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Performance Management

Published April 2008

Make Every Person Count: Customizing Talent Management

 

  David Smith and Susan Cantrell

Most HR practitioners would agree people learn in different ways, are motivated by different rewards and perform at various levels. Yet, for the most part, they design and apply talent management practices as if everyone were the same.

In an era of workforce abundance, a general talent management approach might have worked. Generic practices were good enough for the majority of workers. As for the rest — well, they had to adapt or find another line of work.
 
Today, as most industries and organizations enter a period of talent scarcity, talent managers have to adapt. To achieve high performance in an era of stiff competition for talent, organizations must address the unique and diverse needs of individuals they hope to attract and retain.

Further, when talent management practices are not relevant to business goals, nor tailored to workers individual performance needs, productivity can suffer. Organizations can no longer absorb poor individual productivity within the general cost of doing business. Talent management practices today must reflect the fact that every person counts.

Recent Accenture research — conducted with more than 60 organizations using a proprietary human capital measurement tool — suggests the key to creating customized talent management solutions lies in a close and integrated partnership between HR and an organization's line managers.

An organization is more likely to support individual workers' needs if it gets closer to where the work is performed. That means integrating talent management practices into the very fabric of business — away from the centralized domain of HR and closer to those who have direct contact with people as they perform: the line managers.

HR retains responsibility for setting the broad context of policies and programs and for creating specific, coherent and logical talent management practices at a global level, while also remaining open to flexible interpretation and implementation at the local level. Line managers are charged with making the policies and practices come to life. Because they are more knowledgeable of particular workers and their situations, and more attuned to local needs and pressures, line managers are optimally positioned to tailor general HR practices to the situations and individuals at hand.

Here are some ways companies are tailoring talent management practices and processes to local and individual needs.

Customize Performance Management
 
Top-down processes to manage employee performance are useful, but must be supplemented with more customized, day-to-day development and performance management discussions that managers have with their employees. Managers at higher-performing companies provide feedback and recognition in a more frequent, informal and personalized manner than at more average-performing companies.

The primary goal of customized performance management is to treat every employee as a unique and important contributor. All too often, formal performance reviews rely on performance criteria that are neither relevant nor customized to an individual's work -— nor is the feedback typically delivered how an individual receives feedback best. To avoid these problems, leading companies such as Microsoft and U.S. mechanical contractor TDIndustries supplement formal reviews with organizational systems in which managers and employees can confidentially record frequent, informal feedback.