Talent Lifecycle Thinking: Why We Must Re-Imagine Our Approach To Talent Management
Organisations need to think bigger, braver and more holistically about talent - or risk being left behind.
Professor Nick Kemsley explains how to manage each stage of the talent lifecycle in order to attract top talent, develop future leaders, and drive organisational success.
It's time for some big scary thinking on talent
While we've all been focused on the challenges of attracting and retaining talent through the pandemic, a stark truth has been hiding behind the headlines.
That truth is that many of our approaches to talent management haven't moved with the times. We have allowed a significant gap to appear between how employers think about talent and how that talent thinks about employers. What's needed is, at the very least, a tune-up and, in some cases, a complete rebuild.
This is going to mean thinking bigger, braver and more holistically about how we look at talent and careers. It means recognising talent as 'career consumers' and looking at the world as they do. If we don't, this consumer empowerment will leave behind those organisations unwilling to adapt.
A good place to start is thinking about the different career stages and embracing a lifecycle approach. Alongside this, we should reassess how we have been doing things and challenge and update our strategies. Finally, we need to make sure we have everything in place to make the best of our new strategy – aligning our people value chain for optimum execution of the strategy. So, start by looking at things in a more integrated way and focusing on these four key areas:
1. Expanding our perspective on talent to a lifecycle view
2. Taking the opportunity to challenge and update our talent norms
3. Re-inventing SWP and developing focused end-to-end sourcing strategies
4. Aligning the people value chain to support integrated talent strategy execution
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About the author: Professor Nick Kemsley
Associate Faculty, Henley Centre for HR & Organisational Capability; Strategy and Consulting Advisor, Corporate Development; Visiting Professor; Executive Fellow
Nick is an experienced HR practitioner and recognised thought leader in organisational capability, talent and HR effectiveness. He offers considerable expertise and insight on a wide variety of HR-related topics, particularly strategic workforce planning, where he is considered a global thought leader in the field.
If you would like to talk about any of the points raised in the Talent Lifecycle report, or simply connect to share your own experiences, we would love to hear from you.