Category: Leadership

Integrating talent management across the organization

6/8/2015

“Talent is the No. 1 priority for a CEO. You think it's about vision and strategy, but you have to get the right people first.” –Andrea Jung

In my last article, the evolution of talent management: where it has come from and where it needs to go, I talked about several ways in which talent management is changing and evolving. One of the most critical aspects of this evolution is that talent management is becoming more integrated.

What does it mean for an organization to have integrated talent management? There are multiple ways to define integration, but in my point of view, an organization with truly integrated talent management has these three characteristics:

Talent management is not the exclusive domain of HR but involves the CEO and leaders from across the organization.
The CHRO has the business acumen to be a strategic partner and is held accountable for driving results
Talent strategy is well aligned with business strategy, and talent management programs support strategic priorities and deliver business value.

1. Ensure that talent management is the shared responsibility of leaders across the organization

The most important aspect of integrated talent management is that it cannot be the exclusive domain of HR. Yes, HR should be involved in strategic decision-making, and yes, HR leaders should drive and facilitate many of the talent-related conversations with other business leaders. But for talent management to be successful, it needs to be treated as the shared responsibility of leaders across the organization.

Talent is critical to every single part of the organization – for more and more companies, their people are their biggest competitive differentiator – often the delta between success and failure. So it’s baffling that for so long, in so many organizations, talent management was treated as an HR-only responsibility. Most companies these days are getting the message that talent management is a critical issue that affects the entire organization, as evidenced by recent studies showing that talent is now the number one concern of CEOs.

It goes without saying that the CHRO should be accountable for leading the talent management charge: facilitating discussions with other leaders to define the talent strategy, executing talent management processes and programs, and reaching out to involve executives and managers from across the business in talent management activities as appropriate. But a CHRO doesn’t have formal authority over these executives and managers; the CHRO can only influence them. To really ensure active participation in talent management across the organization, the message needs to come loudly and clearly from the CEO. The CEO needs to communicate that successful talent management is everyone’s responsibility, and all departments will be held accountable for the success of their people. According to the McKinsey book The War for Talent, establishing a talent mindset across the organization is the single most important factor in winning the war for talent, and it absolutely must be driven by the CEO.

2. Ensure that the CHRO has the business acumen and accountability to be a strategic partner

One of the primary root causes of siloed, non-strategic talent management is that HR has not acted as a strategic partner with other business leaders. As described in the 2005 Fast Company article, Why We Hate HR, not only does HR not have a seat at the table, but “the table is locked inside a conference room to which they have no key.” Unfortunately, not a lot has changed in the last decade in terms of HR’s lack of C-level strategic participation. Why is HR so rarely included as a strategic business partner?

Well, to be blunt, many HR leaders have not acted very strategically. HR got a reputation for being focused on policy enforcement, administration and risk minimization, because that’s how many HR professionals behaved. Unfortunately, the “human” part of HR often got lost.

HR expertise alone does not make a great HR leader. HR leaders need to be able to think strategically, and they need to have a deep understanding of the business and its strategic priorities. They need to be able to speak the language of the other business leaders in the organization, and they need to be very good at exerting influence. They need to be analytic thinkers, problem solvers, and change leaders. Not surprisingly, some of the best HR leaders have held leadership roles in other parts of the business as well as in HR.

One notable example of a successful CHRO is Tim Huval, CHRO at Humana. Prior to Humana, Huval held a number of leadership roles at Bank of America, both in HR and in other parts of the organization. He was the first C-level hire made by the incoming CEO Bruce Broussard, and in the time he’s been there, Huval has been leading a major people and culture transformation as Humana shifts its business model from a traditional insurance company to a technology company that focuses on improving its members’ well-being. Throughout the transformation, employee turnover has remained low and employee engagement scores have remained high. According to a recent Forbes article ranking Huval #1 on its list of top CHROs, “Huval refuses to take credit for any of the many successes Humana has achieved over the last two years, quickly giving the credit to his colleagues and teammates. But those who know him will quickly point to the critical nature of his role in Humana’s transformation into the enterprise Broussard envisioned.”

