Talent mapping: a new method to identify potential

Posted by Candice on February 1, 2010 at 11:21am in Recruitment and executive search View Discussions

Kim Kemp, CEO, Pure Innovation Increasing performance effectiveness within companies today is a critical business issue, however getting the most from employees and the business as a whole requires a new way of looking at talent. A new perspective on talent mapping is emerging which creates a new line of sight to developing corporate culture, value systems, group thinking and skills levels. This concept of identifying talent from the inside is further supported by recent research conducted by Harvard Business, Business School professor Boris Groysberg, who was curious as to whether a company could gain some competitive advantage by hiring outside talent. Grosyberg concluded that hiring stars didn't do much for the firms' or the stars performance, and that everyone would be better off by growing talent inside the firm.1 Methodologies and tools are emerging which fast track skills development at lower costs and with better results. These tools are based on identifying the readiness of individuals for specific work and development within the organisation: a practical means of presenting individual readiness and potential for success from a leadership or management perspective. These tools are an indicator of readiness for development NOT as a personality profiler or psychometric assessment. One such methodology has been developed by Pure Innovation when we realised this trend three years ago. We developed Talent MappingC and talent mining methods, which show a graphical representation of an individual's current level of thinking related to key talent areas, resulting in what we call a Talent map indicatorC. Basically this is a map which represents the leadership readiness of a person in relation to critical thinking and reasoning skills aligned to key business success factors. This method is being used to identify potential, determine development pathways, measure progress or selecting individuals using a fair and unbiased process. Now companies can identify the readiness of individuals for specific work and development. The talent map indictor was adapted and tested in 2006, and then further adapted for specific industries in 2008 using a variety of inputs. The final data was then verified using a business analyst on Junior and Middle Management participants (over 700 assessments conducted across diverse groups and ages) in the financial services sector. The findings were that the Talent Map IndicatorC as an indicator of performance was 95% accurate at a 90% confidence level. 2.Redefining talent definitions As organisations grow and develop, the need to embed smarter thinking, behaviour and skills from their employees to meet business performance, culture and transformational objectives, becomes even more critical. Trends indicate that developing talent is about identifying productive talent patterns. Human capital development traditionally focuses on employee strengths and what they needed to develop, by matching their incompetence to their profile for their job. However, one needs to identify both the productive and unproductive patterns. By doing so companies must ask how to leverage productive patterns to increase productivity and place their energy on increasing talent rather than developing weaknesses, all the while still creating the tools that will manage unproductive talent patterns.

We have found that a different perspective on talent is required. When you define talent as a 'recurring pattern of thought, feeling, behaviour or skill that can be productively applied in a given context', then you can develop and embed new patterns from a thinking, behavioural and skills perspective. It is about understanding the recurring patterns of people in a given organisational culture or industry. The challenge is to find ways to integrate existing processes with an overall talent management model that can evolve to meet the specific business requirements and strategic objectives. Pure Innovation has developed a trademarked process, called Talent MiningTM to enable businesses to extract talent intelligence and identify, develop and maximise potential in a given role, team or business.

3.Managing emotional contracts to improve business productivity Managing an organisation's talent will continue to be the most challenging HR and business pursuit for 2009/2010. Employee motivation levels are the key to improving and retaining talent and increasing return on investment for the business. On this pursuit for talent management, HR and business managers must take a closer look at the emotional contracts entered into with their employees to integrate all aspects of the employees' relationships with the business; including performance management, development, career management, recognition and reward. Other talent management challenges that our clients foresee along the way include: -The pace of change and managing the pace at which individuals keep up; -The impact of the generation gap within the organisation which increases the need for individuality and a change in leadership styles; -Integration between human resource processes and the challenge to make them talk to each other; -The need to structure agreements suited for the individual rather than a one size fits all approach, but still within the context of established policies and procedures. Organisations also need to create new opportunities within, not just upwards but helping employees increase their skills base. The objective here, is also to contribute towards skills development goals in South Africa, and improve the technical foundation which given the current economic climate is imperative.