Charting future talent

Accord­ing to Mark Hodg­son, prac­tice leader at tal­ent and career man­age­ment firm Right Man­age­ment:  “Tal­ent map­ping could be described as the process of link­ing tal­ent man­age­ment with strate­gic work­force plan­ning, man­ag­ing the bal­ance between an organisation’s exist­ing sup­ply of high-per­for­mance and high-poten­tial tal­ent, and the need for dif­fer­ent skills and qual­i­ties as the busi­ness changes.”

This is often under­tak­en through a nine-box grid map­ping tool which charts indi­vid­u­als’ skills and capa­bil­i­ties, and assess­es them in terms of per­for­mance and poten­tial, says Gary Miles, direc­tor of inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tions at lead­er­ship insti­tute Rof­fey Park. “It is impor­tant to empha­sise high poten­tial is dif­fer­ent from high per­for­mance,” he points out. “High per­form­ers may be at the top of their game, but not be equipped for future changes, where­as poten­tial is about future, rather than past, per­for­mance.”

High performance different from high potential 

Tal­ent map­ping usu­al­ly starts with man­agers review­ing cur­rent per­for­mance and poten­tial of a sec­tion of their work­force to pro­duce the nine-box grid, says Mr Miles. But it can also be the result of a wider tal­ent man­age­ment process where lead­ers iden­ti­fy crit­i­cal job roles for the future, and work back­wards to iden­ti­fy the skills they will require and what they cur­rent­ly have.

Armed with such knowl­edge, organ­i­sa­tions can begin to put in place mea­sures that should help address any gaps in their employ­ees’ skillsets, to ensure they’re able to devel­op the peo­ple and job roles that will be required in future.

High per­form­ers may be at the top of their game, but not be equipped for future changes

Talent mapping helps hire the workforce of the future

“Assess­ment is of high val­ue to the organ­i­sa­tion and indi­vid­u­als, not only to help gauge how ready some­one is for a par­tic­u­lar role, but also to clar­i­fy strengths and areas for devel­op­ment, and so help pro­vide the data for plan­ning a devel­op­ment pro­gramme,” says Simon Mitchell, UK gen­er­al man­ag­er, Euro­pean and multi­na­tion­al seg­ment mar­ket­ing direc­tor at glob­al tal­ent man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy DDI. “The best assess­ments now allow the data cap­tured to be manip­u­lat­ed accord­ing to vary­ing busi­ness strate­gies,” he adds.

The engi­neer­ing sec­tor is an exam­ple of one that is ben­e­fit­ing from using tal­ent map­ping, says Abdul Uddin, busi­ness lead, infra­struc­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing, at Hay Group, as it seeks to respond to the chal­lenges of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and glob­al­i­sa­tion. “It’s not enough to sim­ply fill roles for today, it’s about attract­ing, retain­ing and engag­ing the right tal­ent who will tack­le work­force chal­lenges for the next five to ten years,” he says. “Dig­i­tal experts are need­ed to make the most of new tech­nolo­gies, for exam­ple, while large-scale pro­grammes require con­fi­dent project man­agers.”

The value of comparing talent mapping with retention rates

In real­i­ty, though, while many organ­i­sa­tions under­stand the val­ue of tal­ent map­ping, few are active­ly putting this into prac­tice. “Very few are suc­cess­ful­ly mea­sur­ing and real­is­ing the busi­ness impact,” says Mr Hodg­son. “Line man­agers need to cap­ture career con­ver­sa­tions with employ­ees, mea­sure the reten­tion rate of employ­ees who have gone through their tal­ent map­ping or high-poten­tial pro­gramme and look at the busi­ness per­for­mance result­ing from those indi­vid­u­als. For exam­ple, they could mea­sure how many of those indi­vid­u­als have tak­en lat­er­al moves as a result of a tal­ent map or career con­ver­sa­tion, com­pared with indi­vid­u­als who have not.”

But Nichola Bat­ley, head of lead­er­ship and man­age­ment at Thales Learn­ing and Devel­op­ment, says some organ­i­sa­tions are already start­ing to plan coach­ing and devel­op­ment pro­grammes as a result of tal­ent map­ping exer­cis­es. “Tal­ent map­ping can be huge­ly ben­e­fi­cial to an organ­i­sa­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when career paths are becom­ing more unpre­dictable and frag­ment­ed,” she says. “The organ­i­sa­tions that use this most effec­tive­ly are the ones that go the extra mile to frame their devel­op­ment plans and ensure a robust suc­ces­sion plan is in place should any key tal­ent leave the busi­ness.”

High performance different from high potential 

Talent mapping helps hire the workforce of the future

The value of comparing talent mapping with retention rates