June 2006

Companies Taking Different Approaches to Talent Management

Employers in a variety of businesses place a high priority on talent management to meet

growing workforce needs. At the same time, when it comes to developing and deploying a
coherent talent management strategy, most companies are still feeling their way. They don't
have a designated HR person to manage their talent programs, and they're using a wide array
of processes — usually informal ones — to meet their requirements.

These are some of the main findings of a Towers Perrin report, Talent Management: The State
of the Art, based on a survey of more than 250 HR executives, all with decision-making
responsibilities for talent or the overall workforce, or involvement in the day-to-day operation
of talent management programs.

Taking center stage

The survey found that talent management has moved to center stage for many HR managers.
Fully 75% now describe it as a critical issue for senior management, with only 23% citing it as
an emerging issue and a mere 3% calling it unimportant.

Companies also have a precise, and fairly narrow, definition of the kind of talent they're
seeking to identify, encourage and retain at various levels throughout the organization.
Generally, they focus on four categories: senior leadership, mid-level employees with
leadership potential, key contributors and technical experts, and entry-level employees with
leadership potential. For the most part, the talent pool averages about 15% of a company’s
total workforce, underscoring the fact that talent management is about a core cadre of people
crucial to delivering business strategy, while workforce management covers the entire
employee population.

The study also affirms that companies’ emphasis on talent management stems from a realistic
view of the complexity and scope of changes in the business environment. More than half
(51%) of respondents cited the changing competitive landscape and the constant need for
new skills, knowledge and behaviors as a force behind their talent management activities.
Increased focus on customer satisfaction and retention was cited by 48% of respondents
(Exhibit 1).

Unknown pathways
While employers recognize the importance of talent management and the link to achieving key
business objectives, most acknowledge that they can do more to build effective talent
management programs. But there’s widespread uncertainty about how to do that, which may
be why most companies (73%) do not have a formal position to manage talent programs and
do not intend to create one.

However, 6% have created a formal talent management position, and another 11% said they
will do so within the next year. These commitments are almost three times as common in large
organizations (those with more than 10,000 employees) as in smaller ones, and more than
twice as common in organizations that view talent management as a critical issue. More
significantly, companies that have created a distinct position around talent management
appear to gain an edge in building more effective processes faster and in adopting best
practices.

Array of informal processes

Companies indicated that they are using a wide array of talent management processes, but
most of these processes are still handled informally. Managing performance via a consistent
process and tools was the only formal talent management approach used by a majority of our
respondent companies. This appears to be changing, though, because roughly a fifth said they
planned to implement a number of formal talent management processes over the next 12 to
18 months (Exhibit 2). The survey was conducted at the end of last year.

Employers recognize that they have more to do in terms of establishing strong talent
management programs. They gave themselves a mixed report card on the extent to which
they follow what we consider to be best practices in talent management, including senior
leadership involvement, use of technology and training.

Companies that cited talent management as a critical issue were significantly more likely to
use these best practices than were the other companies in the survey. Most of the respondent
companies, however, intend to increase their focus on them in the near future, suggesting
there is growing agreement on their value in successfully managing talent (Exhibit 3).

Effectiveness of talent management approaches

Respondents have fairly divergent views about the effectiveness of a range of processes in the
areas of workforce planning, talent development and support for managers. Most are using a
variety of approaches in all of these areas, but just half the group — and often far fewer —
rated their activities as highly effective.

Company assessments of the effectiveness of a range of talent development practices are

shown in Exhibit 4. As you can see, on-the-job training ranked first in terms of prevalence and
effectiveness, followed by regular review of high-potential talent, stretch assignments, in-
house development programs, coaching and external training.

Although managers clearly have a major role to play in developing talent in their units,
respondents don’t believe their companies are providing the necessary support to ensure
managers can do this effectively. This may be one of the most troubling findings since it has
implications not only for talent development, but also a company’s ability to retain and engage
employees.

Ranking talent needs

Companies say their most pressing challenges today are developing existing talent and
forecasting talent needs. The picture shifts slightly over a longer time horizon, although the
focus on developing and retaining current talent holds. In fact, the biggest longer-term
challenge is retaining the right leadership talent. This likely reflects concerns about replacing a
shrinking number of more senior leaders and key contributors who are getting progressively
closer to retirement age, especially given the forecast decrease in new job entrants and
resulting increased competition for talent.

Survey respondents indicated that at this point in time they don’t generally believe their HR
organizations are fully ready to partner with the business in managing talent. Most (64%) are
supporting talent activities through their generalist structure, with just 7% using a talent
center of expertise. A third have nothing formal in place, although this may well change over
time. More troubling, however, is the fact that respondents expressed concerns about HR’s
skills in supporting the line, especially in areas connected to data and measurement for
decision making.

More to accomplish
Overall, our survey uncovered a broad range of talent management processes and practices,
few of which won strong accolades for effectiveness. But our data do show greater use of best
practices and higher perceived effectiveness for those companies that establish a formal
position and accountability for talent management and have an equally formal approach within
HR to develop and deliver talent programs.
While talent management is universally regarded as a good thing, it is more likely to translate
into effective programs and processes when companies dedicate resources and time to it —
typically because senior management has come to recognize its critical importance in
delivering the business strategy.
Back to top
Four steps to making talent management a core competence

Tony DiRomualdo • Published 06/08/05

Print article • E-mail article • Read 10 comments • Reprints

According to a study reported in the June 2005 issue of the Harvard Business
Review, 'people-driven' businesses are now predominant. But many companies, even
in people businesses, don't yet have the talent management processes they need to
excel. While organizations have perfected sophisticated techniques for managing
capital investments, suppliers and the production and flow of goods and services,
their capabilities in managing people seriously lag.

In their article, "The Surprising Economics of a 'People Business'" consultants Felix

Barber and Rainer Streck argue that people are now the most significant cost in
many industries when compared to spending on capital, R&D and suppliers. In
industries like advertising, IT services, financial and brokerage, engineering,
telecommunications and health care, personnel represents the largest component of
total spending (40 percent to 70 percent). These are what the authors refer to as
people businesses. They have high overall employee costs, a high ratio of employee
costs to capital costs and limited spending on activities like R&D.

Another category they identify is 'people-oriented' businesses. These are companies

where spending on personnel, while not the largest component of total spending, is
nonetheless significant because it exceeds capital costs. Companies in this category
include software firms, airlines, restaurants, pharmaceutical and chemical
companies, consumer goods and automotive. Only industries like utilities and oil
spend more on capital costs than on people.

The authors assert that in people and people-intensive businesses, the performance
of talent drives the overall performance of the company. And the distinct economics
of people-driven businesses call not only for different business performance
measures but also different management practices. In these businesses, where even
"the slightest changes in employee productivity have a significant impact on
shareholder returns, 'human resource management' is no longer a support function,
but a core process for line managers."
I agree with these assertions but would go one step further to say that in people-
driven businesses talent management must be a core competence for the entire
business. Not only should line managers be adept at managing people but the
corporation needs to have a robust people management capability that is clear,
coherent, and applied company wide.

