RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

On the back burner for the last few years whilst many organisations have undergone cost cutting exercises, the high potential (HiPo) programme is making a come back as business leaders have recognised that effective talent management and development is the key to business growth and sustainable competitive advantage.
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We have all heard the saying before – you never get a second chance to make a first impression – but that saying couldn’t ring truer than when you are bringing a new employee onboard as part of your company.
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“He just felt right”… it’s the line any assessment professional dreads hearing from a line manager. The brutal truth is that almost everyone over-estimates their own ability to make good hires. As humans, we often have a habit of trusting intuition over reason, thinking that we’re the best judge of who will make a good hire for often emotive reasons.
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In the past two days we have seen the leaders of News International send a clear message to the business: There’s you and there’s us.
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This week we have had a very stark reminder that you cannot just allow anyone to represent your brand in the external market, as the News of The World is abandoned one after the other, by most (if not all) of its key advertising customers.
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There is nowhere that HR transformation is more prevalent than EMEA right now and HR are still grappling with an extremely complex region where making Talent and resourcing programmes work both culturally and commercially is a big challenge. The blue print that everyone seemed to want to search for 3-4 years ago simply doesn’t exist, but what we are seeing in some of the best cases are dynamic talent programmes that bring common processes and still account for local, diverse needs – all aligned directly to the business strategy. So is this complexity why European transformation programmes are taking so long? Yes and no.
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Remember when you used to receive CVs with candidates listing 20 year’s service at one company?  When loyalty to an employer was a key measure of a candidate’s values?  On one occasion (many years ago) I remember receiving a CV from a candidate who had spent 20 years at ICL and in fact presented his CV on ICL headed paper!  The problem was that this was now the late 90s and it had since become the norm to spend 18 months to three years with an employer before looking for the next move. Certainly any more than five years with one employer looked lazy!
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It has widely been argued that had there been more women in leadership roles, then perhaps the world would not be facing financial meltdown… Received wisdom suggests that female qualities would avoid undue risks and bring more people focus to the business etc. However, is there another way to look at this – What if we replace ‘women with HR?’

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Over the years, the use of a contingent workforce (contractors, consultants, freelancers, interims, temps etc) has grown. In just 20 years, the percentage of work allocated to contingent labour on average has grown from 6% in 1989 to more than 27% in 2009. Read full post

This is a question we discuss when talking with HR and recruitment leaders. Most organisations have an idea, but to get a specific figure usually requires painful analysis of agency invoices, frequently squirreled away in obscure places.

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