According to most research studies today, one of the top 3 reasons that the best skills leave the organisation is because they don’t see career opportunities for themselves. And this is particularly true in the new, flatter, Agile/Lean organisations.
Attracting and recruiting top talent has become one of the most challenging aspects of people management today. Managers and HR Professionals spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find the best talent for organisations. Yet, for some reason, the same rigour is not applied to retaining them.
Most organisations, especially those with strong digital links and operating in high growth markets, are feeling the brunt of high turnover, low commitment, and job-hopping.
How can your organisation channel top talent to want to hop around within your own organization? According to Forbes, to achieve this, there are 3 questions that must be answered in the affirmative:
- Are there real career opportunities available?
- Are they visible to your talent pool?
- Are there support structures that facilitate internal career moves?
Agile does not mean no Career Management—but it does mean different Career Management. And, if the organisation does not offer different alternatives, good, ambitious people are bound to leave.
Why Future Talent Career Management?
As organisations are changing and becoming more Agile, or Lean, so the shape and form of the organisation is changing. Layers of management disappear, and management themselves become more cross-functional and less siloed.
This means that there are fewer and fewer opportunities “up” the organisation, but more opportunities across the organisation.
In the world of Agile/Lean, at any one point in time, any person can be performing one or more roles—as needed by the team at the time. The more roles that an individual can play in this new, flexible, dynamic organisation, the more valuable they become to the organisation.
This fact challenges current remuneration strategies—but that is an issue for another time.
The Creation of V-Shaped People
There is much talk about T-Shaped people in the HR vernacular today. It is our contention that, if Future Talent Career and Competency Management is effectively used in organisations, we will create V-Shaped people—who are ultimately of enormous value to the organisation.
The V-Shape starts with fairly limited skills in a fairly limited field—largely dictated by post-school college or university development. However, once in the organisation, people can move up in their primary skill area, or across into different skills areas—or, generally, both!
As they grow in this “spiral” fashion, they develop both breadth and depth of skills and competencies—taking them to the top of the V-Shape.
Benefits to the Organisation
Organisations that have a well-articulated Career Mosaic:
- Indicate to employees that they are serious about people development
- Encourage people to “job hop” within the organisation rather than working for the competition
- Empower managers to have more meaningful and constructive career conversations with employees
- Are able to gear learning and development in line with defined competencies
- Can better assess their competency “assets” and plan for development when necessary
- Reduce their overall Total Cost of Workforce as it is more cost-effective to develop inhouse than to buy in skills
- Save money by optimising skills and competency usage within the organisation.
If you want to keep critical skills in your organisation and save a lot of money from reduced staff turnover, we can certainly help you achieve that. Click here to schedule an appointment to talk to us, or click here to contact us and we will get back to you directly.