• 91 percent of respondents want information on the competency/skills gaps in the workforce but only 55 percent have access to reliable data in this area

• 90 percent say that it is important to have information on how individual’s goals are aligned to business but only 57 percent have access to reliable information

• 82 percent consider data on succession bench strength is important but only a minority (41 percent) have access to reliable data on it

The paper goes on to state that only 33 percent of organisations have access to reliable data on the quality of hire and just 55 percent of companies know if they have the skills to execute their business strategy.

Furthermore, 56 percent of businesses have no access to reliable data on the top performing employees that are not on any succession plans. Almost half (49 percent) of all respondents do not have any insight into the number of new hires that leave the company voluntarily within the first year.

So what does this mean?

• Nearly half of organisations don’t know who their top performers are

• Over half don’t know what their bench strength looks like

• Nearly half don’t know if their new hires turned out to be any good

In summary we can conclude that half of businesses are been driven in the dark. The performance of their people is ultimately a guessing game.

Do you share these challenges?

What does Global really mean and can this really be achieved through RPO? I asked myself this whilst on a 747 between San Francisco and London – having travelled via Hong Kong, India and South Korea during the seven days prior to this. Two days ago I was with the EVP HR for one of our Global customers who said that their transformation objective for doing a Global RPO with Ochre House was to truly Globalise his HR function. This got me thinking… is Global RPO there to support the hires for Companies in many countries across Americas, EMEA & APAC or could it be utilised to create real transformational change within businesses. 

Is this where the RPO Companies have gone wrong up to now? Reacting to the handful of RFP tenders coming out in the year and hoping to pick up as much volume and scale as possible? I was reminded during this trip that Resourcing and Talent Acquisition for this Company was one of their most important strategic agendas – they see RPO as a way to achieve transformational change through executing their objectives and strategy over the next three years.  By introducing a defined blend of talent into the organisation they will be able to facilitate the change, direction and growth needed to achieve real business value to the bottom line.  Isn’t that what RPO is about?  Strategic partnerships that create great things? 

If this is the case does the industry need to go back to the drawing board – to focus on the customers overall strategy first and then the hiring infrastructure and capability second…is it this simple? 

I believe it is! In my experience, no Company should consider Regional or Global RPO without asking themselves what are the main strategic objectives to be achieved from outsourcing.  Operational cost savings and efficiency should be taken for granted. If you look at all the large scale RPO contracts that have been centered on these principals mainly they tend to be short lived relationships which don’t set out to achieve for either the RPO Company or the Customer the original intent and scope of the service. Usually it goes off track because of constant change and drivers within the Company being supported and they don’t ever really realise the value of having external resourcing support. 

This moves me on to my next observation which is what is true partnership? Many RPO companies talk about partnerships by defining the relationship as one that is flexible and one of compromise… but how many are strategic partnerships where the RPO leaders sit on the board of the Companies they work with, define the talent acquisition strategy and shape the future success of the businesses they support? Surely this is the value of an RPO partnership? Where a Company brings in external non core skills,  experience and talent to manage their Talent Acquisition strategy. The output of which creates transformation value and significant contribution to the business success. Lets not forget that the people that work for you are your main differentiator – how many times have we heard this over the past 10 years? But despite this how many businesses have actually put specific strategies around their people?

Its time the industry changed – look after the Talent Acquisition strategy and create a true partnership based on Transformational change. Get this right and you can literally change the world…

Stephen Gilbert, Client Services Director EMEA / APAC

The first is not hard to figure out why as many business needed to increase capability where perhaps divestment had been the order of the previous 2 years.  There has certainly been much greater interest in “Outsourcing” resourcing but perhaps not for the obvious reason of increased flexibility (of cost base) and reduced overall costs.  The key driver we are seeing is that businesses are seriously concerned about being able to compete for, win and retain the best talent in the market place.  They realise that resourcing is becoming more and more complex with a need for good, flexible resource planning to try to deliver against often ever-changing needs of the businesses, coupled with high levels of engagement and innovation in the attraction and selection processes in order to bring the best talent in.   If they can’t deliver these then they may well be left constantly on the back foot and with little chance of delivering what the business demands.

The other key driver has been globalisation with larger businesses wanting to increase economies of scale whilst maximising cross-border mobility for internal talent.  The big challenge in Europe has been how to create efficiencies in such a diverse region, whilst delivering leading-edge service locally to candidate community, hiring managers and HR alike.  Europe really is the antithesis of the homogenised market place and therefore requires wide spread local knowledge and engagement, which often creates cost challenges.  There is no one way that works best as each company culture is unique, and we are fortunate to have spoken to many organisations who do things quite differently,  which makes for very rich debate!

At Ochre House we are running 2 workshops in the next 2 months to address these topics http://www.ochrehouse.com/HR-Network-Knowledge-Centre/Event-Schedule-81.  Please let us know if these are challenges you are facing, and if you would like to add to the debate.

An “identified patient“ is a psychological term referring to a family member — often a child or a teenager — who gets scapegoated for behaviour that is actually just a predictable response to dealing with an unhealthy family. In this sense, Tony Hayward is BP’s identified patient.

