TM - August 2008 - (Page 44)

businesses, how we manage costs — how do we deliver the quality services without overspending? TM: ZOPP: How do you handle succession planning at your organization? The real challenge for us, and I think it’s true for many companies, is long-range planning. We’re trying to look [further in the future] than just the ﬁrst replacement and really look towards where Keeping people focused on the importance of talent management to our operational success is another signiﬁcant challenge. It’s true in any business — particularly true in an operating company like we are — people get busy doing their jobs and making sure the lights stay on and the electricity is ﬂowing. So you have to remind them that they’ve got to develop the talent they have because they’ve got to keep that pipeline going. How have your workforce performance management activities contributed to your company’s bottom line? TM: “It’s true in any business: People get busy doing their jobs and making sure the lights stay on and the electricity is ﬂowing. You have to remind them to develop the talent they have because they’ve got to keep that pipeline going.” – Andrea L. Zopp, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Exelon the talent is going to come from. So when we’re building our pipeline, [we look at] someone who’s really going to be in a leadership role in ﬁve to 10 years, not one to two. That’s a challenge, and I would not say that we have it tackled, but we’re focused on it. The big program that we have in place is our recruiting and our workforce planning functions. Both are very aligned and work together to help build the right pipelines of people and make sure we’re looking several years out, as opposed to ﬁlling the openings that we have today. ZOPP: We started a turnaround [about 10 years ago] of our nuclear ﬂeet because the plants were being operated very poorly. You can’t make money in a generation company if your plants aren’t generating electricity. [After our efforts], we went from a 49 percent capacity factor to about a 94 percent capacity factor, which means that instead of operating 50 percent of the time, they were operating close to 100 percent of the time. That’s all about talent. It’s all about productivity and how you’re managing performance. If you don’t have the right people to do the operating, you can invest all you want; it’s not going to work right. We have that same kind of increased performance in our delivery companies, as well. They are performing better now than they ever have. That, I would suggest, is in large part because of the company’s focus on performance management and having the right talent in place to drive that performance. What’s next for your organization in terms of talent management and workforce performance development? I’d say [we’re aiming] to really focus on retention of our people, particularly the younger people that we’re bringing in. We do a pretty good job of attracting talent, but in the future, particularly with the workforce demographic challenges that we face, retaining that talent, keeping them engaged in what we’re doing, creating opportunities for them and helping them to feel they’re being developed and grown is a key focus for us. [We will also focus] on intergenerational issues. The people running our company are baby boomers, and the people we’re hiring in — [and] we want to make sure that we retain — are [generation] Xers and Yers and Millennials. And they’re different. They think differently, and [we want to] make sure our leadership understands that. [We want to make sure we] get our population to stay here and be happy here and thrive here. That’s what we’re focused on. Really where we’re challenged is setting our target performance goals at levels that are challenging, but also are not so aggressive that they’re not achievable. We’re already in the [top 1 percent] in a number of our operating metrics. You want to improve and you can always get better; there’s no question about that. But you also want to ﬁnd that balance between improvement and reality. That’s a challenge when you’ve achieved a high-performing organization. We try to make sure we’re always setting our targets at some level of improvement so that people have a goal [and] understand that [while] we had a great year, that doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. TM: ZOPP: TM: ZOPP: What challenges impact talent management in your organization? 44 August 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - August 2008

TM - August 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance Leading Edge Foundations Global Background Screening Does Global Assessment Work? Global Total Renumeration: Creat One Organization Border Insecurity: Immigration Reform and Talent Management The Global Workforce: Communication Across Cultures Around the World in How Many Days? Insight: Exelon: Performance Under Pressure Special Report: Perspectives on Managing People Application: Reinventing Sales Rewards at Motorola Dashboard: Mideast Meets West Dashboard: Mergers and Acquisitions 2008 - Don’t Leave Employees Behind Editorial Resources Advertisers' Index Full Potential

TM - August 2008

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