The wild hunt for talent and the next generation of leaders has started in the Swedish companies.  Perhaps that is why more and more companies become aware of the need for Talent Management strategies.

The last two weeks, I know about at least five Talent Management seminars only in Stockholm. StardustConsulting has participated in two of them. And more are to come, be sure.

A survey conducted in 27 western countries show that Sweden is the country with the lowest proportion of managers less than 40 years of age. Less than 15% (source: Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, November 2011).

Add to that this year is the first year when the influx of labor is lower than the outflow of the future pensioners. Now more than 100 000 people born in the forties begin to retire and the company that not yet has planned for succession and
knowledge transfer is facing huge problems. Even worse is that the Swedish companies are generally lousy at making better use of the foreign born and immigrants.

Keep in mind that it takes about 3-5 years to develop a good middle manager. Does your company have an eye on who are the next generation of leaders? Internally? Or externally? And are you sure they want to work in your company?

Research shows (Rodgers and JE Hunter, Bersin & Associates Factbook 2010) that companies that devote resources to setting goals in a logical way that cascades from top to bottom in the organization can increase their productivity by up to 57%!

 
Goals that are related to each other create meaning and a sense of being part of something greater among the employees. They understand where the company is heading and how their own work and personal goals contributes to the business success of the company.

 
There is an enormous potential in working with goal setting in a structured way to ensure  that the organization is in step towards the same goal. Nowadays, you can find good support systems on the market, mostly from the U.S., which make the process of goal setting easy to handle. Simple stand-alone modules or entire systems can be plugged into your HR system, where both managers and employees can work interactively with the goal setting process. Goals that are related in logical chains. Really simple actually!

 
How are your goals related to the company’s overall goals? And to what extent do they motivate you?

Personally, I find those assessments rather entertaining, but I do realize how valuable they must be for the recruiting organization. The wrong person at the wrong place costs a lot of money.

Not surprisingly, there has been plenty of research lately within the field of psychological testing, especially on what capabilities are best at determining success in the work place. And despite all the emphasis on social skills in job ads, the best predictor for success is actually IQ! Regardless of what position you are up for. (IQ predicts 65% of your future success. Grafology, on the other hand,  is hardly useful for predicting success at all)

The latest research has divided the psychological testing community into two camps: the robots and the fortune tellers. The robots claim that you can rely only on pure test results (primarily IQ tests), since that is evidence based. The fortune tellers, on the other hand, claim that you need additional input from other types of testing (e.g. more EQ inspired tests), and perhaps personal meetings to fully assess a candidate.

Within the field of psychology, the debate on how to best test a candidate rages on.  What do you think?

But, despite medalists (and a portion of doping) the 10,000 dollar question remains; is there an optimal way to identify and develop Talent?

Three conditions might give us some guidance:

First, the Talents need to have the right genetic conditions – some will develop and learn faster than others, which do not mean that anyone who takes a little more time will not be the best in the end.

Secondly, Talents need be exposed to different types of creative environments in order to find “their thing”. They need to try on different tasks and be challenged. Job rotation.

Thirdly, to develop Talent, people need to be encouraged, be seen, confirmed and coached by good leaders.

Conclusion: Companies investing in Talent Management need to understand these factors that contributes to Talent development  and consequently make Talent reviews at various times and in different forms and places. The responsibility to identify and develop Talent lies with the line managers.

Many other things, such as development opportunities and your closest boss are far more important.

But that doesn’t mean that compensation models cannot become both complex and complicated. Despite the fact that Sweden has one of the most harmonized salary distributions in the world, salary levels can still be taboo to speak about in many offices.

New research done by the organizational psychologist Teresia Stråberg (read a summarizing article in Swedish here) concludes that when workers feel confident about the compensation model they become more motivated. And her suggestion is that compensation models should be completely transparent across the organization.

Reflect just for a minute on your own work situation: is the compensation model transparent? Do you have clearly defined roles with expectations and goals provided for each role? Roles which you are regularly evaluated on, where the evaluation is directly connected to the salary level?

Because you sure don’t want your compensation to feel like a happening, or even worse, unfair. Do you?

At StardustConsulting we have a modern approach to Talent Management. For us, Talent Management is not about focusing on the 10 % top performers. For us Talent Management has a much wider definition. It is about how companies in a structured way attract, retain and develop the right employees, in order to implement their specific business plans.

Sounds simple in theory but is difficult in practice. It requires a structured approach and a holistic view where both business and HR experience is needed.   

My colleagues’ experiences from Management Consulting, McKinsey among others, coupled with my more than twenty years in sales, marketing and strategic HR seem to be the perfect match. We have fun, complement each other and the customers perceive us as really credible. We know what we are talking about. And our passion shows.

Typical projects for us are development of Talent strategies, refining Performance Management systems, Leadership improvements or Employer Branding strategies. We are off to a flying start, the interest and the need is huge out there. Now we need to keep up the pace, make a lot of sales calls and have fun. The last is important in order to cope with the large amount of work we foresee. Having fun is one of our internal values in StardustConsulting. We are having a lot of fun together and we have decided only to work with clients we really like and who like us back.

Charlotta Wikström

A few insights that I would like to share:

* HR is now perceived as critical for organizational success. Not only is HR invited to the table, they are also allowed to be provocative and are involved early in initiatives

* US companies are spending a lot on Leadership Development again. They realize they need another type of leadership than the one that brought them a recession

* Talent Management strategy is key. I.e. how do you develop a strategy for Talent Management that supports the overall strategy, and acts as an enabler of the company vision

As one person put it: “Most areas within HR are well thought through and structured. But the one hot area right now is Talent Management: that will be the real organizational differentiator as we are leaving the recession behind us”.

So how will it look 10 years from now? Is it fair to assume that “work” will change as much in the next ten years? If so, how will it change? And what is required of organizations to be successful going forward?

I am not sure that I have all the answers, but I have read an interesting report from EIC (the Economist Intelligence Unit), outlining ”the next decade of change for organizations and workers”,  that I think you also might enjoy. You can download it here.

Happy future!

Yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, PwC entered the stage and presented their 14th annual Global CEO report. (No, I am not in Davos. For some reason, Stardust didn’t feel like handing me the US$71,000 price tag required to get a ticket.)

In summary, the PwC survey identifies three focal points CEOs have set to drive strategic change internationally: innovation, talent and a shared agenda with government. As for talent, almost all companies recognize that their workforce is their most important competitive advantage, and almost 80% said that they plan to increase their commitment to attracting and developing a skilled workforce.

The war is on.

Download the report here.