As many leaders strive to optimize organizational performance, many are turning to talent management. We’ve seen references on this blog to the many aspects of an optimized talent supply chain. But we’ve also seen that there is often a disconnect between what leaders or people in charge of policy development believe and what the employee population are looking to achieve.

The latest Gallup panel poll of 540 adults showed another very important aspect of job satisfaction that re-affirms best of class talent management practices.

To the question: “What do you particularly like about your job?”, the first category of answers that came out was not related to salary or benefits—they were #s 5 and 14. What came on top was “Doing what suits me best/fulfilling” at 18%; “Interacting with the public/helping people” at 15%, and “Freedom/flexibility to do job my own way” at 13%.

In other words, as social beings we like the interaction and feeling that what we do is helpful to others, but we want to be doing it in a way that is flexible and gives us the freedom to best organize our time.

But above all, and this is where talent management best practices come first before organizational structure, people want to be doing the job that is right for them. That is the role of talent selection and deployment: assist the individual to find a niche where they can not only be the most productive for the organization, but also the most personally fulfilled, working in the career that’s the best fit!