Hi Manager: The key to long-term success
Business leaders tend to focus on traditional financial success indicators such as sales and profit or perhaps operational performance metrics. While these indicators are undoubtedly important, the long-term success of any organisation and especially orga
This is obviously not a new concept, but in today’s hyper-speed business environment, when management’s focus is often on the next quarter or half-year results it is easy to forget the human factor. Unfortunately, this focus trades short-term performance for long-term success.
To achieve growth targets over the course of years rather than months, senior management and, in fact, management at all levels must make talent management one of their key priorities and they must be evaluated on how well they develop people. In the end, a manager’s performance in organisational talent management should be evaluated based on metrics just like financial and operational performance are evaluated today.
Clearly, the place to start this talent management journey is with a system of evaluating the organisation’s employees and determining the depth and breadth of the available talent pool. This should not be left solely in the hands of the human resource department as they don’t see the employees on a daily basis. All managers with people management responsibility need to play a role in evaluating their staff and, determining their potential and promotion. I know it is easy to say that all managers are responsible for talent identification, but to be fair this is not an easy task. The organisation must provide the tools and skills necessary to take on this responsibility. Key among these is a clear, transparent and objective set of criteria for staff evaluation. Included in these criteria are past performance, peer acceptance and mastery of key skills. These criteria should minimise as much as possible, the subjective element of the evaluation process.
From my perspective, it is vital to focus on selecting the right candidates for entry into the organisation. When I am screening potential new hires, I always factor in the 3 As – Attitude, Aspiration and Ability – and for me that is also the correct order of priority. A positive “can-do” attitude is critical to an individual’s long-term success and is something that can’t be taught – they either have it or they don’t. Basically, if we choose the right people at the outset, they will have a greater chance of joining the talent pool and having a successful and rewarding career, and the company obtains the human resources it needs to grow.
But once the high-potential employees have been identified the organisation needs to put action behind its words regarding talent development. It needs to make available training, skills development, financial incentives and other benefits that clearly communicate to the high-potential employees that they are valued and that their retention is a company priority.
One additional point on talent management is that it is an ongoing process and employees must understand that being identified for the talent pool is not a once and forever thing. They have to continue to perform and demonstrate their potential. Further, as people progress in their careers, they will have different relations to the talent pool. For example, an employee who demonstrates strong potential and high promotability at one time, will probably not show these attributes in the same way after he or she has been promoted. In most cases, there will need to be a period where they develop in their new position before they are ready to go further. This is sometimes not well communicated to people who then feel that they are not moving up fast enough and begin to consider alternatives.
Ultimately, for companies in Thailand to be able to compete at an international level, they must make the development of talent a real priority. If they do this, they create the foundation for long-term success in a globalised and highly competitive economy. If they do not develop their human resources, they risk losing their best people to those organisations that do. There is little time to lose in enhancing talent management capabilities as the establishment of the Asean Economic Community in 2015 will make the war for talent more intense than ever before.
Dhanawat Suthumpun is managing director at Hewlett-Packard (Thailand).