Another key issue is that HR leaders have rarely been held accountable for delivering results. Because the business impact of HR programs can be difficult to measure, and because HR has indirect influence rather that direct responsibility for many aspects of talent management, they are rarely held accountable for delivering business value. In other words, many HR leaders have no skin in the game.

This needs to change. HR needs to be held accountable for driving results, and that can only happen if those results are measured (hence, another key attribute of the talent management evolution is that talent management needs to become more data-driven). And this doesn’t mean just process metrics (e.g. “over 80% of our employees have completed the training”), but more importantly, impact metrics and strategic insight (e.g. “over 80% of our employees have completed the training but quality defects have only decreased 1%; let's take another look at the root cause of those defects and see how we can beef up the training...”). Measuring business impact may not be easy, but it’s what matters. HR should be expected to quantitatively demonstrate the business impact that talent management has had on business results.

3. Ensure that talent strategy aligns with business strategy, and talent management programs support strategic priorities and deliver business value

Many organizations have traditionally taken a very transactional approach to talent management. In other words, talent management has often been focused primarily on processes and activities. For example, HR departments would focus on ensuring there is a process for recruiting, another process for performance management, for promotions, etc., and that all of these processes were working efficiently. Not that efficient and effective processes aren’t important, but they shouldn’t be a starting point. Talent management needs to start with understanding the business strategy, which then informs the talent strategy, which then translates into processes and activities to support the strategy.

Start by defining the strategic goals and priorities of the organization, and build the roadmap for how to get there. This will help determine numerous strategic talent decisions, such as:

How will the size of our workforce need to change? How quickly?
What skills will we need? Can existing employees be retrained? Do we need to hire new employees with these skills?
What types of leaders do we need in the next 3, 5, 10+ years? Do we have enough high potential leadership candidates internally? Do we need to look outside for leadership candidates?
How will strategic changes affect our employees? What do we need to do to optimize employee engagement as we implement changes?
How is our culture helping us get there? Is it helping us more where it’s stronger/less where it’s weaker? How? Why? What can we do about that? Who's going to be best at helping us do it?
What are the most important talent-related priorities? How should we prioritize effort and investment in talent management programs?

Once these strategic talent decisions are made, then it’s time to get tactical and work out what talent-related processes, programs and activities are needed to support the talent strategy. By starting with business strategy, it becomes much clearer what talent management actions are needed to support strategic priorities and deliver business value.

An example of integrated talent management

So…what does truly integrated talent management look like in practice? Great examples are still relatively hard to find, but there are a few, and General Electric (GE) is one of them. GE has been recognized as a talent management leader since the 1990s, going back to when Jack Welch put Bill Conaty into the CHRO role because of Conaty’s demonstrated performance across a number of organizational roles and his strong business acumen. Conaty was known as being an influential strategic advisor to Welch, which was even rarer among CHROs in those days.

Jack Welch saw talent as a top priority and was instrumental in driving a talent mindset across the organization. He made it unequivocally clear that talent management was the responsibility of every single leader in the organization, and they would be held accountable. He also saw developing talent as his main job: “I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.”

Even though Welch and Conaty have both retired from GE, their legacy lives on, and GE continues to be recognized as a talent management leader. Talent management is seen as a key responsibility of all of GE’s leaders, and talent management programs are very closely aligned to business strategy. According to Jeff Immelt, GE’s current CEO, their talent management system is the most powerful tool they have to implement corporate strategy, through attracting, recruiting, developing and deploying the right people.

Here are a few examples of how GE is demonstrating integrated talent management across the organization:

Jeff Immelt and most of GE’s leaders spend at least 30% of their time on people-related issues.
Every manager at GE is responsible for the leadership development of his or her team, and they are expected to put a significant amount of effort into the leadership development processes.
GE identified a strategic goal of increasing the focus on technological and innovation. In response, technology skills were added as a key development requirement as part of Session C, GE’s leadership review process.
21 Millennial employees were selected from across the organization for a special three-month assignment, to make recommendations to Jeff Immelt on how GE can better retain and inspire Millennials. GE implemented several of the recommendations made by the task force.

