Talent management

I have long agreed with the saying: “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”.

Those sentiments were recently validated when I attended the “Talent Management Conference 2008” conducted by John Clements Consultancy and the Harvard Business Publishing group.

Before the conference I have to confess that the words Talent management as far as I knew referred to an office or an agency used to recruit, tie-up, schedule and utilize young unsuspecting people aspiring to be actors, actresses or models. This of course has to do with the world of media or entertainment.

The conference, which essentially focused on the need not only to recruit the best candidates for employment but also to “talent Manage” your managers and employees in order to develop and to retain them.

Things have not changed much since I stopped being a full time employee many years ago. For starters, although many of today’s Human resource Managers are better trained, better looking and relatively younger both in age and outlook, the sad reality is that many of their good programs still die at the CEO’s doorstep.

On one side many of today’s Bosses in the Philippines are still direct descendants of the AMO Y SENORITO upbringing or mindset. Even in companies that are not family owned or controlled, many Bosses and managers still conduct business affairs in the same way they run their household.

Those who have liberated themselves from that mentality are certainly better off since they are also the type who immerse themselves in knowledge and training. But the great irony of business management and managers in the country is that very few bosses, CEO’s or business owners actually find the time to formally learn the business and responsibility of Human resource management.

Every business guru tells you “People are the most valuable resource of any company”. But how come they don’t make HR management a vital component and requirement for Business Administration graduates as well as for MBAs?

The perfect analogy to this defect is the fact that I still have not heard of a school of Journalism or Broadcasting that has in its curriculum several semesters of a little known subject as INTERVIEW.

Even before you can write a story, read the news, or broadcast a documentary, or hire a new employee, you will ultimately need to interview someone FIRST. Yet every time I ask MassComm students, they tell me there is no such subject being taught! Did anyone ever bother to consider that “INTERVIEW” is one of those generic but important skills we need to teach people?

In the case of HR, the Boss simply hires an HR Manager to deal with what he presumes is a mere matter of hiring — firing, payrolls, deductions and time keeping. Because Bosses runaway from the responsibility of acquiring knowledge and expertise they automatically makes themselves incompetent.

As a consequence of their incompetence, they are unable to appreciate the needs and unique opportunities that their human resources present them. So you entrust the work to the HR Manager but you cannot fully trust the HR Manager because of your ignorance!

Unfortunately their ignorance also disqualifies them from training or mentoring HR executives to better communicate their perspective to the CEO or inside the Board Room. The reason they say many HR executives never sit in the Board is because a) they don’t ask, and b) they don’t know how to speak the language of business. If you want to be an even more effective HR, learn to talk in terms of Profit and progress, Benefits and Recognitions. Cost cutting is the language of yesterday and presumed to be a “given” today.

The conference was also a lesson on the value of attending such events where the learning potential is very fulfilling.

Jim Lafferty the Country Manager of Procter and Gamble shared how the simple effort of building a more creative and relaxing environment such as painting white walls into more vibrant hues, setting up a massage area, hanging up mini basketball hoops just like the “creative facilities” of Google nearly doubled their work place satisfaction as compared to past years.

On the other hand, expectations or corporate image must also meet or deliver on the promise because many people who leave companies have pointed out that the company failed to deliver on its image or “promise”. Imagine if you joined the US Navy because they said, “Join the Navy…see the world” and all you ever saw were the insides of a boat. You would probably file for a medical discharge.

The second biggest cause of attrition or why other people leave a company is because the company mismatched the individual with the job. A person who applied to be a flight attendant would certainly be unmotivated if assigned to be counter or baggage clerks!

If I remember correctly the DELL representative was the one who revealed that many Filipinos place a premium on knowing they are TRUSTED more than financial incentives. The extra pay has less value than the trust factor.

One thing that really rang a bell for me was the point raised about how a single leader’s skewed perspective could rob a company of so many talents and potential. Market trends may spell Youth with a capital Y but it also robs a company of other productive and profitable talents. Once a particular market is satiated, the company finds itself desperately looking for replacements they once had but disposed of. As they say been there, been done to me.

Finally, I also had a chance to face my Dragons so to speak. I have always been intimidated as many of us are when reading or hearing the term HARVARD BUSINESS.

Aside from their books on business, management and human resource development, I discovered that they had both audio and video materials that were readily available. If you also believe in the Philosophy: “Why buy the cow when you can buy the milk”, the folks from Harvard Business Publishing are the right people to talk to.

Knowledge is never wasted no matter what your age is because knowledge is not only something to be used but something to be experienced as well.