Talent Management: Searching for the Greatest Impact

by Alice Snell | August 27, 2007 No comments

We were happy to get a note from Josh Bersin, CEO at Bersin & Associates, who wanted to highlight some of his firm’s recent research on talent management: High Impact Talent Management. The focus of the research was to identify:

Business drivers and specific industry solutions that organizations are implementing.
Level of maturity and adoption of different processes and systems.
The highest impact talent management solutions.

Bersin analyzed more than 1 million data elements from 750+ corporations to develop these findings. Here are some of Joshs comments about that report:

The best way to develop a focused strategy is to consider talent management a business strategy not an HR strategy. For example, many retail organizations need to develop talent acquisition, management, training, and succession programs. If they focus in a critical job area, their entire talent management strategy can be easy to define and actionable.

Second, we looked at 62 different talent-related business processes and through a series of correlations to business outcomes, we analyzed the processes with the greatest business impact. This data produced a list of the Top 22 Best Practices processes which drive the greatest business outcomes. Among these 22 processes, let me highlight a few of the very interesting findings:

1. The biggest impact area is performance management.
2. The second highest process area was competency management.
3. The third major area which is becoming urgently critical is sourcing and recruiting.
4. The whole area of workforce planning needs tremendous focus.

Weve always agreed that HR can add more value by better aligning talent with business objectives using the right solutions. And the best place to start is by developing talent management strategies that provide focused and immediate impact to the business. Thats how talent turns business goals into business performance.

Alice Snell

Alice Snell

Former Vice President, Taleo Research

Alice Snell is former Vice President of Taleo Research. Ms. Snell has been tracking and analyzing the intersection between technology and talent management for more than a decade. A noted […]