Photo credit: Pixabay

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Improving Employee Engagement through Effective Team Leadership

3/31/2015

9 Comments

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” —Jack Welch

Have you ever had the experience of working on a team with a really bad team leader? I certainly have, and I’ve heard many depressing “bad team leader” stories from others. I’ll share a story I heard from a young consultant – I’ll call her Sheri – who was part of a large project team with a particularly ineffective team leader. There were about a dozen people on the team and everyone worked remotely. Other than weekly team calls, Sheri never heard from her team leader. She was given a very vague assignment and was not given any opportunity to ask questions. Sheri tried sending instant messages and emails to her team leader to ask questions, but he never once responded. Sheri would submit work products like financial models and PowerPoint slides, but the team leader gave her very little information on what he thought of her work or how it was incorporated into the overall project deliverables. Sheri never had the opportunity to meet or speak with the client, and the team leader didn’t share any feedback from the client on what they thought of the work. Of course, Sheri never received any feedback from the team leader on her performance during the project. The only “feedback” she got was a mediocre performance assessment score two months after the project had ended, with no explanation given as to the reason for the mediocre score. At the time I spoke with Sheri, she and several others on the team were already well into the process of looking for another job…and who could blame them?

In today’s work environment, more and more work is being done collaboratively in teams. And many of the factors that drive employee engagement are significantly influenced by team leaders. Employees want meaningful work. They want flexibility in how, when and where they work. They want to have fun at work. And they want to work with people who will help them grow their skills and inspire them to do great work.

As a result, team leaders play a critical role in employee engagement. Since they have regular interaction with the people on their team, team leaders are often in the best position to develop employees’ skills, provide real-time performance feedback, coach employees to improve their performance, challenge employees to take on “stretch” assignments, and mentor employees on their career goals. Team leaders are also often in the best position to sense when employees are not engaged and may be at risk of leaving their job.

Companies need to do more to support team leaders
Given the high degree of influence team leaders have on employee engagement, companies should do everything they can to help employees be great team leaders, yet this is too infrequently the case. Often, companies provide little training and support to team leaders on how to be effective in their role. I have heard many stories about – and experienced firsthand – situations where inexperienced team leaders have been thrown into the deep end with little or no support, and it’s up to them to “sink or swim.” Unfortunately, in many of these situations, the team leaders clearly “sank,” which had a detrimental impact on the rest of the team. And the problem isn’t limited to new team leaders. In many cases, team leaders may be very good at some aspects of their role, such as keeping the client happy, but they are particularly ineffective at managing the people on their team. Yet this goes unchecked because their performance isn’t measured on how effectively they engage the people on their team.

Sheri’s story was clearly a worst-case scenario, but based on the stories I’ve heard over the years, I suspect it’s not all that uncommon. And even more common is the scenario of the “so-so” team leader, who provides some guidance and feedback for team members, and may genuinely want to effectively engage the team, but hasn’t been given the training or support on how to do that. With the job market heating up these days and employees having other options available to them, even having a “so-so” team leader may be enough to convince employees to look at what else is out there.

So…what can companies do to ensure that team leaders are effectively engaging employees? In short, companies need to do three things:

Provide training and resources to team leaders
Provide team leader coaching
Hold team leaders accountable for employee engagement

Provide training and resources to team leaders
Formal training on team leadership can dramatically improve the effectiveness of team leaders. At least some training should be live (in person or by webinar / teleconference), so that team leaders have the chance to ask questions, as opposed to online self-paced training. One option might be a multi-day team leadership “boot camp” for new team leaders, supplemented with ongoing monthly presentations for all team leaders. In addition to training, companies should provide templates, information and examples that team leaders can leverage over the lifecycle of a project, such as team building exercises, project plan templates and suggestions on coaching and feedback.