Many companies are only beginning to appreciate the importance of enterprise wide
talent management. For example, I recently spoke with an HR executive in a large
services organization who indicated that her firm was finally waking up to the
importance of managing their talent in an integrated fashion across the enterprise.
The company realized it was losing tens of millions of dollars a year in unnecessary
recruitment and termination costs and lost productivity. Its approach to recruitment
was fragmented and not connected to other key talent management activities. It did
not have an enterprise view of vacancies and surplus people across the organisation.
Development and deployment of people were separate and non-integrated activities.
Lastly, there was no organizational focal point to oversee the process.

The result was that for several years hundreds of people were laid off in one part of
the business while hundreds of others, often with similar skills to those departing the
organization, were hired in other parts of the company.

Regrettably, this situation is not unusual in many organizations today. Indeed, many
companies are missing substantial opportunities to save costs and improve
performance by upgrading their talent management capabilities. There are four steps
that companies can take to quickly assess their talent management process and
begin improving their talent management competency:

Step 1 – Identify Key Roles. Analyze the key steps in each part of the talent life
cycle (identification and attraction, hiring and inculcation, motivation and
development, appraisal and reward, building and sustaining relationships) and map
the key players and their roles and responsibilities to each stage. Are there gaps in
responsibilities – key activities that no one is directly accountable for? Are there
overlapping responsibilities – multiple people responsible for the same activity? Are
the right people in the right roles? Are line managers provided with consistent and
effective processes, guidelines and tools for managing talent?

Step 2 – Take an Inventory of Your Talent Management Skills. Identify the critical
skills needed to play the key roles in the talent life cycle effectively. To what extent
does your company employ people who possess them? What might you do to
improve or develop them? What are you doing in-house that might be better
outsourced? What have you outsourced that you should be doing in-house?

Step 3 – Measure the Right Things. Assess the measures you use to evaluate the
performance of your talent management process at each life cycle stage such as
offer-to-hire ratios, average tenures of new hires, performance ranking, skill fit to job
requirements, etc. What data are you capturing and reporting? Does it feed directly
into a enterprise talent scorecard? How do these measures align with your overall
talent management strategy?

Step 4 – Set Up a Process-Wide Feedback Loop. Everyone managing talent needs to

understand the big picture and to connect their role and responsibilities to the overall
objectives of the process. How is data captured in each stage of the life cycle
reported and communicated? How are knowledge and experiences shared across the
process? Where are the information gaps and missed communications? How much
feedback is formally captured and communicated versus informally discussed among
staff? What key actions might you take to improve your feedback mechanisms?

With so much of the costs and performance of a business now dependent on people,
isn't it time managing them became a core competency of your organization?

Tony DiRomualdo is a business researcher, writer, and advisor with Next Generation
Consulting. He works at the intersection of people, business strategy, and
information technology to help companies create a committed and high performance
workforce. Tony can be reached at td@nextgenerationconsulting.com.

The opinions expressed herein or statements made in the above column are solely
those of the author, & do not necessarily reflect the views of Wisconsin Technology
Network, LLC. (WTN). WTN, LLC accepts no legal liability or responsibility for any
claims made or opinions expressed herein.
 Talent Management: Something Productive This
Way Comes
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 | by Howard Adamsky
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by Dr. John Sullivan

Talent management is nothing new. It has been around for a long time and worn
many guises. It is, however, holistically a concept whose time has come. And if
you are an HR professional looking to justify your existence, bringing talent
management to the forefront of human resources is a step in the right direction.

Talent management means a host of different things to different people. I

personally see it as an all-encompassing model of what HR should have been
doing in the first place.

For openers, let's define my version of the ideal role of HR within a given
organization: "The purpose of HR is to act as a business unit whose primary
responsibility is to partner with and proactively support senior management's
business objectives as they relate to human capital."

With this as an operational definition, let's look at the primary areas that need to
be addressed and use them as a rule of thumb.

Please understand, the following categories can be subdivided endlessly, with no

argument from me. But for the sake of simplicity, let's look at six areas that
really matter, with a few sample details to consider in each one. The better you
are doing in these areas, the more measurable value you are adding to the
organization. The converse of this is true as well — so ignore this advice at your
own peril.

Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is a big part of supporting organizational growth. It requires

you to work closely with senior management. Together, you have to plan not only
the number of employees to be hired but also the types of skill sets and core
competencies that these employees must possess. You also have to plan the
hiring schedule and help to architect what the organization will look like down
the road.

All of this, of course, is easier said than done. But I recommend you to think
about the following:

• Plan your strategy as far into the future as possible. No one expects
perfection, but the more well thought out the projections, the better you
know what will be expected of your organization. Be sure to have a "Plan
B" in place that you can fall back on, in the event changes in anything
from shifting markets to economic gyrations come into play.
• Keep in mind that there are pre-packaged solutions for talent
management. Purchase them and use them as tools only. Beware of "one
size fits all" templates. Nothing takes the place of ongoing communication
and common sense.
Recruiting

Recruiting is the bugaboo (I always wanted to use that word) of most

organizations. It is like quicksand. It can eat up every second that you are alive
and still ask for more. Besides, identifying and attracting the best employees is
never an easy task, because good people are always hard to find.

Recruiting is also usually very expensive, which makes it an ideal place to make
or save money for your organization. Recruiting alone is good for another 20
articles, so just consider the following points in this talent management
discussion:

• Hiring the best candidate is Job One. Nothing else matters. Diversity does
not matter (don't yell at me on this; I am a fanatic believer in the value of
diversity). Politics do not matter. The boss' sister-in-law who has been out
of work since 1965 does not matter. There are no sacred cows here. The
candidate hired must be the best candidate for the job. End of story.
• Develop a good, fair, comprehensive and cost-effective recruiting
methodology and be sure that everyone is on board. No one was ever
sorry that they had a good recruiting machine. Make it your business to
build the machine and gather data along the way for the metrics you will
need to demonstrate its value and that the resources were well spent.
Human Capital Development

Human capital development covers many different areas. Frequently it will

involve working with senior management to do such things as:

• Identifying the best "athletes" your organization employs. These

are the people whom you do not want going to the competition. They are
usually about 20% of the workforce. (Be aware that these groups are fluid
and morph constantly. An employee might be in one group one year and
in another group the next year. The only constant is change.)
• Identifying the second tier. These are the individuals who are not quite
there yet, but with the right career development and strategic
management programs will soon be a part of the above mentioned group.
Think of them as the farm team, as they are also superb athletes.
• Carefully managing the remaining group to motivate, inspire, and
squeeze every ounce of productivity out of each player.
• Creating and developing new and challenging professional
development programs and avenues for employee advancement to aid
in creating a stronger workforce and improving retention.
Diversity

Diversity is a very important component of talent management. It helps to

provide the broadest possible intellectual and cultural capital through
management's attempts to hire the most diverse set of qualified employees.

There are many ways to achieve organizational objectives. One way is to cull
candidates from different backgrounds, cultures, and viewpoints to create a rich
tapestry from which to draw intelligent plans of action.

