Are Talent Management and Career Management Compatible?

1. Are Talent Management and Career Management Compatible? Stuart McAdam

2. Me? • BA, MA, MBA • Executive Coach – Tavistock Institute, School of Coaching • Psychometric Instruments including Hogan • KPMG • Global HR Director: M&G Re • Executive Board Member for HR: Swiss Re Life & Health • Global HR Director: GeSeaCo • Search – Actuarial and Risk • “Successful Career Management” out soon! – Thorogood Publishing

3. Hypotheses on Misperception • Previous experience exerts a powerful impact; although it may lead to the mistaken belief that the present situation is like the past one • The greater the time taken to create a plan or take a decision the greater the feeling that it will be clear to others • We tend to see the behaviour of others as more centralised, coordinated and disciplined than it is • If it is hard for us to believe that others can see us as a menace, it is often even harder to see that issues important to us are not important to others • We tend to overlook the fact that evidence consistent with our own theories may also be consistent with other views • Source: Jervis

4. Overview: Talent Management

5. Overview: Career Management

6. Compatibility?

7. The Talent Pipeline • “The executive pipeline is not an easy nut to crack… organisations need to attract the best people at the start of their careers, spot and nurture their talent and ensure that they have good development routes, offering challenges, variety, role models, mentoring and career progression in a supportive environment. • Succession plans help to ensure that senior management pools are well developed and that the company is well equipped to handle any unforeseen events.” • “Women on Boards: Second Annual Review, April 2013

8. The Talent Pipeline • Operates at all levels from graduate recruitment to next generation leaders • Requires clarity about purpose and scope • Current uncertainty is causing major issues in predicting needs in short and longer term • High potential individuals are also more likely to reassess their own career opportunities

9. Time for some changes? • “As financial services has lost its cachet, the industry needs to up its game in finding, motivating and developing its people” • Ensure senior management own their talent strategy • Offer more than money • Release the informal organisation • Manage egos and don’t compromise on culture • Oliver Wyman 2014

10. Issues • Assessment or development based • Transparency • Time scale • Participant expectations • Inclusion versus exclusion • Sponsorship, roles and boundaries

11. A Virtuous cycle?

12. A Joined-up approach?

13. CTO?

14. An End to End Process? • Identify? • Recruit or Promote? • Assimilate? • Retain and engage? • Develop? • Happy Endings?

15. Identify • Quantifying and qualifying what constitutes the “right stuff” is the challenge • Are new competencies required to master a significantly different business landscape?

16. Capability Readiness to Change Insurance and Performance • Getting more from less, strategic process improvement and innovation • Creating transparent, robust processes for strategic risk management • Responding to continuing systemic shocks and concomitantly reduced consumer confidence • Retaining investor confidence as investor behaviour and capital requirements shift • Identifying opportunities for innovations presented by changing demographics and adaptive technologies • Understanding the business impact of regulatory change

17. <Creating /Innovating> <Conforming/Diverging> Insurance and Innovation • Getting more from less, strategic process improvement and innovation • Creating transparent, robust processes for strategic risk management • Responding to continuing systemic shocks and concomitantly reduced consumer confidence • Retaining investor confidence as investor behaviour and capital requirements shift • Identifying opportunities for innovations presented by changing demographics and adaptive technologies • Understanding the business impact of regulatory change

18. Insurance/Professional Services Issues • Solvency II • Emergence of the CRO role • Transformation or reformation • OpX and innovation • Divergent thinking? • Skill shortages • Energy • IT • Actuarial • Risk

19. Recruit or Promote? • Mitigation • Substitution • Interim • Imitation • Underestimating • Search • Strategic/tactical/opportunistic? • Recruit

20. Performance Management • A paper chase rather than a process • Annualised ritual • Too complex, subject to frequent change

21. Issues • No common language to define performance and behavioural expectations • No clear line of sight between effort and reward • Wide variations in how superior or poor performance is actually assessed • Personal rather than objective judgements of performance and potential are allowed to go unchallenged

22. Assimilation and turnarounds, M&A • Due diligence – in particular a structured approach to assessing both commitment and capability • Benchmarking of talent within an acquired organisation as early as possible after the deal has closed • An integrated approach to retaining and building capability to ensure an appropriate return is achieved over the desired time frame •  “Stars” are important; although you need to be very certain who they are!  Individuals making the “right” noises may not be the people to take the business forward; apparently reluctant embracers of the new vision may have much more to offer

23. … • Transparent approach to retention and separation issues • In real life there are winners and losers; there is little point ignoring this. The way in which people leave organisations has a powerful impact on those who remain • Getting “the best from the rest”; just as there is a need to focus on “key” people, the importance of through targeted motivation and communication through line managers matters too.

24. Retaining • The “churn” caused by a departure which may unsettle other colleagues and produce frictional costs in determining how best to respond to the departure, • The cost of finding a replacement, whether the internal opportunity costs or fees for recruiters, search firms and advertising, • And most significantly the time it will take for a new employee to become effective.

25. Engaging • Talent management - aligned to business strategy? • CEO’s commitment - visible and consistent? • Where does talent management sit in the HR hierarchy? • Are succession and performance management processes congruent with a common language to articulate what’s wanted? 

26. Generational Differences? • Recent Ernst & Young research suggests that Gen Y (“Millennial”) respondents (13%) were significantly likely to rank promotions over Gen X (5%) and boomers (4%) who may have already achieved these career milestones. • Additionally the “Millennial” generation, currently in the age range 15-35 are well connected and used to “instant” responses. Their expectation of frequent job moves will require new approaches to maintain their engagement with their job • “Intergenerational conflict” (KPMG)

27. Career Management - the wider context? • Retirement Age Increasing? • Economic imperative to keep working? • Lock in impact of final salary schemes? • Re emergence of the brain drain? • Precarious employment versus vicarious employee engagement? • Bipolar organisations?

28. Career Management

29. Engagement - The Individual’s Return on “Me” Developing a framework which enables people to: • Understand themselves and their aspirations • Identify potential career options within the organisation • Understand and practise having adult to adult conversations with the organisation

30. Your own experience of retention and development processes? • …or those of your colleagues/clients/competitors

31. Line Managers… • Expertise in performance management. They need to be effective coaches and committed to making it possible for people to perform effectively. Nothing in their job is more important than this • Expertise in talent management and organisational effectiveness. Make talent decisions with the same rigour as financial decisions • Ability to look into the future • Ed Lawler

32. The Return on Me? • Discussing life before the current role – and organisation – develops a perspective of where the current job sits on the individual’s preferred career pathway. This gives both parties the opportunity to reflect on the “fit” with what may have been expected when joining/taking the job and current perceptions. • Gaps may be related to organisational culture, operating style and team behaviour. Additionally, a discussion based on an exploration of “differences” rather than “failings” provides the opportunity to discuss the implications of this for future career moves.

33. Happy Endings? • Leverage ROM through dialogue based career discussions • “Career CV” • Gives individuals a “nudge” to engage/re-engage • Requires shift in corporate mindset • Training for line managers • Boundary Management • Voluntary

34. Why? • Many managers inherit teams and are often oblivious to the longer term career drivers of their people and the pattern of their career moves. • This biographical look at an individual’s progress and experience may trigger thoughts by both the manager and the individual about future roles which could potentially suit their skill set.

35. Finally • Ensure which competencies are really required • Review impact, outcomes and cost effectiveness • Make greater use of senior line managers as sponsors and mentors • Identify the people you really need to retain