Why doesn’t senior management care enough about top talent to be held accountable for it?
UK companies run the risk of slipping behind global companies if they continue to focus on things that can work counter towards improving the business through leveraging their talent.
Many businesses understand the need to develop and nurture their top talent but according to the CIPD Global Leadership Forecast 2008-2009 accountability for this lies mostly with the HR team and junior managers within the business. Only 19% of UK senior managers being held accountable, in global companies this rises to 36%.
Most business leaders are aware of the old adage ‘you get what you measure’ and this can explain why there appears to be failure in companies ability to ensure that effective leadership development takes place. Senior management abrogating accountability can be an effective way to ensure the success or otherwise of this vital development is hidden in a HR metric, potentially not even aligned to the business.
The CIPD found that 64% of UK companies felt that improving or leveraging top talent was a number one pirority for their business. To achieve this then overall accountability must move from HR (who should continue to support managers in this area) and junior managers to senior managers. This is the most effective way to ensure that talent management is taken seriously by the company and enables our business priorities like improving customer service and maintaining growth in increasingly competitive markets take place.
Senior management can be held accountable in a number of ways the most effective include:
- Align accountability for talent management to salary and bonus schemes
- When senior managers resort to the Board on their functional responsibilities like growth targets,talent management has an equal amount of ‘airspace’
- Ensure that senior management are not promoted unless there is a successor readily available
- Ensure that talent management is addressed as a senior management team not just an individual managers responsibilty
- Enable the HR team to hold senior management accountable to effect talent management as well as the Board.
The measures above are designed to ensure that senior management remains focused on developing and nuturing top talent as a key importance to the business. These managers are most able to define key talent’s career opportunities, morale and ability to perform well for the company via their direct control or patronage. If this ability is used well then the company is more likely to achieve its strategic objectives.
Tags: Leadership, Senior Management, Talent Management, Troublesome Talent
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:00 am
One of the biggest problems I find is that the KPIs are skewed towards tangible results like turnover and profit. This rot often sets in with entry level management who are give very few incentives – and even less time – to actually manage their teams. As people work their way up the totem pole, the whole concept of development, management, etc. get lost in the wash.
Your list is a fair one, but implementing it might prove tricky. Much as I am in strongly in favour of bottom up learning solutions, this is one thing that isn’t going to work bottom up. It would ahve to be top down.
Problem is: in my experience the sort of person who takes this sort of thing seriously is unlikely to have made it to board level, and if they have, they will outnumbered. The kind of guys (and they are usually guys) who tend to responsible for the direction of the company sneer at this stuff.
June 24th, 2009 at 6:06 am
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