Talent Management - December 2008 - (Page 53)

Insight continued from page 49 long they lasted in their role during the ﬁrst 12 months of employment (Figure 5). To measure the quality of recent hires, organizations need to have processes in place to determine what level of performance the new employee should be at in three-month, six-month and nine-month time frames; to measure the candidate against those milestones; and to evaluate any performance gaps that need to be addressed. How well an organization can measure new hires job performance and use that information to improve the recruiting process plays a major role in a successful talent acquisition program. Yet, according to Aberdeen’s research, organizations ability to clearly articulate what quality of hire actually is still has a long way to go. Research revealed that quality of hire at most organizations is based largely on loose deﬁnitions. In fact, establishing “clearly deﬁned metrics pertaining to quality of hire” is the most common plan related to talent acquisition that organizations will put in place in the next 12 months. Recommendations • Gain clarity on skills gaps. Clearly deﬁne the common behaviors and skills of the organization’s top performers or key contributors. Use this or the organization’s core values as a general competency framework to identify skills gaps. This enables an organization to ascertain where gaps can be ﬁlled internally and which require more targeted recruiting efforts. • Seek feedback. New hires should be interviewed after the job offer to obtain feedback on the recruiting and hiring process. Make improvements as needed. • Deﬁne success metrics. Clearly deﬁned metrics should be in place to measure the success of talent acquisition efforts. These metrics should be agreed on by HR and hiring managers and should address the organization’s speciﬁc business issues. • Involve hiring managers. Hiring managers and recruiters need to be trained to use new technologies to ﬁnd passive job candidates. Such workers can be a vital source of talent and expertise but have traditionally been invisible in recruiting efforts. • Focus on internal and external employer brand. The entire organization should work together to collectively brand the company a best place to work. Recruiting should be seen as an enterprise-wide function, not the role of human resources. Kevin Martin is vice president and principal analyst of human capital management for Aberdeen Group. He can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com. We also have a recognition piece, and this is just as important as our rewards. The type of employee we hire is self-motivated but also wants to be sure they’re adding value to our clients and to the company. We have many ways to do that. For example, we have a tool called Celebrating Performance, and anyone who supervises people can use the tool. The tool makes it very simple to nominate someone, pick out an electronic card, talk about their impact and automatically copy their supervisor. I can choose to send that or to assign them some reward recognition points. We have an online catalog where they can pick out what’s most important to them, and we have programs like that globally and locally. Engagement has improved, and performance and engagement often go hand in hand. We just got our engagement results back, and one of the things highlighted in it is how much people love this tool. TM: Smart: How does Accenture handle succession planning? We’ve institutionalized our corporate succession planning approach. For our top 400 key leadership positions — the roles most critical to Accenture’s health — it’s centrally managed by our chief leadership ofﬁcer, and he works very closely with the CEO and the CEOs of each of our business. Succession planning is an ongoing continuous process. We use a tool, which forces us to think about who’s ready for a job now for each of these 400 spots, who will be ready in six months or in 12 months. The most important part is for people who could be ready in a number of months — what does that person need? Succession planning is not about the list of names; it’s talking about the names and what you need to do to make them ready. That’s where we spend the majority of our time, and within each part of our organization, that’s carried out. TM: Smart: What’s next for Accenture in terms of talent management? Tactically we’re trying to simplify our performance management. We have one approach, one set of ratings, one tool, one timing. It’s objective-driven and objectives are cascaded, but it’s still a hard thing to do. Then, the big focus on career and talent management is around global mobility. We’ve started kicking some programs into high gear around proactive mobility at all levels to make sure we’re developing our top leaders, getting them the global experiences they need earlier in their career and at the right points. You can make up your own deﬁnition of what talent management means, and it is different depending on the company, what products you sell and what clients you serve. It’s getting harder in some ways, but one of the reasons it’s getting easier is because it’s a top priority in some companies, which makes it easier to get things done. It’s an exciting area right now. December 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com 53 http://www.talentmgt.com

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Talent Management - December 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance Leading Edge Foundations Recruitment & Retention Assessment & Evaluation Compensation & Benefits Performance Management Learning & Development Succession Planning Insight Dashboard Application Advertiser's Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

Talent Management - December 2008

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