BOOK REVIEW: "Talent Management : Financial Times Briefings" by Stephen Hoare and Andrew Leigh (2011)

Talent Management: Financial Times Briefings by Stephen Hoare and Andrew Leigh

Key words

Talent management, strategy, organizational culture, corporate culture, generation Y and generation X, women in business, Marks & Spencer, UPS, oil industry, Deloitte

Summary

Talent management is defined as “what an organization does to recruit, retain and develop talent for its future benefit.” This closely linked to the strategy and corporate culture and therefore the long term success of the organization. Understanding how to manage employees then is a key factor to maintaining profits.

Stephen Hoare is a well reputed journalist who has written extensively for newspapers such as The Financial Times, The Times and The Guardian. The book is a nice read over the summer break and gives many examples of management policies designed to improve overall HR performance.  It deals with two groups of workers in particular; women and the so called Gen Y. It compares how their motivation may be different to the standard male forty plus executive and gives some excellent tips for improving talent retention.

The book has some international examples from the USA and India but most of the companies are UK based. It also provides metrics for assessing talent and talent management policies.

Managing talent across borders

Some keys facts:

The length of time a big corporation can expect to stay up with the winners has fallen from 75 years in 1934 to just 15 years in 2010.

Marks & Spencer’s staff turnover is currently one of the lowest in the industry at 23% due to its talent management policies.

In the UK, around a third of newly qualified teachers give up teaching within their first three years. Having passed their probationary year in a school and becoming newly qualified, most receive no further career development.

When UPS studied why drivers left, they found that the turnover could be traced to the exhausting task of loading the trucks at the beginning of their shift.

Vineet Nayar: “employee first, customer second”

In the oil business, for instance, it costs around $60,000 to replace an employee. With 25,000 employees and 20% attrition rate an oil firm could pay an astronomical $30 million to replace lost talent.

Companies with the highest percentages of women corporate officers have, on average, a 35.1% higher return of equity and 34% more total return to shareholders than companies with the lowest percentages.

Talent management is a process. No two companies will adopt it in exactly the same way

Engaged employees work at up to three times the rate of the disengaged (William James, Harvard)

A Deloitte poll[1] revealed that while 65% of companies are nervous about losing high potential employees and critical talent to competitors, only 35% have updated their talent retention plans.

While most (89%) American companies have at least one woman at executive committee level, only 32% of European companies and 18% of Asian companies do.

Interesting quotes from the book:

The CEO of the Indian IT services giant HCL has a bracing motto: ‘employee first, customer second’. Yet Vineet Nayar is no flaky idealist. His company has 55,000 staff with a market capitalization of $24 billion.

 Significantly, the bigger the company the lower the levels of engagement amongst staff.

In the Fortune 500 companies, female executives leave at twice the rate of men because they become frustrated with their work environment.

Talent management is a process. No two companies will adopt it in exactly the same way; each is on a separate and unique journey towards making the best use of talent.

The Generation Y students, for example, fed on a diet of the internet and Facebook now expect to see video blogs and online diaries of role models from organizations to which they are considering applying.

The Generation Y students expect to see video blogs and online diaries of role models from organizations to which they are considering applying

Nurturing talents requires to value, involve, develop and inspire people (VIDI).

A recent US government survey[2] predicted that a typical Generation Y would have up to 10 jobs before the age of 38. While this figure may well be reduced by recession, it does reflect an increased appetite for change.

Emotional commitment is four times as valuable as rational commitment in producing discretionary effort.

According to the recent government report on engagement, a 1% increase in employee commitment can lead to a monthly increase of 9% in sales.

Business School  Grenoble EM  International Affairs   Higher Education   ESC Grenoble   Strategy  Blog  Global Ed   Graduate Business School    Mark Thomas

See also:

10 Corporations That Have a Major Hand in Higher Education

Sex…Past, Present and Future: Confusing your Xs and your Ys

Christine Lagarde becomes head of the IMF: Will this inspire future female business leaders?

  

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[1] ‘Critical Disparities between Employer Perceptions and Employee Turnover Intentions’, 2009, Deloitte study

[2] US Census for the Bureau of Labor