BP is a great example of an organisation in the grips of a leadership crisis because it has suddenly found itself with an “Identified patient”. Whether this is because of leadership failure or because the US administration “wants some blood” is a point for debate. However, it is clear that few organisations are immune from this potential risk. This therefore poses some interesting questions for those in charge of planning succession.

Typically, leadership succession processes are designed to fulfil three objectives:

Build a “talent pipeline” that is full of the capabilities required in the future organisation
       – Plan for future leaders in specific roles
       – Be ready for a sudden change in plan

It’s this final objective that organisations are frequently poorly prepared for. Whilst BP is one example, the Saga at ITV  last year just underlines the point.

My observation is that whilst strategic leadership planning seems to happen relatively smoothly, scenario planning for shorter term changes tends to be overlooked. So a question for you all? If you had an unidentified patient in your organisation, would you have an answer?

We recently conducted Gender Diversity market research on behalf of one of the biggest global banks, to try to determine how big the problem was to them internally, but also on a much larger scale out in their market. One of the key findings was that only 9% of women interviewed even wanted executive level roles. At the risk of oversimplifying things, is that any surprise? You cannot pay a segment of your workforce on average 55% less than another segment doing the same job, particularly during and after a deep recession when millions of UK employees are looking for a deeper connection in their working lives and perhaps contemplating radical change.

An effective in-house team or third generation RPO provider has been and is working hard to link a total resourcing solution with the talent management strategy that meets the business needs of today and tomorrow.  This means ensuring the business has the right people in the right place at the right time, many of which exist internally as headcount numbers have needed to stay flat. Whilst many businesses have not been recruiting for the past two years, HR functions have built robust talent management programmes, into which the resourcing function feeds both internal and external candidates. These resourcing functions have become experts in maximising direct, non-agency channels partly because it is so much cheaper and largely because candidates in 2010 behave so differently. They are more discerning, need to be communicated with differently, belong to online professional and social communities, are more brand conscious and are actually more accessible directly. The best resourcing functions are also now communicating directly with external talent up to two years before they might need or want to employ them.  

Combine all of this with the work many organisations have done on their Employee Value Proposition and thus maximising on referrals from existing employees, and you have a whole host or reasons why many agencies should be getting upset.

The use of the word ‘talent’ itself has of course many interpretations. We can be talking about ‘people with ‘talent’ i.e. those with special skills, those people that are particularly good at their jobs (i.e. talented jobholders), those that are generally bright (talented) with potential to do great things and the more all inclusive interpretation of the term ‘talent’ which encompasses almost everyone in an organisation on the premise that they are there on the basis of having some ability that makes a contribution – even if they haven’t discovered what it is yet. So – not helpful.

I would argue that even if HR functions and organisations haven’t always used the term talent management, they have generally speaking been trying to improve people abilities (develop talent) through L&D, attract and onboard good people (talent) through resourcing strategies, and retain good and skilled people through reward and ER strategies. The ‘management’ bit implies something extra – an active driving force and control to do things with talent – bring it in, move it around and have it in the right place at the right time. Something that pulls the various HR components together to achieve a flow – hence concept of pipeline, etc.

Holistic talent management is only different from what HR might claim it has always done if we are clear about what is new or different here that makes it s new from the sum of its distinct parts – and for me that is a) the active management ingredient to achieve that constant provision and flow and b) the new components and approaches that organisations are now focusing on (often through technology) to integrate the previously separate resourcing, development, talent and reward processes to achieve a coherent outcome.

So – if organisations are now increasingly taking a holistic view – and I agree they are (hence a growing trend to integrate learning, resourcing, talent and OD functions), I think it is this management and integration across processes that they are focusing on.

Richard Blay, Interim HR Consultant

Perhaps the credit crunch has been the catalyst that HR needed, to convince senior management that talent management is not only a worthy, but a critical investment. Quite apart from stopping them from walking out of the door, modern day businesses cannot be competitive without lean, effective and engaged people, right through the organisation and not just the “top” talent.

It therefore stands to reason that taking big bets on a few executives is a risky strategy. A few ‘executive development’ programmes, secondments and coaching programmes will not offer you much change out of €100k. It’s a heavy price if the high potential don’t perform; or even worse, if the high performers leave the organisation.

That’s why organisations are increasingly taking little bets on a wider population. The role of the talent manager is therefore evolving from focus on the few to sewing fertile fields of talent across the organisation. The traditional actions identification, assessment and development and being replaced with a continual process of seeding, feeding, weeding and transplanting (if you’d excuse the gardening analogy).

 So, what’s your approach, the vital many or the chosen few?

In this report Deloitte have made no excuses for recommending that organisations “follow the market leaders” and it is for that reason that we have assembled global HR heads from organisations that are leading with their talent management programmes.  On May 13^th Ochre House are running an event that will focus on action, tapping into experts and hearing what needs to be done and how to go about it. 

This is a time for action, so lets hear from those that have already taken a lead.