Integrated Talent Management – Phase II

In this phase you will lay the groundwork for optimal talent management. Once clear on business requirements, and what is and is not working with your current approach to talent management, you now need to begin to identify the critical segments of your employee population, determine what the key talent decision points are throughout the career and talent management life cycles, and define the requirements for ideal decision making. In other words, what data do you need to make good decisions and how will you go about securing it? There are four key steps.

1. Target Assessment Populations: Identify and segment the specific talent populations to be assessed, e.g., entry-level, first-time managers, executives. Align these to the critical decision points along your employment life cycle. Again, leverage the gap assessment to pinpoint those critical inflection points where the organization has struggled or failed to make the most of talent management efforts. For example, if director is the level of leadership most foundational in creating effective senior executives, then name that as a specific and targeted segment with unique requirements and take care when preparing people for their first director role. Focus development during their tenure to build the capabilities that are needed at more senior levels, and make sure you don’t rush people through that phase of their leadership journey.
2. Determine Key Talent Decision Points: Embed your validated competencies into all talent decisions across the employment life cycle. Consider the broad spectrum of decisions that you make throughout the year and over an individual’s career, e.g., hiring, performance management, rewards, promotion, succession. Determine how best to apply the competency model to each of those decision points. One organization we know cared so much about how its leaders led that it based 50% of an executive’s annual bonus on the individual’s 360^o results built off the organization’s leadership competency model. This practice reinforced that results, while critical, were not enough.  It helped to embed the culture the organization’s executives believed was required to deliver on their strategic objectives.
3. Define Assessment Requirements: Determine the data and insight required at each decision point. How rigorous do you need or want to be when you hire someone from the outside? Are behavioral event interviews in combination with a cultural fit assessment the right approach? Given the criticality of executive talent, how will you assess succession readiness? Are a person’s results sufficient, or do you need to develop a more holistic view of their leadership? How will you make development investment decisions related to different employee populations? Anecdotal evidence? What people say they want? And will those investments be differentiated based on impact to the business, or does everyone get to go to the leadership workshop? Define the assessment requirements based on the connection, the ability to impact the business strategy, and employee contribution and commitment.
4. Finalize Assessment Methods: Specify the method and content for each decision point – e.g., 360^o, external assessment, quantitative leadership instrument – based on the requirements of the decision as defined in the previous step. Codify and document your methods with clear, easy-to-follow steps. Specify the link between methods and expected outcome to support adoption. One of our client’s expressed the following needs:

• To raise the confidence of their executive team and board by delivering robust succession assessment and preparation
• To improve the defensible consistency of talent decisions
• To increase predictability of probable successTo support an aligned view of what “good” looks like
• To ensure business continuity

To meet their needs, the organization’s leaders made thoughtful choices about the methods they would use at each critical decision point along the career life cycle – selection, promotion, succession, in-role evaluation – and then applied specific timing and frequency of method to each of their leadership segments. For example, in support of succession decisions at the VP level and below they leveraged their on-line 360^o survey (conducted once every two years), career history, and one external, quantitative leadership assessment instrument. For SVPs and above, they utilized externally led 360^O interviews, career history and at least two leadership instruments to make succession decisions. For all new hires they included a cultural fit assessment and at the VP level added behavioral event interviewing to ensure incoming leaders demonstrated strength in not just their technical area, but in the company’s leadership competencies.  For each population and each career reflection point there were specific tools and processes applied, all with the aim of enabling the best and most consistent talent decisions possible.

Again, the tenet to follow here is that the focus of integrated talent management is improved decision making in support of the business. Being explicit about the decisions you make, the circumstances under which you make them and the data you must leverage to ensure they are sound, are the hallmarks of Phase II.