What is the total impact of learning and development on your organization?
I’m not just talking about the obvious connection between enterprise education programs and productivity. Even the most jaded CEOs now seem to be catching on to the fact that building a smarter workforce leads to a better bottom line.
What I’m getting at are the more extended, less evident effects of learning and development.
For instance, if you run a respected corporate university, it might help your company to recruit top-shelf hires who are seeking the opportunities your organization offers to further develop their skills and expertise. Or perhaps the measurement functions of your learning programs can help determine which managers should follow the current ones once they are promoted or retire.
Making connections such as these — finding the greater whole that emerges from the sum of all the key parts of talent management — is now a critical element of business strategy. Companies that purposefully attract, develop and retain talented people — and satisfy the conditions these employees need to succeed — create value and competitive advantage.
The larger point here is that no aspect of talent management resides in a silo anymore, if any ever did. Each component — whether it’s recruitment and retention, assessment and evaluation, compensation and benefits, performance management, learning and development or succession planning — influences all the others and multiplies its impact.
Shifts in how organizations value and manage human capital have presented our company with a unique opportunity to create a synergy among our publications. Effective with the January 2007 issue, magazine’s sister publication, Workforce Performance Solutions, is changing its name to Talent Management to more closely align with industry developments.
With a broader editorial scope that covers management of the complete workforce life cycle from hire to retire, as well as an increase to monthly frequency, Talent Management provides the core knowledge needed to integrate all the key pillars of talent management:
Talent Management will strategically connect employee performance with the achievement of identified business outcomes.
If you subscribe to Workforce Performance Solutions, look for the first issue of Talent Management to hit your mailbox in early January. If you’re not yet a subscriber, I invite you to register for a free subscription at www.chieftalentofficer.co.
I think you’ll find it to be an invaluable resource for assuring that your learning organization supports all the integral parts of your company’s strategic talent management initiatives and that they work with and support you — for the greater good of the whole organization.
As always, I encourage you to share your thoughts on this with me at norm@clomedia.com.
Norm Kamikow
Editor in Chief
norm@clomedia.com
