1956 opened the Leadership Training Center in Crotonville, which can be considered one of the first corporate universities. It should be noted that training in the company is almost a constant and continuous process. It necessarily involves acquaintance with the company's values, structure and system, the adaptation of new staff members.
At the same time, even if the worker has reached the position of managing director, education continues. The company attaches special importance to personnel rotation, this allows talented staff member to show current competence either of a higher level of administration, in completely new working conditions, or in complex and problematic areas, etc. The company makes a strategic bet for such rotations, even if in case of failure, financial problems are possible. One of the elements, almost "ingrown" in corporate philosophy, is mentoring. As well several mentors for the employee are possible in connection with the rotation. It is interesting that young employees can be mentors of older people, for instance, inside the field of using computer technologies. Finally, a special place in talent management approach is occupied by a special motivation approach founded on a combination of contribution and skills. Basic compensation is to be formed via basis grade system (positions), bonuses are based on results of "Session C". Also, some special meaning is carried by identification and support of leadership.
Procter and Gamble
Procter and Gamble corporation alongside with previously analyzed General Electric company is considered as one of the world's leaders in talent management. P&G was created in 1837 by the William Procter and James Gamble. Currently, company's plants are situated almost worldwide. Quantity of staff members is also astonishing and includes approximately 140 thousand people.
An important feature of talent management in P&G is so-called "success" drivers, which essentially are models of competencies themselves, based on the corporate culture and strategy of the company, including main values and goals. Special attention is to be drawn at "Destructors", which can add rather destructive force. The talent management system includes elements which traditionally exist throughout personnel management system, but obtain their own characteristics. Thus, stages of recruitment are the following:
1. Filling in an online application for a vacancy.
2. Online questionnaire, the reference to which is received after processing the application.
3. Test of thinking approach downloaded on corporate company's website.
4. A series of interviews with the employees of the department in which the application was submitted.
Almost 90% of staff members start their job at P&G from the bottom of the career ladder, followed by staged development inside the corporation. Recruitment service selects graduates in many countries of the world. Also, leaders are tending to be generated inside the company. Goal lies in identification values, goals of staff with the goals or values with corporate culture that has direct impact on the behavior of leaders. The traditional section is the evaluation, which is carried out annually for all employees. It includes three main components:
• self-assessment: an employee evaluates his results for the year, comparing them with his work and development plan;
• an assessment of 360 degrees: the employee receives feedback from everyone with whom he worked for a year, including from subordinates/clients;
• evaluation of manager's success stories described above. Based on assessment results, every employee develops an individual work and development plan, consisting of:
o work plan for next year alongside with expected results;
o short-term/long-term careerinterests,includinginterestinrotation,tasks,projectsthatemployeeisexpectedlike to engage in;
o a personal development plan that specifies one or two areas in which development will take place with specific measures.
Just like in General Electric, in P&G, the development includes three areas: training, mentoring and rotation. Peculiarity of training lies in profound development of company's goals. As well, in P&G each staff member can take two trainings during year, but they must be reflected in "upgrade" plans. In P&G, a direct supervisor or a more experienced specialist can act as a mentor. In addition, the choice for a mentor by worker can be allowed. A significant issue of career promotion in P&G is played by rotation, which has a specific feature: it is mainly carried out horizontally (between directions) and also in a geographical plan but this kind of rotation comes as a prerequisite of a career vertically. Motivation system is aimed at securing talented staff and includes two components: basic remuneration, bonuses. P&G conducts research on labor market competitors' salaries. But directly on level of earnings in P&G four factors affect:
• level/position;
• work experience;
• growth of salaries in the market;
• immediate achievements of the worker.
There is a set of formulas for determining the level of wages, taking into account all these factors as well. At same time, higher the professional "level" is, the higher maximum possible level of payments is. Moreover, higher the position is, greater the percentage of compensation is. This is called "payment of risk" and reflects the principle of the company, which admits inseparability of corporate and staff goals.
Some significant non-financial motivation approaches are used:
• active involvement of managers in career development and personal growth of each employee;
• flexible job hours (work from home, both financed and unpaid leave for various reasons, with the preservation of the workplace, etc.);
• a wide range of benefits;
• development programs in different countries in the framework of education, alongside with the chance to obtain geographically and functionally different work experience included for the rotation process.
The motivational systems used by the company within the framework of the leadership strategy are aimed at protecting and developing talented workers.
McDonald's
In McDonald's a very significant work sphere with personnel is the "Education Support Program", which is as well presented in the Russian market, one of the most important components of which is investment in the upgrading of young talent. The program assumes financial bonuses to the best employees of the company, which successfully combine work with study. Below the issues acted by McDonald's in terms of talent management are listed:
• social one: financial educational support (in Russia student workers could get 15-20 thousand rubles);
• professional function, as it allows young, successful, talented employees to combine the educational process with the mastery of competences that can be used in almost any profession;
• qualification issues, since it assumes continuity of education: in order to fall into the position of restaurant director, an employee must pass about 2,000 hours of training, while employees who have reached this position have the opportunity to study abroad, in particular in McDonald's Universities in the US and Germany, including at Hamburger University, the world's first corporate university established in 1961;
• recreational issues, as the company's restaurants are equipped with rest rooms, rest time is given (for a 9-hour shift there are two 15-minute and one 30-minute break);
• organizational issues, since flexible working hours are provided alongside with the opportunity to choose convenient hours of work, part-time employment, etc.
Personal Analysis
Thus, summing up, modern HR talent Management faces the following phenomena. Firstly, these are relatively higher general requirements for the quality of employees. As employees constantly feel pressure, realizing that compensation for their work is unfair, wages become the most important factor contributing to their overall job satisfaction. Secondly, the growth of the market of talent employees. Currently, the unemployment rate has fallen and it has become harder to find a new well-trained staff. Here, additional services and scheduling play a major role for the company. Another fact may be the company's unattractive c ulture. In this situation, there may not be an internship path with a mentor, but the execution of routine work. Employees are looking for a job offering benefits, an open communication policy and flexible planning. Companies, which do not meet at least some of these requirements will find it difficult to recruit suitable employees. Finally, the lack of options for growth and strong leadership inside the company. Senior management positions are experiencing the highest level of turnover. This creates a unique challenge for HR: the lack of leadership within the organization. To solve this problem, HR managers should have a meeting with the current leaders about developing of training plan for new managers, since the old ones are being replaced. This is not an easy task but the future of the company can very much depend on these preemptive measures.
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