Talent Management an intelligent career approach

Read about an innovative and fresh approach to 'talent mangement' using the intelligent career theory....

A great business needs great managers!
Great managers build staff engagement!
All staff perform well when their strengths are being utilised!

In today's vastly competitive and stressful job market, it is well known that people are the key to success. It does not matter what a company's business ideas are, or how well planned and marketed are its products and services. If a company does not invest in and maximise the value of its key employees it will not succeed.

Talented workers are the key to success. Yet, talented workers are in increasingly short supply and the cost of employing and retaining these workers is rising rapidly. Talent management has to become a key strategic issue for all organisations.

If the supply of this talent is a key issue in today's competitive marketplace, the question needs to be asked 'what is talent'? Isn't everyone talented? How do we differentiate between 'talent' and 'key talent'? How do you measure the success of these talented individuals in relation to the business?

A successful talent management programme brings about an enduring and measurable shift in indicators such as a company's competitive advantage, level of innovation, management of change, organisational morale and employee engagement. Companies that fail to engage and nurture their talent will eventually suffer where it hurts - the bottom line.

But how do you determine whether the employees you have identified as 'key talent' for example, are indeed 'key talent' and how do you know they not only understand what 'talent' and'key talent' means but more crucially that they would want to be fast-tracked and nurtured to senior management levels within your organisation?

One method is through psychometric testing or profiling. About 70% of companies with more than 50 employees use psychometric profiling, according to the annual recruitment and retention survey carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

However, it is becoming increasingly obvious that this method is not a magic formula for successful talent management. Organisations must reach for alternative ways of identifying and coaching their talent. One such way is to employ a more subjective approach to supporting their talent, addressing with their employees such key issues as:

What are my key motivators, values and beliefs regarding the whole talent
management process?
How do I take ownership of and manage my own career?
How will I deal with any misconceptions or even failures during the process?
Am I ready for a senior management position, and for the complications and
responsibilities that go with it?
What kind of relationships will be important to my future career success?
What will success really mean for me and for those who support me, including
my family?

In taking a more subjective approach to talent management, it is important to work with each individual so that individual clearly understand his or her own personal motivators, career drivers, and vision of career success. A Brave New World, a leading career development company, has now developed a unique method of identifying and supporting talent that turns individual differences to the company's advantage.

Working with a leading group of global business professors, A Brave New World has successfully introduced the 'intelligent career' approach into the UK. This approach is unique in insisting that individuals take ownership of their career situations, and in helping those individuals understand how their career behaviour will influence their future success.

Unlike psychometric profiling, the intelligent career approach enables people to reflect on and make connections among their personal values, motivations, skills, expertise, communication patterns, relationships and reputations. The approach insists that employees fully understand what a talent programme will mean for them, and if indeed they want to be included in it.

A particular benefit of the intelligent career approach is that individuals who are aware of the connections across what is important to them in their careers seek out and benefit from potential career opportunities. They both understand and make fresh investments in why they work, how they work and with whom they work. These investments add value to the whole talent management programme as a whole, and to its ultimate success.

The self-knowledge that stems from the intelligent career approach, allows each individual to sustain a sense of purpose in a world of continuous change. Moreover, there is firm evidence that people who make the greater investments in why they work (concerning their values, interests, motivation and family commitments) how they work (concerning the skills and expertise they have to offer) and with whom they work (concerning their personal relationships inside and outside the company) report higher levels of career success.

In this complex, global workforce, the competition for talent is intense. Given that our workforce will be decreasing in the next 10 to 20 years, now is the time to be developing talent for the future. Moreover, greater challenges for workers to care for children and other dependents add to the importance of an individualised approach to talent management.

A programme using the intelligent career approach is easily administered, with the first stage completed on-line, followed by a series of one to one meetings. Group focus sessions can be arranged to identify and recognise key differences, affirm ideas and develop mutual respect. At the end of the programme, individuals are empowered with the knowledge on where they want their career to take them and what they have to do to get there. Senior managers can simultaneously gather data on how to best manage, utilise and develop the company's talent pool.

Fitting individuals into predefined boxes does not reflect the uniqueness of people's career situations. Working with the intelligent career approach offers an alternative way forward.