Talent supply chain
Par Bruno Dufour, jeudi 20 juillet 2006 à 14:31 :: Le DRH Stratège :: #18 :: rss
Recruter et gérer les meilleurs talents est sans doute la dimension stratégique ultime de la fonction RH. Article en Anglais
Talent supply chain and consequences for HRM
Defragmentation of some HR processes have brought together departments dealing with the same internal clients but with a different perspective.
• Recruitment
• Definition of strategic competences needs, management template
• Succession planning
• Retention planning
• Compensation and benefits
• Assessment and appraisal, balanced score-card
• Career development
• Personal development, including leadership development (operations or support functions) and high-potential
• Senior development
• Organisational development
The rational supporting this evolution is linked to the fact that more and more corporations are processes managed for other support functions and operations and that the HR function will also have to move in the same direction.
If not, the risk, is that HR does not deliver the proper services at the proper time in alignment with the strategy and the cascading of the implementation.
This requires a fresh new look at HR organisation and the deep understanding of Total Quality Management practices.
The main purpose of the new organisation, with a new terminology : supply chain of talents, under the same roof, is to avoid transaction costs between these units, lack of efficiency, turfisme and loss of credibility of HR departments internally. But frequent observations of such difficult cooperations have been witnessed and it is no surprise that corporations wanted to find a practical organisation to improve the situation.
It may hurt certain feelings, as HR always thought of its function as different and special in the past, because it was dealing with people matters, and not with objects, would it be flows of date, of money or services/goods. But the crude reality is that managing people is also about managing data, money and services/goods. It is true nevertheless that people are no objects and that special care must be taken even in handling objects or data around or concerning people. Hospital or hotel, airlines, insurance and banking corporations do deal with people-client- with a lot of care and provide supply chain services with a high concern of respect, ethics and quality.
There should not be then any conceptual incompatibility, or even philosophical difficulty, to do the same with personnel issues. They are corporate clients, even though they are also providers in the same time. There no real contradiction, and we observe these controversial situation in many occasions within the corporate life, noticeably when one talks about co-opetition between competitors forging a strategic alliance.
The same way a company can value its customer relationship as a relationship capital, the same way it can apply such a type of evaluation to its personnel. The fact that personnel is managed by HR is no excuse and could not stand as a defensive attitude towards marketing and sales as they value their customer relationship, or in front of the CFO when he values the financial assets and flows.
This is even more important these days as everyone understands that the scarce corporate resource is more talent than money or goods.
Dave Ulrich in his HBS article “A new mandate for HR” contributed to opening that door, and many other authors are using now the concept of HR as a Business Partner.
If the word “partner” is accepted by HR then it means that every support function should world in alignment and coordination. Hard to do but a true necessity.
Some movements have already been done with the outsourcing of administrative non strategic tasks or the setting up of call centers to answer basic questions and solve simple problems. E-HR has taken place in many firms, mostly for efficiency reasons.
The theoretical requirements needed so far is about the Human Capital model. A big share of the goodwill of a company can be analysed as people wise, and up to now we have few means to really figure out that patrimony, which means also that we do not manage properly this issue.
What is the specific process of talent supply chain management and the stakes.
Defining needs in quality, quantity, delay, and cost is the primary issue and should be dealt with the executive committee based on the strategic lines, the priorities, the projects, the drawbacks and week points, as well as the redundancies, and complete demographics of the corporation.
For a first try, the personnel should come in different strategic categories in terms of priorities level by level specifying if provision can be internal or not. (See chart)
The relevant recruitment or preparation have to identified to launch the proper process. Sometimes substitutes must be implemented with momentarily experts to wait for the definitive applicant.
The image of successive reservoirs of different talents comes to the mind in a representation which complements the well known “dynamic leadership pipeline” model by adding the dimension of inventory and stock to the pure flow approach.(see chart)
This means that the level of each talent reservoir must be determined by the board in alignment with the strategic needs.
At some time, if a full reservoir is missing or redundant, because changes in technologies, appropriate decisions must be taken, either to source in or out, or to redistribute, requalify or abandon .
