RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

Are they knowledge, skills, or abilities? Well in the context of positive psychology they are defined as “something that energises you, which leads to your personal growth and development and which results in peak performance” (Strengths Partnership). But what does this mean to you? Are ‘strengths’ different to competencies? Are they a fad that’ll come and go? Why spend time trying to persuade your managers that there is yet another thing to consider?
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In the last few months, Lord Davies’ report on businesses addressing gender issue bias in the boardroom has had a high media profile, in many different ways and with very many different commentaries! It has galvanised, quite rightly, a number of organisations into making a renewed commitment to aim for 20% – 25% female representation at board level by 2013.
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You may remember in June 2007 Gordon Brown announced that his was to be a “government of all the talents”. A bold statement indeed, and one that left me feeling a little aggrieved that under Blair we must have only had “some of the talents” or even worse, perhaps “none of the talents”?! Brown was certainly excited to be in charge, and obviously felt that his team selection was superior to that of his successor – he had removed half of Blair’s team and moved most of the others to new roles, but critically, was still drawing on the same rather tired talent pool.
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Attending one of Ochre House’s HR Network workshops recently got me thinking anew about how we’re going to meet the challenge posed by the fact that talent is the number one goal on CEO agendas today. I hope that sharing my thoughts with you will stimulate your thinking too.
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It can easily be argued that search, as a specialism, has always been an outsourced function; as very few internal HR departments have had the courage, contacts or the credibility to conduct searches at director-level in the UK, let alone looking at overseas options. The fabled ‘little black book’ that has made many a head hunters’ fortune is jealously guarded and it has been seen as a cost-efficient option to hire search consultants, often at an eye-watering retainer, to conduct a series of one-off searches, sometimes to open-ended timescales.
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