Talent Management - October 2008 - (Page 26)

recruitment & retention assessment & evaluation compensation & beneﬁts performance management learning & development succession planning results come back, Scott will analyze them to determine if there should be some realigning of job tasks. “I don’t think that we’re necessarily going to move people totally out of their position[s],” she said. “That would be too traumatizing. People will keep the jobs they have, [but] because there are multiple functions that need to be done in all of those jobs, they may be aligned differently.” Once the results are in, Scott said development will be for role-based assessment, relook at candidates and ultimately make a decision. “I did not wish to pigeonhole or ‘box’ people in through the use of this method,” Pak said. “I make sure I meet an individual before I send them to take the survey, so I can gut-test them ﬁrst.” No assessment is perfect. Role-based assessments must be used with other practices so talent managers have a more well-rounded view of an employee or potential candidate. “The biggest pitfall is it’s not an exact science,” said Russell Klosk, a global talent management and workforce planning expert and the HR line of business leader for RGS Associates, which specializes in land development. “No single assessment is going to give you [a] full picture into someone’s personality and where they ﬁt in your organization. You want to leverage multiple levers. If you become overly reliant on [role-based assessments], you look past the business strategy as a whole. Just because someone’s not a ﬁt doesn’t mean you “[This] was a business decision that we made to ensure that we would have the kind of talent that would help us be competitive [in] the marketplace not just today, but in the future.” – Marsha Love Morrow, Director, Human Resources, Allstate very important, as each employee needs to understand their co-workers’ roles and learn the techniques for working with other roles. “If you have long-time employees [who] are used to doing things in a certain way, it really takes staff development, the follow up, for them to see the value in doing things in a different way,” she explained. For Pak, who also uses TGI’s tools for hiring and developing teams, role-based assessments have been very effective. “The proﬁles of each role within the role-based assessment [are] unique, and learning our preferred method of working gives a different insight to better understand ourselves and each other,” she explained. “With increased understanding comes respect, and through respect we learn to trust each other, which builds overall faith in the people of the organization and the company itself.” Pak initially had some reservations about this type of assessment. She was concerned it might lead to false assumptions or limit a worker’s development. As a result, she has a speciﬁc process when hiring that utilizes other measures: study the cover letter, meet the candidate, gather ﬁrst impressions, interview, administer all internal tests if applicable, send don’t need them.” In addition to using role-based assessments to develop teams and select the right talent, they also can be employed to identify high-potential employees. “It’s very easy to come up with a performance management system that measures past performance; it’s very hard to put the potential equation against that and say who [is] top talent,” Klosk said. “Role-based assessment[s] can be used as a tool to help you spot at an earlier point those people who are going to have that potential.” For role-based assessments to be successful, Klosk believes their use must have leadership buy-in. He said talent managers can get that leadership support by gathering business intelligence and establishing a business case to support their use. “Usually, the people who do these kinds of things love talking about them, so just looking at conference presentations and what’s being talked about in peer groups is a pretty good reader of where the trends are and a pretty easy place to get data,” Klosk said. “Ultimately, the champion can’t be the HR person; the champion’s got to be someone in either the ﬁnance or the operations role.” 26 October 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Talent Management - October 2008

Talent Management - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Contents Human Performance Leading Edge Foundations The Three Pillars of Executive On-Boarding Role-Based Assessment: Thinking Inside the Box Who's Going to Speak Up for Health Care? Obey the Push to Automate Managing the Star Performer No One Wants to Work With Adopting a Mutual-Funds Model for Talent Management Hewlett-Packard: Simple Talent Management in a Technical World Team Effort Pays in Talent at London Business School The Employee Survey: What’s in It for Me? Why Most Managers Are Stuck Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

Talent Management - October 2008

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