When one thinks of diversity it is usually about race, religion, or other

divergences. But be advised that diversity of thought and opinion is every bit as
important as diversity of anything else. You can have the most racially,
religiously, and gender diverse workforce on earth. But if each employee is a
middle-aged Republican who lives in a suburban town and drives an SUV, I
question the true diversity that exists within your organization and the value
derived from what I see as the illusion of diversity.

Please consider the following in the diversity part of the talent management
cycle:

• You cannot achieve diversity unless you understand the value it brings to
the organization. Diversity is not a numbers game or saying that you are
an Equal Opportunity Employer. Diversity only comes when there is a real
commitment to go the extra mile to make it happen as opposed to going
through the motions of making it happen. I know HR people that talk
about diversity but really do not seem to understand, on a guttural level,
 the true value it brings to the organization. Because of this poor insight,
their organization is at a real disadvantage.
Employee Relations

Employee relations is serious business. It is hard to get the job done if no one is
getting along.

Employees should value diversity of thought, respect individual differences, and

try to work together in an effective manner. Sadly, reality is not always in
alignment with this model. Understand this: employee relations is not the belief
that everyone should be happy all of the time. You are a businessperson, not a
therapist. Employee relations is all about dealing with interpersonal issues and
doing what you can to fix them for the sake of organizational productivity. The
idea is to remove the rough spots that slow down the machine and create
inefficiency.

I urge you to consider the following:

• How you handle employee relations demonstrates your ability and

business judgment. Time is money. Some employees are high
maintenance. How much time should you put into these employees and
workplace situations? It is a judgment call. Once again, be advised it is a
business decision, and you are a businessperson who is running a
business unit. No one is irreplaceable, and sadly, some employees might
be happier at another organization. (Boy, do I wish I had space to write
more about this issue alone!)
• Work with people to help solve their problems, but do not solve their
problems for them. They will never learn anything if you do. Your best bet
is to coach high maintenance employees in first avoiding problems,
solving them only when they get stuck. You are not a guidance counselor,
and this is not fifth grade (sure seems like it sometimes, doesn't it?).
Employee Retention

In every organization there is a necessity to work closely with certain individuals

in order to retain them (on the other end of the scale, there are employees who
desperately need to be fired). Retention is the art and science of keeping those
employees who are most valuable in supporting the organization's business
objectives engaged, growing, developing professionally and happily employed.

This is not as easy as it sounds, but the following is worth thinking about:

• Employee retention costs money, but the cost of losing the people within
your organization you wish to keep is far more expensive. Lack of
retention will lead to entropy. Nothing good can come of that plan.
• Poor retention has a corrosive effect on every aspect of your organization.
It affects employee morale, customer/client relations, productivity, and
cost per hire. It impacts the very culture of your company.
As you can see talent management, is a huge undertaking and requires a
commitment from senior management in order to become and remain effective.
But the future of the organizations we work for will require nothing less than a
full commitment to talent management in order to meet the rigors of competing
globally.

We owe it to this country to try to get back on track and do all we can to
dominate in all possible marketplaces. Such commitment will help us to do so.

Howard Adamsky (howard@hrinnovators.com) has been recruiting since 1985 and is still alive to
talk about it. A consultant, writer, public speaker, and educator, he works with organizations to
support their efforts to build great companies and coaches others on how to do the same. He has
over 20 years' experience in identifying, developing, and implementing effective solutions for
organizations struggling to recruit and retain top talent. An internationally published author, he is a
regular contributor to ERE Media, a member of the Human Capital Institute's Small and Mid-Sized
business panel, a Certified Internet Recruiter, and rides one of the largest production motorcycles
ever built. His book, Hiring and Retaining Top IT Professionals/The Guide for Savvy Hiring Managers
and Job Hunters Alike (Osborne McGraw-Hill) is in local bookstores and available online. He is also
working on his second book, The 25 New Rules for Today’s Recruiting Professional

Talent Constellations or Talent Communities – Choosing the

Right Talent
Tony DiRomualdo • Published 10/16/03
Print article • E-mail article • Add your opinion • Reprints
Model for High Performance

Today’s business conditions provide a golden

opportunity to tune your talent strategy. While the battles for talent might appear to
have calmed, the long-term winners will be those firms who move beyond battlefield
tactics to long-term winning strategies. Real competitive advantage comes from
making a clear choice in your overall talent strategy and fundamentally aligning your
talent management practice to that choice, even when the talent battle heats up.

My study of the talent management practices of more than one hundred U.S. and
European-based businesses suggests that companies achieving high performance
have two things in common:

First, each has a distinctive attitude - a very clear point of view about people and
the role people play in competitive advantage.

Second, the most successful companies have “bet the firm” on one of two quite
distinct talent management approaches in alignment with their core people attitude.
In essence, they are either a Talent Constellation or a Talent Community.

Talent Constellations leverage the individual and group performance of an elite group
of the brightest people.

Talent Communities take the opposite approach – recruiting and retaining ordinary
people and getting extraordinary performance from them.
Talent Constellations mimic the operation of free markets – individuals acting
rationally pursuing their self-interests in ways that increase the greater good.

Talent Communities are like families – individuals members are strongly bonded to
the group and further their individual interests by pursuing the collective good of the
whole community.

Companies that successfully adopt these models demonstrate a strong point of view
about talent. They know what they are after. They feel strongly about who to hire
and who to keep and are not afraid to reject high-caliber candidates because they
lack the key behaviors or skills that defines their organization.

Who is the Star—the Individual or the Organization?

Talent Constellations are companies built around exceptional individuals. They seek
to create environments where these individuals can grow, perform and be rewarded
to their fullest potential. This model of talent is oriented toward specialists
performing work that requires high degrees of skill, knowledge and expertise. It is
predominant in professional fields like investment banking, academia, consulting,
law, medicine, and the arts. Examples of successful implementations of this model
are General Electric, McKinsey, Microsoft, Intel, the Harvard Business School and
PepsiCo.

In the Talent Community, the sum worth of talent is greater than the individual
parts. Companies adopting this model feel it is of paramount importance to create an
environment, culture and practices that maximize the performance of the
organization as a whole, rather than relying disproportionately on the contributions
of key individual talent. Talent Communities shine in every industry. Among the
companies that excel at this model are Whole Foods, SAS, Men’s Wearhouse, St.
Luke’s, and Southwest Airlines.

Choosing the Right Talent Model

Which model is better, the Talent Constellation or Talent Community? It depends

upon the nature of your business: an investment bank might thrive on the
performance of a relatively small number of deal-making stars, while a distributed
service business such as an airline would rely on strong and consistent performance
across the organization. The decision also depends on your business priorities,
culture, values and beliefs. St. Luke’s highly successful democratic approach to
running its business is atypical for the advertising industry where firms built around a
small group of creative and management talent are the norm. Kookmin Bank in
South Korea has assumed a leadership position in the country’s banking industry by
building its business strategy around recruiting, developing and paying individual
performance-based compensation to top talent, an approach that breaks with the
industry and cultural norm of paying everyone the same wage for the same job.

Can a single organization excel at both of these models, or some hybrid – getting the
most out of exceptional talent and achieving extraordinary performance from the
workforce at large? The answer is NO. Such an approach dilutes focus and
compromises performance, yet many corporations unconsciously pursue this method,
vacillating in their priorities and treatment of employees. At best, you get separate
and rival camps and cultures competing for attention and resources. At worst,
performance-sapping contradictions and conflicts wreak havoc beneath a superficial
guise of balance.

As Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Standford Business School has pointed out, “There is not a
shortage of good talent, but a shortage of great companies to work for.” Want to
become a great company to work for? Then clearly choose between the Talent
Constellation and the Talent Community model and fundamentally align your talent
management practice to that choice.

_____________________________
Tony DiRomualdo is a business researcher, writer, and advisor with Next Generation
Consulting. He works at the intersection of people, business strategy, and
information technology to help companies create a committed and high performance
workforce. Tony can be reached at td@nextgenerationconsulting.com.
To win in a knowledge economy you have to acquire the best knowledge! As the
knowledge economy evolves, the world of talent acquisition is undergoing drastic
change. In this article, I will uncover the technologies to help large companies
leverage the latest strategies to lead in this new economy and show the likely
economical implications of those new applications.

You acquire knowledge by different means: some by training existing staff or

redistributing it internally; or by externally acquiring new skills. Here I will not cover
internal retraining, but rather focus on optimizing skills within companies and the
external acquisition of these skills. To help explain, let’s take the analogy of what
actions and technologies you would use to find a restaurant.

Finding a Restaurant Tomorrow

If you are driving around looking for a good restaurant, knowledge can help you
reach your destination faster. A long time ago, people had only one way to know the
location. That was to have been there before or to have been given an explanation of
how to get there by someone who went there before. Then signs came along as a
way to help people find their way around. Next maps gave us the ability to locate
where we were and give us directions on how to get there.

More recently, the world has expanded the possibilities. Now, global positioning
systems (GPS) can help you locate where you are, and tell you. Automatically, they
show or even tell where you want to go at any time. Some even more advanced
systems will actually recommend restaurants according to your taste. Those who
have tried GPS in their car, however, know it is still sometimes better to have
somebody in the car who knows the city well.

GPS technology is not yet perfect but we are close to a technology solution that will
not only learn our taste, recommend a good restaurant and tell us if it is reasonable,
but also share third party reviews of the eatery. So, what are the similarities between
technologies to find a restaurant and those to find a job?

A Short History of Acquiring Human Capital (Recruiting Talent)

In the past, we had a referral system. “I know somebody who is looking to hire
somebody like you.” That still operates today. Next came the “signage” stage,
advertising that we were looking for somebody. This signage went from the physical
world, such as the store window, to the paper world of the classifieds. Today it is
further extended to the online world in the form of online job posting. But, as you
can imagine, there is a revolution—the equivalent of the GPS technology—in the
technologies to find a job, or to find talent to fill a job.

How Are Corporations Optimizing Their Search for Talent?

Today companies use a combination of techniques to find, or source, talent.

Advertising was the first way to find talent and a retained resume was the tool par
excellence. Today the Internet changes many interactions and makes it easy for
corporations to maintain relationships with prospective candidates. At iLogos, we
follow the evolution of career web sites by tracking the latest usage and best
practices of large corporations. In our research, we identified 20 factors of success to
begin efficient recruiting with technology.

Before covering these 20 best practice factors, though, I want to make clear that
using a corporate web site only as an online front-end to recruiting data or to simply
attract viewers is not very useful. You need to integrate the user interface with a
back-end process to improve recruiting efficiency.

In our research, we found that best career sites contain the following 20 sections.

1. A link to Careers Section from the Homepage

2. About the Company: Benefits
3. About the Company: Culture
4. Separate College Recruiting Section
5. Job Search by Job Category/Department
6. Job Search by Location
7. Job Search by Keyword
8. Urgent Need Jobs Highlighted
9. Complete Job Description
10. One Click to Apply
11. Pre-Assessment Tools Customized for Each Job Position
12. Choice of Cut-and-Paste Form or Resume Builder
13. Attachment of Formatted Resume
14. Application Automatically Connected to a Job Position
15. Anonymous Application
16. Email to Friend
17. Job Agent
18. Profiling
19. Reuse of Candidate Information for Multiple Applications
20. User Feedback

Full details on all the Best Practices for Fortune 500 Career Web Site Recruiting are
available at www.recruitsoft.com/ilogosreports. Now, we’ll look at two important
practices: Profiling and the Job Agent.
Profiling

Profiles of candidates compile information about their career preferences in a

predefined way.

Profiling is a matter of matching, not filtering, candidates to job positions. The

traditional resume has sections covering education and work experience. Profiling,
instead, standardizes the gathering of a candidate’s job preferences and overall
conditions of employability.

Conditions of employability refers to such issues as:

Skills level and development

Willingness to relocate

Attitudes toward business travel

Expected salary range

Availability or start date

Preferred working conditions: shifts, full-time/part-time, telecommuting.

The recruiter also has the opportunity to gather information such as “Languages
Spoken” that, while appearing on some candidates’ resumes, may not appear on all.
Profiling ensures that this information is gathered from each candidate in a
standardized way.

Profiling resembles a resume builder: an online form presents the jobseeker with a
number of predetermined questions. They then choose from a set of predetermined
options; there are no free-text fields, which would require interpretation.

Unlike a resume builder, which is presented to the applicant at the very end of the
job search and application process, profiling can occur at a very early stage. A first-
time visitor to a Careers section is prompted to register with the site, which provides
profiling information. This information can become part of a record the candidate can
save on the site, with a password, for future use and updating. Also, visitors who
proceed directly to a job search can be prompted to complete a profile when they
apply for a particular job position.

Job Agent

During a visit to a company’s Careers section, a jobseeker may register with a “Job
Agent” to be informed if a position matching his or her job skills and interest arises in
the future.

The Job Agent asks the jobseeker to provide his or her email address, and to answer
a few simple questions. The email address enables the jobseeker to be contacted at
a future date. The questions form a picture of the jobseeker’s interests. At a
minimum, the jobseeker is asked to indicate his or her desired location and job
category.

To do this, the jobseeker typically selects from lists built into the Job Agent,
reflecting the company’s locations and business areas. A jobseeker, for example, can
select the job category “Marketing” from the supplied list of job categories. Questions
on such topics as the jobseeker’s salary requirements or willingness to travel help to
build a more detailed profile and can be used for the person registering with the Job
Agent.

When a position matching the profile supplied by the jobseeker arises, that jobseeker
receives a notifying email. The email can give a short description of the job so the
potential candidate can make a quick, on-the-spot assessment of his or her interest.
The email invites the jobseeker to return to the company’s Careers section and apply
immediately to the job position. Typically, the email provides a link that leads the
jobseeker directly back to that job’s online application.

Implications of The Job Agent

As shown on the chart below, a Job Agent is used by only six percent of Fortune 500
companies. That level of adoption shows that we are at a very early stage for this
practice.

The Job Agent is the equivalent of having an intelligent friend to remind you what is
available out there according to the criteria that you selected. But most Job Agents
have been based on simple tools that work with keyword matching technology and
have no learning or evolution capability.
As described earlier, profiling is the complement to make this technology useful for
both the jobseeker and the corporations. It allows a true match between the two and
provides true value.

