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Succession Planning

Published June 2007

Building a Talent Pipeline

  Max Goldman and Rob Bernshteyn

So often these days, we hear about the war for talent — companies fighting companies to hire the best and the brightest in an all-out war in which the munitions are salaries, bonuses, perks and stock options. Victory is marked by the successful recruitment and retention of value-added employees who help move companies forward.

The war for talent is largely the consequence of a shortage of natural resources, that is to say, a supply problem. This is compounded further by the nature of what is being supplied.

People are far more thoughtful than many other naturally occurring materials such as coal or rubber, and the market in which they work — as with many other markets of today — is far more fluid than ever. A simple check on Salary.com lets people know immediately what they're worth, and a hop over to Monster.com lets them know who is hiring. Coal can't do that.

But for organizations with their thinking caps on, this war is far from lost. Creating a talent pipeline that feeds your business is more than just possible — it's a downright powerful competitive advantage. According to a recent SuccessFactors survey, more than 50 percent of companies have failed to implement any sort of succession planning program or compensate or reward employees based on performance.

In talent war terms, that means more than half of your competitors have no airplanes or tanks. The talent war is yours to win.

A talent pipeline first is about bench strength. The only way your organization can be firing on all cylinders is if no seat is left unfilled for long. Recruiting is the first place everyone looks when they hear that. And that makes a certain amount of sense — the only way to fill seats is to find brains to put in them.

But looking outside should be option No. 2. What's the first option? Keeping the people you already have.

Employees leave companies for many reasons: money, bad bosses, boredom and so on. Seventy percent of U.S. employees say they feel either "not engaged" or "actively disengaged" at work, according to a recent survey by The Gallup Organization. But there's a lot we can do to keep them happy and in their seats.

Goals

The alignment of goals is not just important to ensure the effective execution of a company's business strategy — it is also a significant contributor to employee motivation. According to the article "Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation," by David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind and Michael Irwin Meltzer, one of the conditions for employee enthusiasm is a clear, credible and inspiring organizational purpose, essentially, a "reason for being" that translates for workers into a "reason for being there" that goes beyond money.

Goals that are negotiated and mutually agreed on improve employee-manager relationships and provide an important sense of ownership for employees. Although most employees desire to be part of some higher purpose to feel important, they also want the option to offer their own ideas about how they can best fit in the grand scheme of things. Different individuals will have unique and varying ways to overcome problems and achieve goals, and that's desirable. Studies have shown that more can be accomplished by diverse individuals working together than singly.

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