Every modern company has talent development as one of its HR functions. Some companies also have a specific position of talent development on their rolls. If you delve deeper in the role, however, you will observe that this role has got converted into a compliance role in many companies.
For instance, the talent management role in such companies is typically evaluated on following metrics: How many employees were met for developing new competencies? How many employees were retained after they had submitted their resignation ? ( Very often retention is a desired purpose of this role!)How many positions were planned and developed for succession?
If so many companies have fallen into this trap of compliance then one has to assume that some systemic causes are in operation. Let us discover them.
On the one hand, talent management necessitates 'individual' attention to employees. Companies find it difficult to justify the effort and time required to spend time on unraveling individual dynamics. If the companies have more knowledge workers, present in plenty in software companies or call centres, time/effort required is even more for these companies.
When some brave companies venture into talent management for their top rater associates, to reduce their effort/time on talent management, they land up in another trap. They find it difficult to manage the 'wild' aspirations of their employees.
Even if HR is objective with its suggestions, their well-meaning suggestions are perceived as biased and subjective by top raters. These brave companies, despite their vision and intentions, are therefore unable to sustain their talent management efforts, because their efforts do not bear any fruits. Infact, many HR managers feel that these interactions with top raters opens up pandora's box that is better kept closed!
Once this dynamic is understood, the solution is also apparent for companies willing to deploy talent management.
These companies should adopt a 'career-building framework' that is perceived to be objective by employees. The framework should be transparent ( and understandable) enough to be 'questioned' by employees. If the framework is deployed by an 'unbiased' senior HR member, this will further reduce questions and strengthen the perception of objectivity. This will ensure positive feedback effect. Further, to reduce the cost of deploying talent management, companies could also use the same objective framework to construct an 'interactive social web' that can resolve many of the standard queries of employees.
The million dollar question to be answered is : is an objective framework of career building available? Fortunately, the answer is yes today. I was lucky enough to develop this framework.