The Gap Between the Supply and Demand of Talent

Friction or a lack of direct and clear communication characterizes inefficient markets.

Today, the human capital world is full of friction. We often hire a candidate because
we can find no one better or, because there is nothing open, we cannot allow another
candidate to grow.

Tomorrow that will improve. Large corporations will be allowed to maintain their own
database of candidates where automated skills matching will be performed between
the supply of talent and the demand for talent. Historically friction has been very
high when acquiring human capital because of the many imperfections in the
medium of communication. The lack of a standard communication platform has
caused a supply and demand disconnect. We tried to fix this communication problem
by imposing a standard of communication to describe skills: the resume. But today,
the databases and the Internet technologies allow companies to define a new
standard. Today a new dynamic platform has been created: a corporate-wide skill
database that allows candidates and corporations to produce a better match and
reduce the friction.

Finding a Job Tomorrow

Tomorrow your dynamic profile of skills will be available and will streamline the
process of matching talent to requisition. Like the intelligent guide to your restaurant
of choice, the route to filling and mining your talent pool will be vibrant and efficient.
Dynamic, updated databases and automated interactive communications will enable
a good fit for both jobseeker and corporation. Companies will also be able to utilize
personal and corporate-wide skill databases to link demand of skills or talent
internally or externally and even help build people’s skills through training and
elearning.

What Will Technology Change for the Economy?

Technology and automation in human capital are here to stay. If you are competing
for talent, technology is key to speed. If you are in a slow down, technology is key
for maximum efficiency. Technology will also most likely influence the speed of the
economic recovery. Time to fire can be very short; that process is easy. But time to
hire has produced an intrinsic friction because of the inefficiency of the
communication process between jobseekers and corporations. With Internet
technology bringing better efficiency to recruiting, that friction is diminishing. Hiring
can accelerate and corporations can gear back up with less lag time once economic
conditions change.

The Internet and its related technologies are changing the backbone of the intrinsic
structure of our information exchange. Those who are not rewiring their processes
today could be swept away by the next wave!

Yves Lermusiaux is President and founder of the Internet recruiting intelligence consultancy, iLogos Research. He
is a widely sought after public speaker, consultant, and industry analyst on the topic of online recruiting, and has
been quoted in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Standard and Time magazine. Contact him
at yves@ilogos.com.

VYL040301GR

How to keep young talent working for you

Tony DiRomualdo • Published 04/28/04

Print article • E-mail article • Add your opinion • Reprints

Many companies are their own worst enemies

when it comes to retaining young talent. I’ve lost count of the number of managers
I’ve met that have given up on this task. Many seem to believe that young people
have some form of career ADD or commitment phobia that prevents them from
staying in any one company for more than a few years. This is a myth. While there
are undoubtedly some young people who have ants in their pants, it is an inaccurate
and unfair description of an entire generation. It focuses attention on the supposed
inadequacies of young talent while avoiding the real root cause of the problem –
outmoded organizational designs and constrictive management practices.

There should be no mystery about why many companies have trouble holding on to
young workers. Young people know the score. They understand that their
employability and career is their complete responsibility. They recognize that a key to
their success is constant learning. Because learning in many corporations today
happens almost exclusively on-the-job, they depend on their work for continual
growth and development. But most jobs, particularly entry level ones, are narrowly
defined. Opportunities to take on new responsibilities or try new things are often
scarce.

Growth and advancement through promotion into new positions is severely limited in
many organizations as well. The downsizing of management has shrunk vertical
advancement paths and few organizations have bothered to create any horizontal
ones. Despite their rhetoric about constant change, managers, especially in large
corporations, are notoriously reluctant to allow workers any real freedom to move
into a different role or change their work. “Shut up and be thankful you have a job”
seems to be the prevailing attitude of many managers when confronted with this
situation by their young charges.

But mobility is exactly what many young people require most to stay with a
company. Providing an environment that offers continuous opportunities to grow and
learn through frequent changes in roles, responsibilities and projects is the ticket for
building a sense of loyalty in young talent. Creating such an attractive environment
for young workers is not easy. It requires organizational and management practices
that make control-obsessed managers squirm in their Aeron chairs. Freedom to learn
and grow through frequent change however is a fundamental part of the culture and
way of operating of organizations that keep young talent consistently stoked. They
frequently turn off the seat belt sign for jobs to let workers be free to move about
the business. And once young talent settles back into a new seat in the organization,
they have plenty of leg room to stretch out and grow.

SEI Investments, a leading global provider of asset management and investment

technology solutions, has a stellar record of motivating and retaining its young
workers. The company understands their deep need for challenges and learning. It
organizes staff exclusively in teams to allow frequent changes of job assignment and
cross learning and is not afraid to let younger team members take on new
challenges. Young staffers are also encouraged to take advantage of the company’s
mentor network to get direction and guidance as well as identify new learning
opportunities and job assignments.

At W.L. Gore & Associates, the maker of Goretex®, continuous learning is expected
of all staff. New hires joining the company take on a particular “commitment” not a
job. The company believes that narrowly defined jobs and titles limit people. New
staffers are assigned a sponsor - an associate who helps the newcomer get
acclimated and rapidly productive. A key goal is to find a "quick win" – a project or
idea that puts the person on a fast track to accomplishment and to moving on to new
projects and responsibilities. Sponsors give the person a basic understanding of his
or her commitments and what it will take to be successful in those commitments.
Sponsors are motivated to nurture and mentor their charges. Helping others to grow
and achieve is a key success criteria for all Gore associates.

Having trouble keeping young talent? Try challenging them, stretching them,
stimulating them, letting them try new things, and allowing them to learn by doing
and failing. Allow change to happen more frequently than every couple of years. If
you can do these things you will not only keep the young talent you have but will
become a magnet for the young stars of other organizations.

________
Tony DiRomualdo is a business researcher, writer, and advisor with Next Generation
Consulting. He works at the intersection of people, business strategy, and
information technology to help companies create a committed and high performance
workforce. Tony can be reached at td@nextgenerationconsulting.com.

*****
The opinions expressed herein or statements made in the above column are solely
those of the author, & do not necessarily reflect the views of Wisconsin Technology
Network, LLC. (WTN). WTN, LLC accepts no legal liability or responsibility for any
claims made or opinions expressed herein.

From the basement to the boardroom at Valero

Energy:The strategic imperative in talent planning
Valero Energy?s ability to grow from a small company to a global mega-corporation

over a six-year period is a tremendous story.

Introduction:

Dan Hilbert, manager of employment services, joined Valero Energy in December

2002. He recently received recognition as a finalist in ERE's Recruiter of the Year

award based on his transformation of Valero’s talent acquisition program through

strategic recruitment leadership, data analysis and workforce planning.

Valero Energy’s ability to grow from a small company to a global mega-corporation

over a six-year period is a tremendous story. The transformation of its staffing

organization to go from the basement to the boardroom is a “next practices” talent

management study to be emulated by every company’s HR and staffing leaders. It

transcends the evolution of HR going from “personnel administrators to human

capital strategists.”

