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Brand leverages talent management
Tuesday, 13th May 2008. Posted by alan in Culture | Permalink | No Comments »
Talent management is the hottest topic around these days as the issues that affect the attraction, and more importantly the long-term commitment, of employees, gets ever more vital to resolve. It is well recognised that the issues that attract candidates to a position are often not the issues that make them stay. Yet the attrition rate within two years is still high.
Psychometric testing is becoming increasingly used even where the candidates are still assessed primarily on skillsets, but employers need an ongoing factor that can move an organisation away from the traditional filling of vacancies into long-term relationships - hence the development of talent management. Sadly, implementing this strategy in isolation is too little, too late. Something more is needed.
Although great recruitment holds one key, and attractive employee benefit packages hold another, there is a third key that is largely unknown or simply over-looked – one that provides a long-term, more secure platform on which to build. That key is your brand culture.
Unfortunately most company cultures have been allowed to develop haphazardly; they 'just grow', and where the internal culture 'just grows', it can develop in ways you probably would not choose. The focus for change then has to be exerted through the HR department to manage employee conflicts, fight potential tribunal proceedings, whilst attempting to retain key personnel. The relatively new strategic concept of talent management could go some way to resolving these issues, but what would the effect be on talent management if the internal culture was already managed proactively according to a pre-planned brand strategy?
Importantly, if the internal culture is well-managed, proactive and positive, it works for all organisations even before recruitment is considered. Word gets out. And where change management and positive cultural transformation occurs, talent management is made much easier.
Many HR practitioners say that buy-in for talent management at board level is relatively easy – it's getting buy-in throughout the organisation that is difficult. It need not be so. Create and implement a brand culture change first, and integrate into this a recruitment policy which is based on a pre-determined ‘brand personality’. This focuses attention firstly on ‘fit’ for the brand and its culture, then on talent. Build the brand culture on brand behaviours and principles. Outline the brand ‘fit’ for the attributes of an ideal employee for your organisation – irrespective of job role. The induction process should also introduce the company culture, the behaviours and principles that are required of all employees, and how the company strategically supports these behaviours.
People who 'fit' also buy in if the culture is, in actuality, what they have been led to believe it is. People who feel they 'belong' stay much longer than those who don't. And those that don’t buy into the brand culture have a negative impact on those that do. That is why a recruitment 'fit' policy pre-empts many of the usual HR issues because you create a culture where all aspects of talent management are underpinned by buy-in in the first place!
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