Key indicators can define the level of strategic relevance of each reservoir, as well as qualification and number of members, and strategic pressure. As in physics natural entropy will deteriorate the indicators of the reservoir if nothing is done. Negentropy can be represented by recruitment , development, promotion changes in the organisation, new means allocation etc…
Levels and flows:
Reservoirs are communicating between each other.
The role of TSC, talent supply chain, is to make sure proper decisions are made to keep the relevant levels and monitor the indicators in the different reservoirs.
Not only we come now to individual approach of skills and competences, but we can also define it for all reservoirs. Time issues might also be different to upgrade a reservoir, some might be longer than others, and care needed different. Some part of these reservoirs will have to be at some time to work out a new reservoir, would it be a new project, a new organisation, new country, new initiative..
Management of each reservoir is under the sponsorship of one board member, and a global TSC steering committee is periodically organised together with people reviews.
The relative weight of each reservoir brings visibility to crucial decisions. In some companies certain profiles might be more valuable than others due to specific competitive issues.
The global weight of all reservoirs, including the board can be figured out by adding or computing key indicators. In the same sector, competitive companies, with the same profile and performance should come to close figures. Any discrepancy in the profile of reservoir should be a strategic indicator of relative strategic differentiation.
Cross-checking and surveying profiles of reservoirs of key competences and performances can become of strong interest to define the market value of a publicly listed corporations. It can also be a strong managerial instruments for boards.
Managing talent reservoir of operational leaders will differ from managing reservoir of experts.
Each individual will be granted a series of identifications explaining the different reservoir belonging: any individual can be: in one or many expertise reservoir, in one operations leadership one, in a specific geographic unit, different demographic ones (age, degrees, foreign languages, nationality…) and eventually in a mobility one. Different potential levels can be managed to alert more clearly on dangerous levels. Too many high potentials is as dangerous as too many low potentials.
These multi characteristics definition make possible the follow up of necessary levels and flows in each reservoir. This will give a set of indicators explaining how the level can be satisfactory on one point and not so on another. This allows for a better definition of provision need in combining the different needs.
In terms of analysis this allows to find out turnover rate, evaporation and redundancies in the different reservoirs and to anticipate important supply decision. It may take six months to recruit and train a salesman, and many years for a research expert in a specific field. There is also a cost to maintaining the proper level of each different reservoir.
Defragmentation of some HR processes have brought together departments dealing with the same internal clients but with a different perspective.
• Recruitment
• Definition of strategic competences needs, management template
• Succession planning
• Retention planning
• Compensation and benefits
• Assessment and appraisal, balanced score-card
• Career development
• Personal development, including leadership development (operations or support functions) and high-potential
• Senior development
• Organisational development
The rational supporting this evolution is linked to the fact that more and more corporations are processes managed for other support functions and operations and that the HR function will also have to move in the same direction.
If not, the risk, is that HR does not deliver the proper services at the proper time in alignment with the strategy and the cascading of the implementation.
This requires a fresh new look at HR organisation and the deep understanding of Total Quality Management practices.
The main purpose of the new organisation, with a new terminology : supply chain of talents, under the same roof, is to avoid transaction costs between these units, lack of efficiency, turfisme and loss of credibility of HR departments internally. But frequent observations of such difficult cooperations have been witnessed and it is no surprise that corporations wanted to find a practical organisation to improve the situation.
It may hurt certain feelings, as HR always thought of its function as different and special in the past, because it was dealing with people matters, and not with objects, would it be flows of date, of money or services/goods. But the crude reality is that managing people is also about managing data, money and services/goods. It is true nevertheless that people are no objects and that special care must be taken even in handling objects or data around or concerning people. Hospital or hotel, airlines, insurance and banking corporations do deal with people-client- with a lot of care and provide supply chain services with a high concern of respect, ethics and quality.
There should not be then any conceptual incompatibility, or even philosophical difficulty, to do the same with personnel issues. They are corporate clients, even though they are also providers in the same time. There no real contradiction, and we observe these controversial situation in many occasions within the corporate life, noticeably when one talks about co-opetition between competitors forging a strategic alliance.
The same way a company can value its customer relationship as a relationship capital, the same way it can apply such a type of evaluation to its personnel. The fact that personnel is managed by HR is no excuse and could not stand as a defensive attitude towards marketing and sales as they value their customer relationship, or in front of the CFO when he values the financial assets and flows.
