2009 – A Year for Making Talent Strategic?
January 6, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant
Happy New Year!
As we start the year 2009 with a high probability of a global recession, many organizations will try to hunker down and cut costs to survive. One of the things they do is reduce head count. That is the standard operating procedure for surviving during the recession. Although this makes sense in manufacturing sectors, it rarely makes sense for companies that leverage knowledge and information. This means IT companies cannot treat human resource the same way as manufacturing companies.
Therefore an employee in a knowledge industry is the biggest source of competitive advantage and hence companies need make talent management its strategic priority. Yet the management and executives especially in HR department have no strategic plan to manage its talent. McKinsey Quarterly article titled ‘Making talent a strategic priority’ points to a survey that confirms that most of the companies are unprepared for the challenge of finding, motivating, and retaining capable workers. The article point out that the problem with talent management is acute because ‘companies face a demographic landscape dominated by the looming retirement of baby boomers in the developed world and by a dearth of young people entering the workforce in Western Europe. Meanwhile, question marks remain over the appropriateness of the talent in many emerging markets’.
The article also makes no qualms that the problem is mainly internal to the organizations because managers too readily treat talent in a reactive, knee-jerk manner. On top of that HR department has failed to evolve from its manufacturing roots. McKinsey research confirms the idea that the HR’s influence is declining. The executives view HR professionals for lacking business knowledge, observing that many of them worked in a narrow administrative way rather than addressing long-term issues such as talent strategy and workforce planning.
I think talent management is a critical indicator than can portend long run success of a knowledge based company. And how the companies react to slowing global economy of year 2009 will be a window to their future success.
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Comments (2)
I agree completely that 2009 could be a watershed year for many organizations. However, judging by the response rate to my company’s (Infohrm) recent webcasts on workforce planning, as well as our Workforce Planning Advantage survey results, HR professionals see a great opportunity to use workforce planning to anticipate human capital risks, identify top-notch talent, and build pipelines for hard-to-fill positions.
Of course, it is extremely difficult to devote resources to long-term workforce planning when there are immediate fires to fight, but with a good business case and solid data on the risks (and costs) of doing nothing, HR can certainly improve the perception of its ability to lead the business.
Let’s hope that 2009 is a landmark year for workforce planning!