New Roles for Talent Professionals

These new roles are the new sets of skills and competencies that talent management needs to actually earn its position as a key strategic player.  The good news is that talent management does matter to the strength of the organization; the not so good news is that we have to have leaders who can really lead this practice, make a difference and play these important new roles.  Among the new requirements are the following:

The Marketer – For organizations to transform, they must move from the safety and comfort of their present circumstances to one that fully embraces the role that talent plays in strengthening the company.  This is not a small change, this is literally a transformation; and it must be marketed and sold to the company.  Business cases and messages must be crafted, individual constituencies must be engaged and campaigns must be waged.  Perhaps nowhere is this new role more in demand than in creation and marketing of the company’s talent or employment brand.  This demands that the company properly position itself in terms of the talent it wants to attract.  It answers the question:  Why should someone come to work here as opposed to our top competitors?  If this question cannot be answered and supported, the war for talent is lost. 

See Libby Sartain:  “Brand From The Inside” and the writings of John Sullivan.

The Experimenter – As companies, competitors and technology change, so too do talent practices.  It’s a constantly changing landscape, and those that lag are left.  In “Hard Facts,” Pfeffer and Sutton talk about the success of Harrah’s and muse that there are only three ways to get fired from top HR positions at Harrah’s:  steal, do something else illegal or not have a control group.  The implication being that it’s vital to keep evaluating current practices and challenging conventional wisdom.  A key role that can be played within any organization is seeing where centers of excellence reside.  There are always departments, locations or managers that outperform others; the issue is how to capture, study and leverage those successes.  Create a continuous improvement cycle through experimentation. 

See:  “Hard Facts-Dangerous Half Truths and Total Nonsense” by Pfeffer and Sutton

The Data Analyst – It has been said that HR people are best with words, not numbers; but that’s simply not good enough anymore because talent management demands more.  Companies are sitting on a wealth of data, and they have been too pre-occupied or incapable of learning lessons embedded in this information.  Companies have often substantial data on candidates, employee preferences, experiences and tenure, and turnover.  Incredible insights can come from analyzing this information for trends, insights and aberrations.  Some examples:  Which sources of candidates yields best job performance and lowest turnover?  How quickly are new employees productive and fully engaged?  Where will retirements hit the company the hardest?   Do we have a turnover problem in the first two years?  What are the top three reasons that people leave the company? 

See:  For a fascinating account of this role see Dan Hilbert case study of Valero Energy on the Enterprise Workforce Management learning track.

The Business Entrepreneur – This is all about results.  In moving from administrative and operational to strategic roles, the problems of the business are HR’s problems.  While compliance and cost control are important concerns for all executives, it is the value creation that defines winners from losers.  How can HR lead to greater innovation, more agile responses, better performance, improved customer loyalty, new business models, stronger competitive positioning, and more enduring success?  These are the results that matter on anybody’s scorecard.  In the productivity formula, it is about the numerator, not the denominator.  In the past, HR shied away from such tasks; now Talent Management or Strategic HR must firmly embrace them.  Talent practices must all be framed in terms of results and outcomes, even if some of the steps are intermediary. 

See:  “Improving Human Resources Analytical Literacy: Lessons from Moneyball” by Mark Huselid and Gary Becker.

David Forman serves as an executive director and Chief Learning Officer for The Human Capital Institute. In this capacity, David is responsible for designing and teaching the HCI Designation programs, as well as serving as a liaison to HCI's academic and learning communities worldwide. David is also the author of "The Principles of Human Capital Management" book that serves as a foundation for the HCI designation programs.

He has worked with many of the country's leading corporations to design, develop and implement technology-based training solutions. Among his clients are IBM, Federal Express, DuPont, Deloitte & Touche, Exxon, Microsoft, the Ford Foundation, the Children's Television Workshop, Sony and AT&T. David has written over 40 articles and books in the fields of human capital, globalization, training, evaluation, return on investment (ROI), and instructional design; and has presented at most of the major industry conferences and seminars, both in the United States and abroad. He is also the principal author and developer of the newly released Global Learning System for the Society for Human Resource Management.

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