Background:

Dan Hilbert has a history of driving innovation and change wherever he goes. In the
past two years, Hilbert has transformed Valero’s staffing function into a state-of-the-

art, business-driven department, built upon technology, precision forecasting,

metrics, indices and continually evolving best practices and processes.

Hilbert passionately comments, “When the war for talent is waged over the Internet,

major corporations will be won and lost over staffing technology.”

Overcoming the Obstacles:

Valero’s expansion required fast and drastic action in the recruitment arena to keep

pace with competition, growth and customer demand. When Hilbert joined Valero,

the department was mired in the day-to-day administration and processing of

applicants and requisitions. There was no plan or strategy, resulting in recruiting

being reactionary and having to always play catch up.

The Plan:

“To start, we mapped every single component of the recruitment business so we

could understand it inside and out,” says Hilbert. This takes time and discipline to do

correctly, but Hilbert was convinced that reforms could not begin until he knew what

needed to be changed. Over the course of three months, Hilbert and his team

mapped the entire recruiting process.

Hilbert knew that the paper process had to end without delay. The organization, with

almost 20,000 employees at the time, was far too large and growing much too

quickly to function efficiently without recruiting technology. However, he did not

immediately purchase a hiring management system.

“Once we were able to map all of the processes, I was able to see our processes—

what worked and what didn’t—and then model what Valero needed in a system to

support its new processes,” explained Hilbert. “When we chose an applicant tracking
system (ATS), we were able to tell vendors exactly what we wanted. We invited

vendors to Valero and then rated vendors based on our pre-defined criteria versus

what they felt we needed. We had our needs fully defined before we invited any

vendors to demonstrate products.” Time studies of recruiters performing tasks in

each ATS were conducted, and recruiters ranked systems on ease-of-use.

“To our surprise, a mid-size vendor from Dallas scored high on every test,” Hilbert

mused. “And, then they scared the heck out of us with their bid. It was too low!”

Eighteen months later, Hilbert says with smile, “Signing the papers with HRsmart

was a major cornerstone of the success and awards we have received in the Staffing

Department at Valero.”

But the discussion of technology gets us ahead of ourselves. Hilbert’s goal was to

elevate the profile of talent acquisition in Valero. Hilbert understood how critical a

world-class staffing capability was to Valero’s success, growth plans and competitive

position in its industry. In his words, he felt it necessary to move recruiting “from the

basement to the boardroom” to accomplish this.

Time for Action

After only six months, the pieces were in place for the industry’s first fully functional

Labor Supply Chain. “It was all built on business principles and aligned with the

corporate and business unit plans. It was designed to make HR look like it was a

business. The HR VP embraced it, as did his boss,” explained Hilbert.

Hilbert believes it is essential to map and model recruitment planning to the business

objectives. The Holy Grail, according to Hilbert, that will help you move from the

basement of staffing to a partner in the boardroom is a first rate Labor Impact and

Needs Analysis system.

“Any staffing leader who hasn’t completed (and maintained) a labor gap and needs

analysis will never get out of the basement. That’s the bridge to the senior

executives. I’m watching it happen and it’s phenomenal. They’re skeptical at first,

and then you show them the model, the formulas and the soundness of those the

model and formulas. Once it’s solid, any questions about the calculations are

dismissed. Then it’s about the data—how far back can you go to make it more valid,

and how can we use regression analysis and other methods to project trends. It is

fun to observe their buy-in. Sound data in decision-making is very important to good

senior executives. It is their language,” explains Hilbert.

“Certain industries and skills will be extraordinarily affected by the demographics. If it

applies to you, innovative systems and processes are needed. If your primary means

of hiring is getting experienced people, you are in a position of crisis. The entire

industry in some cases will lose 50 percent of its workers to retirement within a few

years. If your strategy is to poach, you’re going to be in a tough spot. For some,

when the crunch comes you’ll go out of business. The planning and reform has to

start now,” advises Hilbert.

“In the Human Capital Institute’s terms, we are having to go through a preservation

of human capital while transferring intellectual capital in order to survive, let alone,

compete. We also have to understand the nature of bringing in foreign talent. This is

a proactive project, and you have to have next year’s plans filed with immigration by

the previous October. The college hire is up to five years out, and internal

development needs planning also. Being reactive is no longer going to do it for

Valero,” says Hilbert. “In addition, this isn’t just about a traditional company like

Valero. It’s about every small start-up to large 21st century company.”
Whether or not your company is in a preservation of human capital mode or one with

a predominantly young workforce, your workforce will either be a supplier of talent

(depleting your human capital intelligence) or needing to be on the forefront of

creative and strategic sourcing for labor supply chains.

Hilbert notes, “Valero sees this as an opportunity to dominate a labor force for years

to come and increase shareholder value. We have superb leadership at the top that

is committed to enduring success.”

The Outcomes

This kind of thinking sounds like it might be music to senior executives’ ears. So how

has Hilbert fared since unveiling his new approach?

“No longer do they simply call me demanding 10 accountants. Now I’m sitting with

the executives consulting on longer-term needs and strategies for talent. The ability

to quantify and articulate value is made easier also. If you have a project that needs

five mechanical engineers and is designed to earn $200 million per year in revenue,

the human capital value to the project is $40 million per engineer, per year – that’s

what’s at stake in finding the right people, quickly and efficiently. That’s the value

talent acquisition brings. They respect that,” Hilbert elaborates.

The Bottom Line

In addition to gaining a place at the strategic level in the organization, Hilbert

believes that Valero is now “world-class” when it comes to hiring and has caught up

with his company’s world-class status ranking as one of “Fortunes Top 100

Companies to Work For” over the past five consecutive years. He and his team have

earned six awards already, and they continue to innovate. “It’s all about the team and

the talent you surround yourself with and about meeting the standards of Valero’s

world-class executive management,” says Hilbert.

“The ability to build one of the best staffing groups in the country earned us respect,

but that labor impact and needs analysis system is what gained us partnership with

senior executives. The results, after you’ve done the gap analysis, are what are

amazing. When you have a major new capital project with plans for hundreds of

millions of dollars in revenue, you can see the value of a well-oiled labor supply

chain. This model puts a quantifiable value to it.”

Hilbert again speaks to the importance of technology, “You have to be aligned with

the business and from there it’s about planning and implementation on top of and

surrounded by technology. The HRsmart technology suite provided the integral,

flexible infrastructure to support our five-year staffing model and objectives.”

What’s Next?

Hilbert’s next steps at Valero include a system to capture critical intellectual property

and to propagate expert practices through a Knowledge Management System being

developed by HRsmart. He believes this to be critical because when a high

percentage of senior people are leaving, it is vital to capture, store and share their

knowledge.

Just one more challenge in the “Talent Management Continuum” for Dan Hilbert, and

anyone who knows Dan Hilbert and Valero would place a sizeable bet that they will

be one of the big winners in the war for talent.

The tipping point for talent management

By David C Forman, Chief Learning Officer, The Human Capital Institute
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, an innovation or change can suddenly appear through

small, almost incremental steps, none of which by itself is especially noteworthy. But

the combination of these seemingly minor events can cause organizations to be

shaken, countries to be impacted and people to break out of established behavioral

patterns. What could not be accomplished in one grand wave of the baton is, in fact,

being accomplished by different pieces of the puzzle coming together at just the right

time.

