Rethinking talent management for future success

“If your organisation feels the urge to perform talent management just because others do it, without any objective, without any commitment – then don’t waste your time and your budget doing it at all.” 

Pattamawalai Rattanapl, chief people officer and chief operating officer at the Minor Food Group, made that statement after being selected along with me as the only representatives from Thailand to speak about solving the talent crisis at an upcoming conference to be held by the Association for Talent Development (ATD). 

Having worked in human-resources and organisational development for more than 20 years, I’ve come to realise that many – whether or not they work in an HR function themselves – are still struggling to define and categorise their workforce. 

They tend to call everyone who has potential “talent”, while in reality there are at least three types of workforce within your organisation: talents, high performers and mere employees.

What are the differences among these three? Simply put, talent is a group of people who have potential to help their organisation grow and develop. They are eager to be a part of the organisation’s success and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. 

On the other hand, high performers are those who can work well and can learn fast. They differ from talents in that if you put a high performer somewhere else, he or she will still be a high performer, because they can work well but rarely feel committed to the overall success of the organisation. 

The rest of your organisation consists of employees. 

So, you can see that talents are special and can contribute greatly to long-term, sustainable success; thus it is essential that they be treated, managed and developed differently from others. To be more specific, they need to be groomed by the executives and the leaders who know best the organisational direction and intent.

Having worked closely with the Minor Food Group for the past few years, I have seen it grow from a small firm into one of the biggest multinational companies, operating in more than 35 countries with about 52,000 staff, compared with only 10,000 a decade ago. 

These numbers signify that the company must have done something right in terms of its strategic human resources by mapping out talent and putting them into a well-designed talent management programme that equips them with the full-loop framework – from educating to engaging, reinforcing and monitoring.

However, it is critical for any organisation that wishes to implement a talent management programme that it is not just putting every rule in the guidebooks into practice. Rather, the programme has to be adjusted to suit the context, culture, and working style of each organisation in order to reap the benefits fully. 

In this regard, the Minor Food Group and APM Group will be presenting and showcasing the success of our talent management programme at the an ATD conference in Orlando, Florida, next month.

 

Arinya Talerngsri is group managing director at APM Group, an organisation and people development consultancy. She can be reached at [email protected].