Capitalising on your talented workforce for organisational success

Capitalising on your talented workforce for organisational success

Recently I had the opportunity to hold a press conference with Ms Pattamawalai Rattanapl, chief people officer and chief operating officer of the Minor Food Group, about our planned participation, as the only two representatives from Thailand, at the Association for Talent Development (ATD) conference next month in Orlando, Florida.

We have been invited to speak on the topic “Solving the Talent Crisis: Deploying the ATD Talent Framework”. I have spoken and written numerous times about how important talent is for any organisation that aspires to be successful. In my most recent BizKits column two weeks ago I talked about this subject and how to incorporate assessment tools into your talent programmes.

Unfortunately, I have come to realise that the majority of people are still confused about the simple concept of how to differentiate their own workforce; hence, they are not aware that each group in the workforce requires a different type of treatment and a different development approach.

Now, you might ask why it troubles me so much to talk about this particular topic again. The thing is, having worked in the human resources and organisational development field for more than 20 years, I have seen many organisations invest in the talent management programmes simply because “others do it, so why don’t we?”

In reality, applying such logic — the statement implies a lack of genuine commitment — to your talent management investment could cause more harm than good. Not only will it not bring about a sustainable result, but your talents might also feel misused and eventually you could see higher staff turnover.

The reality is that you can’t simply call anyone in your organisation who has the potential to go further a “talent”. This will lead you to think that you have plenty of talents in your workforce — no need to seek more, while in reality there are at least three types of people in your organisation: talents, high performers and employees.

Simply put, talents are people who have potential to help their organisation grow and develop but they also have some important and essential additional qualities: they are eager to be a part of the organisation’s success and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal.

On the other hand, high performers are those who can work well and can learn fast. The difference between a talent and a high performer, however, is that if you put a high performer somewhere else, she would still be a high performer because she can work well but she rarely feels committed to the overall success of the organisation. After the talents and high performers come the employees, who make up the majority in most organisations. While essential to day-to-day operations as long as they carry out assigned duties competently, they tend not to have much ambition or commitment to the organisation.

Now that you see the differences, you should also understand that as talents are special and can contribute greatly to organisational success — sustainable success to be precise — it is critical that they be treated, managed and developed differently from others. Specifically, they need to be groomed and guided by the executives — not the HR department — who know best the organisational direction and intent in order to fulfill the objectives.

Last but not least, it is essential that human resources professionals be careful to ensure that they do not focus solely on those classified as talented, while failing to recognise the high performers as well as the rest of the workforce. Overlooking the latter two groups will certainly lead to a lack of flexibility and dynamism in the entire talent management process.

I hope that this article can further enhance your understanding about talent because I know that it has become a big buzzword. Most people may not always be sure what it is, but they know they want some. So, in order to truly create success and growth from talent, ask yourself and your organisation these questions today: do you truly value talent? How well can you manage it? Do you even manage talent at all?

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Arinya Talerngsri is Group Managing Director at APMGroup, Thailand’s leading Organisational and People Development Consultancy. For more information, e-mail arinya_t@apm.co.th or visit www.apm.co.th. For daily updates, visit https://www.facebook.com/apmgroupthai

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