Of course, people management is just one aspect of team leadership, and training and resources should cover a comprehensive list of topics, such as:

People management: team building, providing coaching and feedback, dealing with underperforming team members, assessing team member performance
Client management: stakeholder management, executive presence, presentation skills
Project / financial management: project contracting, project planning, metrics tracking, budget tracking, revenue generation
Thought leadership: best practice methodologies, harvesting intellectual capital

Provide team leader coaching
While training and resources are very important, they are not enough. An equally important type of support for team leaders is coaching, especially for new team leaders. A new team leader is inevitably going to encounter several unfamiliar challenges and may not know how to handle them. Having an experienced team leader as a coach to go to for advice will help team leaders navigate these challenges. How long a new team leaders gets coaching depends a lot on the person, but I would recommend a minimum of one year. More experienced team leaders should take on the role of the coach to newer team leaders.

When I was learning how to be an effective team leader, I had a coach that I met with biweekly, and sometimes on an ad hoc basis when I needed immediate advice on how to handle a challenging situation, such as a difficult client or an underperforming team member. It was reassuring to know that my coach was available to help me whenever I needed it. In addition to giving me advice on handling sticky situations, he coached me on team leadership skills, such as leading a team kickoff meeting, building out a good project plan and preparing for a client presentation, where he played the role of the client and threw curve balls at me like cutting me off with challenging questions.

Incidentally, companies should also provide training and support to the coaches on how to be an effective coach, because the quality of the coaching that team leaders receive makes a big difference. It’s important that coaches understand what’s expected of them, and if they aren’t going to be 100% committed to the coaching role, they shouldn’t be coaches. Coaches should also be given coaching resources, such as suggested topics to cover with the team leaders they are coaching.

Hold team leaders accountable for employee engagement
In addition to supporting team leaders through training and coaching, it’s critical to hold them accountable for their performance. Of course, team leader performance should be measured across all of the dimensions listed above. The problem is that team leaders are often not measured on their people management performance, the dimension that most directly drives employee engagement. Team leader performance is often assessed by a supervisor who may not have much visibility into how effectively a team leader managed the people on the team. As a result, team leaders may put less focus on the people management aspect of their role.

The best way to assess a team leader on people management performance is to ask the team members for input. For example, did the team leader provide adequate direction and guidance to team members? Did the team leader motivate team members to perform at their best? Did the team leader provide helpful coaching and feedback to team members? This type of input from team members can be gathered through 360 feedback or employee satisfaction surveys. There are dozens of software products that companies can use to easily collect 360 feedback.

Unfortunately, not every team leader has the passion or talent for people management. Someone might be a strong team leader across other dimensions but may not have the skills or the desire to lead and manage the people on her team effectively, despite training and coaching. Sometimes in this situation, someone else on the team with strong people management skills may naturally step up to fill the role of people manager. In other instances, where this doesn’t happen organically, it may make sense to assign someone as a “deputy team leader” who has the skills and the passion for leading the other team members. The team leader responsibilities can be split, and performance metrics adjusted accordingly, with the team leader focusing more on client management / thought leadership and the deputy team leader focusing more on people management. Of course, this requires a strong working relationship and frequent communication between the team leader and deputy team leader. And it may not work well in all situations, depending on the personality of the team leader and the culture of the company.

I believe effective team leadership is critical to employee engagement…what do you think?
There are many different factors that determine how engaged an employee is, but a really effective team leader can play a major role in improving employee engagement. Likewise, a particularly ineffective team leader can significantly decrease employee engagement. Companies need to recognize the importance of the team leader role and give team leaders the support and the incentive to effectively lead, motivate and coach their team members.

I’d love to hear your feedback…do you agree? Do companies do enough to support and incent team leaders to effectively manage their teams? Do you have additional suggestions on how companies can ensure that team leaders effectively engage the employees on their teams?

Photo credit: CanStockPhoto

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Integrating talent management across the organization

Improving Employee Engagement through Effective Team Leadership

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