So it got me thinking - if this guy bought the names of the people that he wanted to work for, what's to stop an employer buying the names of the people they want recruit or retain and using it to deliver a message to that individual?
The Drive To Normalcy by Ian Till appeared on DDI's Talent Management Intelligence blog. In the post Till discusses "four talent risks and opportunities as we drive" to what McKinsey have labelled, The New Normal:
Flat Tires: Unengaged employees who feel their jobs are monotonous and flat
Road Rage: The recession may have brought about a ceasefire in the War for Talent, but the war is still raging
Speeding: As we prepare for better times, and move back into cyclical patterns of resignations, organizations must not fall back on making poor and hasty selection decisions simply to fill seats
Blind Spots: Leaders cannot solely rely on past skills and approaches to navigate the future.
I think there are some useful points in the post that blend nicely with my final pick; The Harvard Business ReviewIdeacast: Keep You Top Talent from Defecting. This is an audio interview of Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt of the Corporate Executive Board's Corporate Learning Council in which they share some of most common mistakes that managers make with their talent, including:
Failing to properly identify top talent
Assuming that top talent is highly engaged
Expecting stars to share the pain that the organisation is going through
Forgetting that talented people still care about getting paid
At 14 minutes, this podcast is well worth listening to.
In Three To See this week we look to the impending challenges of acquiring, retaining and managing talent in the short, medium and long-term.
The Economist Intelligence Unit's report: Companies at a Crossroads is based on a December 2009 survey of over 400 senior managers in major organisations from across the world.
Amongst the findings of the report, which was sponsored by StepStone, it would appear that executives have identified economic recovery, credit availability and the availability of talent as the top three priorities for growth and are planning to tackle this by investing in Performance Management (46%), leadership Development (41%) and Training and Development (36%) in 2010.
41% of respondents agreed they have a shortage of talent in their organisation
44% agreed they find it increasingly difficult to recruit talented employees
50% plan to ramp up recruitment over the coming year; only 18% still plan to reduce or freeze headcounts
Only 16% of line managers said that staff were fully engaged with the business, yet this is not recognised in many boardrooms, with 38% of CEOs saying that trust is ‘high’.
The report suggests that a workforce increasingly dominated by older staff, with changing motivations for staying with an employer, is compunding these issues, adding to talent retention problems for managers in companies that fail to recognise the different priorities of young and old workers. For example 50% of younger workers cited career development as their biggest priority, but in the over 50s this dropped to just 1%. Conversely almost 40% of older workers cited non-salary benefits as important, dropping to just 2% among 20-30 year-olds.
Matthew Parker, Managing Director of StepStone Solutions commented on the report:
"It is particularly worrying to see low trust among middle-level employees going hand in hand with low graduate recruitment and an ongoing demand for senior executive talent. Left unaddressed these problems constitute a perfect storm for businesses, as the most capable employees head for the exit and fresh talent is not recruited. These trends have serious, long-term implications for any business in a recovering economy and they require urgent attention."
The Coming Talent War: Young, Global, Diverse posted by Josh Bersin echoes some of these points suggesting that readers think about some of the factors that will influence what Bersin describes as the "new war for talent:”
Age: Every single organization (of any size), is going to become squeezed by the eventual retirement of the baby boomers and the need to compete for young professionals and managers
Diversity: Every workgroup, team, and leadership pool will be far more diverse than today. This means that diversity must be included in our talent management strategy, not in some “compliance group” in the organization.
Under and Un-skilled: More than 30% of the employers studied in a recent report by ASTD state that their new college graduates do not have the basic skills to enter their workforce without some form of remediation. Typical skills they need include communication, critical thinking, self-learning, and writing. We, as employers, are just going to have to deal with this and spend more time and money on remedial training, basic skills development, and partnerships with local universities and community colleges.
Youth Orientated: The turnover rate among workers under 30 is nearly twice the turnover of older workers. I do not believe this is because they are fundamentally different – rather I think our organizations have become too “old-oriented.” As we get older and have families we focus more on benefits, stability, progression, and other needs. We need to “youngify” the workplace we create.
In this context, Seth Godin's post on schooling; It's easier to teach compliance than initiative was interesting to me, not least for the parallels that can be drawn with the role of HR. Godin opines that:
"Compliance is simple to measure, simple to test for and simple to teach. Punish non-compliance, reward obedience and repeat."
He then goes on to observe that:
"The economy has rewritten the rules, and smart organizations seek out intelligent problem solvers. Everything is different now. Except the part about how much easier it is to teach compliance."