We are in the midst of such a sea change in the field of talent management. This

new approach to managing companies and people has not yet become a clearly

articulated science. There is still too much to understand and learn about the shifts

occurring before us. But there is an emerging set of practices – especially as

evidenced by industry-leading companies – that are moving talent management to its

tipping point

The changing business context

The current economic environment sets the foundation for the reason that talent

management practices have arisen in the first place. Bossidy and Charan (2004)

have identified five different economic stages that have existed during the past

century. Others have talked more generally about the movement from agrarian to

industrial to the knowledge economy. Pink (2005) describes the next step as moving

from the knowledge age to the conceptual age, while Friedman (2005) discusses

many of these same shifts in terms of ‘Globalization 3.0’. While neither of these

terms has resonated with wider audiences, there is no doubt that we are entering a

post-knowledge worker economic stage – whatever it may be called.

The management models and systems from past stages tend to be the first ones

applied in new stages. These, after all, have been what executives know, understand
and have experienced. Past success becomes a blinder for future achievements,

because it is natural to think that what worked once, should work again. It takes

years and even decades for new models and practices to emerge.

Most of our current management practices are mired in the past and based on a set

of assumptions that no longer exist. The sidebar opposite highlights many of these

differences. Consider this list and assess your own company’s position.

Many companies are at a spot along this continuum with one foot in the past and

another in the future. Some of these factors may not be as important as others, but it

is becoming increasingly clear that old practices will not be effective in a future that

requires innovation, fast responses, horizontal relationships, high engagement levels

and optimum performance from assets that are not “owned” by the company.

Perhaps this is why in this transition period, 75 percent of change managements fail,

less than 10 percent of companies do a good job of implementing their own strategy,

and the vast majority of mergers and acquisitions fail to meet their objectives. New

mindsets and practices are needed for new times.

Globalization

“Today, the most profound thing is that a 14 year old in Romania or Bangalore or

Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply

knowledge however they want.”

Perhaps the biggest contributor to the talent management tipping point is the new

global marketplace. More than any single factor it has caused us to consider how

fast change can take place, and how firmly held beliefs are wavering or are no longer

valid. The world is a very different place than it was even at the start of the century,

barely six years ago. Consider the following examples:

 • Billions of people are new entrants into the world economy and entire nations

have skipped stages of economic growth to get there faster than anyone

could have anticipated.

• The talented minds of foreign born nationals are returning to their home

country rather than contributing to the human capital of Western Europe and

the United States.

• China is revamping its educational system to focus less on rote memorization

and more on creativity and innovation.

• Ireland is the world’s largest exporter of software.

• The business incentives and infrastructure offered by many ‘developing

countries’ is equal to or better than the environment in the so-called ‘richer

nations’.

• Three countries that excel in new scientific and technical talent are India,

China and Russia.

• Talent pools, just like markets, exist all over the world and are no longer the

exclusive province of Western countries.

• Microsoft’s R&D center in Beijing is the best performing software research

unit in the corporation.

• Outsourcing and offshoring are not just about cheaper wages and low cost

services, but also about access to talent.

The companies that will win in this post-knowledge economy may not be those that

were the most successful in past stages.

“Intel goes where the IQ is” Tom Friedman The World is Flat

Integrated talent management wheel

Talent is now a global game. It requires a much broader horizon than just a specific

company, city, region or country. And it requires a much broader vision even within a

company. The Talent Wheel (Figure 1) highlights the key talent functions that need to

be coordinated and integrated within organizations.

Workforce planning looks at the supply and demand for talent over a two-year or

longer period of time for key jobs within the enterprise. Key issues are retirements,

planned and unplanned attrition, varying staffing options, competencies for superior

performers and bench strength for key talent.

Talent acquisition is the ability of a company to attract and hire key talent. This is one

of the two most pressing needs according to Accenture’s 2005 survey of global

executives. Key issues are compelling employment brand and value propositions,

referral recruiting, and keeping a gold standard for new talent entering the

organization.

Talent engagement represents the extent to which the workforce identifies with the

company, is committed to it and provides discretionary effort so that it can be

successful. Engagement is a key leading indicator for high performance workplaces,

improved employee productivity and subsequent turnover. Keep engagement

surveys relatively short and ensure that data are acted upon by employees and

managers.

Talent development used to be synonymous with training, but no longer. Research

shows that 70 percent of what we need to know to do our job, we learn on the job.

Informal learning is more powerful than formal learning through such activities as

stretch assignments, cross-functional teams, international assignments and flexible

job design.
Talent deployment can be summarized as the right people are doing the right job at

the right time. Top talent is assigned to the most vital projects or roles. Alignment is a

key aspect of talent deployment, and it is most often achieved through performance

management systems and competency databases matching project needs to

employee capabilities.

The ability to lead talent is also key. Great managers are like chess players who

understand that different pieces (employees) have unique strengths (Buckingham,

2004), and these managers work hard to put employees in positions where they can

shine. Great managers also understand that their value to the organization is through

the contributions of others, and it is their responsibility to develop, guide and

enhance the performance of the people that report to them.

Talent retention is the number one issue on the minds of global executives according

to the Accenture study (2005). Many CEOs doubt their company’s ability to retain top

talent. Too little and too much turnover can damage a business. It is interesting to

observe that when managers of departing employees are asked why a person left,

money is the overwhelming answer. When the employees themselves are asked,

money doesn’t even make the top five.

These talent functions must work together and be part of a seamless system. Being

excellent in one or two areas is a start, but the whole system must be working

effectively. It does little good, for example, for a company to attract and hire great

talent but then have few challenging development opportunities. Similarly, for CEOs

to focus compulsively on retention misses the point that retention probably wouldn’t

be a problem if talent engagement, development and deployment functions were

smoothly operating.
These talent functions are too important to be left to separate departments, silos or

champions. The essence of a company’s ability to compete rests with the

optimization and integration of these functions – it is the network, not the nodes that

provide the value.

The tipping point

Talent management is ready to be tipped. First, there is the growing amount of

empirical evidence that shows a clear relationship between excellent talent practices

and improved shareholder returns. Among the providers of this research are

McKinsey, Gallup, Collins, Bassi, Watson & Wyatt, Becker and Huselid, and the

Fortune Best Places to Work surveys.

Second, there are the best practices from companies that truly believe that talent is

the essence of their success. Among these companies are GE, Dell, P&G, HSBC,

FedEx, Starbucks, Microsoft and Capital One, to name just a few.

Third there is the growing realization that talent issues are board level issues. More

investment analysts and company directors are demanding to know about

engagement levels, segmented turnover data, and the types of developmental

opportunities for top talent. CEOs are starting to spend 30 percent or more of their

time on talent issues, and are being held accountable for the strength of their talent

pools. For instance, all companies registered in Denmark will be required to include

in their annual reports information about customers, processes and human capital. A

minimum of five measures for each is required and comparisons with the previous

two years must be shown. Information for investors about intellectual capital both

current and future should occupy at least one-third of the report.