This is even more important these days as everyone understands that the scarce corporate resource is more talent than money or goods.
Dave Ulrich in his HBS article “A new mandate for HR” contributed to opening that door, and many other authors are using now the concept of HR as a Business Partner.
If the word “partner” is accepted by HR then it means that every support function should world in alignment and coordination. Hard to do but a true necessity.
Some movements have already been done with the outsourcing of administrative non strategic tasks or the setting up of call centers to answer basic questions and solve simple problems. E-HR has taken place in many firms, mostly for efficiency reasons.
The theoretical requirements needed so far is about the Human Capital model. A big share of the goodwill of a company can be analysed as people wise, and up to now we have few means to really figure out that patrimony, which means also that we do not manage properly this issue.
What is the specific process of talent supply chain management and the stakes.
Defining needs in quality, quantity, delay, and cost is the primary issue and should be dealt with the executive committee based on the strategic lines, the priorities, the projects, the drawbacks and week points, as well as the redundancies, and complete demographics of the corporation.
For a first try, the personnel should come in different strategic categories in terms of priorities level by level specifying if provision can be internal or not. (See chart)
The relevant recruitment or preparation have to identified to launch the proper process. Sometimes substitutes must be implemented with momentarily experts to wait for the definitive applicant.
The image of successive reservoirs of different talents comes to the mind in a representation which complements the well known “dynamic leadership pipeline” model by adding the dimension of inventory and stock to the pure flow approach.(see chart)
This means that the level of each talent reservoir must be determined by the board in alignment with the strategic needs.
At some time, if a full reservoir is missing or redundant, because changes in technologies, appropriate decisions must be taken, either to source in or out, or to redistribute, requalify or abandon .
Key indicators can define the level of strategic relevance of each reservoir, as well as qualification and number of members, and strategic pressure. As in physics natural entropy will deteriorate the indicators of the reservoir if nothing is done. Negentropy can be represented by recruitment , development, promotion changes in the organisation, new means allocation etc…
Levels and flows:
Reservoirs are communicating between each other.
The role of TSC, talent supply chain, is to make sure proper decisions are made to keep the relevant levels and monitor the indicators in the different reservoirs.
Not only we come now to individual approach of skills and competences, but we can also define it for all reservoirs. Time issues might also be different to upgrade a reservoir, some might be longer than others, and care needed different. Some part of these reservoirs will have to be at some time to work out a new reservoir, would it be a new project, a new organisation, new country, new initiative..
Management of each reservoir is under the sponsorship of one board member, and a global TSC steering committee is periodically organised together with people reviews.
The relative weight of each reservoir brings visibility to crucial decisions. In some companies certain profiles might be more valuable than others due to specific competitive issues.
The global weight of all reservoirs, including the board can be figured out by adding or computing key indicators. In the same sector, competitive companies, with the same profile and performance should come to close figures. Any discrepancy in the profile of reservoir should be a strategic indicator of relative strategic differentiation.
Cross-checking and surveying profiles of reservoirs of key competences and performances can become of strong interest to define the market value of a publicly listed corporations. It can also be a strong managerial instruments for boards.
Managing talent reservoir of operational leaders will differ from managing reservoir of experts.
Each individual will be granted a series of identifications explaining the different reservoir belonging: any individual can be: in one or many expertise reservoir, in one operations leadership one, in a specific geographic unit, different demographic ones (age, degrees, foreign languages, nationality…) and eventually in a mobility one. Different potential levels can be managed to alert more clearly on dangerous levels. Too many high potentials is as dangerous as too many low potentials.
These multi characteristics definition make possible the follow up of necessary levels and flows in each reservoir. This will give a set of indicators explaining how the level can be satisfactory on one point and not so on another. This allows for a better definition of provision need in combining the different needs.
In terms of analysis this allows to find out turnover rate, evaporation and redundancies in the different reservoirs and to anticipate important supply decision. It may take six months to recruit and train a salesman, and many years for a research expert in a specific field. There is also a cost to maintaining the proper level of each different reservoir.
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