The confluence of both internal and external factors is causing a new science of

talent management to emerge and tip. This is very different from traditional human

resources concerns. While HR is more concerned with consistency, compliance and

treating everyone in the same fashion, talent management recognizes that different

people make different contributions to the enterprise, and that top talent is the key to

competitive differentiation. The seamless and integrated functioning of the talent

management wheel is what will drive companies into a leadership position in the

new, post-knowledge economy.

Building a retention culture

By
October 23, 2003 12:18 PM

This article originally appeared in the June 2003 issue of MHRA News, published by the
Society for Human Resource Management, Alexandria, Virginia, and is reprinted with
permission.

Handout: The Manager as Developer - A Critical Coaching Competency (125 KB PDF)

Media HR executives need to better understand?and have their managers
understand?how critical the recruiting and hiring process is to finding and keeping good
people, said Beverly Kaye, speaking to 14 newspaper publishers and senior media group
executives in March at the Northern Va. -based American Press Institute (API).

Kaye, founder and CEO of Career Systems International, was invited to speak after an
API survey identified hiring and keeping talent as top concerns of media leaders.

"The skill issue is only one-third of it, " said Kaye. "You also need to look for career fit and
interest. Skills, interests and values must connect. "One of her main concerns, she said,
is the disconnect between what the recruiter tells a prospective employee and the real
world of the workplace once that employee joins the company.

"A leader's ability to contribute to an organization's mission, and ultimately to the bottom
line, is determined by his or her ability to attract, retain and develop today's knowledge
workers, " advised Kaye.

People join organizations, but leave managers, she warned.

The true "employer of choice, " said Kaye, is the individual manager. When employees
feel that their manager cares about developing their talent, they also believe the
organization cares.

According to a 2001 Gallup Organization study, only one quarter of employees are
actively engaged on the job. An alarming 55 percent are "just putting in time. "Kaye
asked executive attendees at the API session to think about the consequences of talent
mismanagement. Some disengaged employees become psychological casualties, she
said, and others, who actually leave the job, become physical casualties. Both situations
hurt the organization's performance and drive up costs.

Even if HR executives are doing everything right, shifting demographics, entrepreneurial

options, heightened competition for talent and the uncertain economy will ensure that
engaging and retaining talent remains a top concern for the foreseeable future.

What Are the Problems?

Kaye, co-author of Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay (Berrett-Koehler,
2002) encouraged media executives attending the API session to share their wish lists.
"What do you wish your managers would do " to improve retention, she asked. Many
attendees said their HR leaders are working to build into the corporate culture more
coaching, more consistent performance management, more sensitivity to individual needs
and more willingness to take risks to keep talent on board.

Kaye also asked the group to share some of the obstacles they face in managing talent.
The U. S. and Canadian news executives reported that they are working to break down
such barriers as:

 The perception that companies can't retain employees unless they pay top dollar.

 Diminishing budgets that keep organizations from being competitive in career

development.

 The "old-line " attitude that all employees should get the same treatment.
  Investing in people remains low on the radar screen in the jockeying for priorities.

 The deadline urgency of putting out a new product every single day.

 High turnover in some areas (copyediting, telemarketing) and the assumption that
nothing can be done about it.

 Resistance to change.
First Months Critical

During the first six months of employment, said Kaye, managers and new employees
need to have a series of conversations about six critical topics:

 Working relationships. Have the new employees found friends among their new
colleagues?

 Job challenges. Are they learning and growing?

 Passion for the work. What are their interests and strengths and are they being
used?

 Focus on achievement. Do they understand what the organization is trying to

achieve and how they contribute to its success?

 Honor the balance. Employees' lives extend well beyond the office doors. Get to
know what else is happening in their lives.

 Intention. Follow through on exploratory conversations. What new skills would

the employee like to develop? How can the company help? Margaret Buchanan,
publisher of The Cincinnati Enquirer, agreed that it's critical to keep working on
retaining employees and to "invest in your stars. " She plans to make these
important conversations part of the culture at her newspaper.
Best Practices of Leaders

Kaye and her partner and co-author, Sharon Jordan-Evans, run an annual "Retention
Convention " at which they gather global talent leaders together to share their key
findings and best practices.

These leaders work to build loyalty and commitment in the workplace and focus on fully
engaging employees.

Kaye said top talent leaders have some best practices in common. They:

 Elevate retention to a core business initiative.

 Collect and present compelling data.

 Instill a talent mindset in all leaders.

  Identify targeted talent drivers.

 Educate their managers about expected new behaviors.

 Educate the staff and encourage them to ask for what they need.
Training Programs for Managers

Susan Davidson, SPHR, vice president of human resources for Cox Newspapers, noted
that her organization has developed a three-day recruiting and coaching training program
for its managers. Cox holds managers accountable for new behavior based on this
training, Davidson said.

Cox Newspapers analyzed its retention rates and found that the biggest turnover
occurred during the first three months. Davidson says HR executives realized that the
company needed to do a better job of communicating information about what each job
entails, especially in high turnover areas such as customer service, copyediting and
mailroom positions.

To address the problem, Cox instituted a three-day training program. After managers
finish the program, they develop a competencies checklist and a template with
behavioral-based questions to improve the interview process.

The company plans to train all of its managers in selection, coaching and performance
management. It also plans to encourage managers to talk with new employees about
their preferences for communication and performance coaching. These conversations,
said Davidson, will be based on an instrument used in the organization's broadcast
division, Cox Communications.

The Rochester (N. Y. ) Democrat and Chronicle, a Gannett newspaper, also provides
performance coaching for managers. Publisher Dave Hunke says Gannett is a leader in
evaluating performance and that performance coaching is "ingrained in how managers
get ahead [at the paper]. "The hours managers spend in training are carefully tracked.
The company wants every employee to have a clear idea about what he/she needs to do
to improve performance. For help with career development and succession planning, the
company turns to the HR staff to identify opportunities for employees and match
attributes and skill sets to ensure the right fit in the company.

"What do your managers need to do more of to keep people? " Kaye asked the group.
Among the answers were mentoring, enriching the job, helping employees find work they
love, telling the truth, sharing more information and rewarding often.

John Kirkpatrick, publisher of the Harrisburg, Pa. , Patriot-News, said "I am usually so
focused on what we are doing or not doing that I don't step back " and examine where to
make the investments for retention. He plans on using a self-assessment tool Kaye
demonstrated to the group as an aid in focusing on his company's critical values.

For many organizations, winning the war for talent will require rebuilding the current
culture. Kaye notes that once you have fair pay in place, money is not the main issue.
The leading drivers for keeping talent, in ranked order, she said, include exciting work
and challenge; career growth, learning and development; working with great people; fair
pay; supportive management, a great boss; being recognized, valued and respected;
good benefits; meaningful work, making a difference and a contribution; pride in the
organization, its mission and product; and a great work environment and culture.

Publisher David White reported one way to engage employees that is being practiced by
his paper, the Albany, N. Y. , Times-Union, a Hearst newspaper. The organization helps
employees make a difference in their communities by encouraging volunteering, White
said.

This is the kind of thing Kaye has in mind. "Compete on dollars but win on culture, " she
advised, "because there will always be a higher bidder. "