The phrase “talent war” has grown more popular in the corporate world as companies with a great need for skilled employees fight over a shrinking supply of good help.
But, Rosalyn Taylor O’Neale contends, looking at recruiting as a war is where many companies go wrong. The nationally renowned job-training consultant says it should be looked at as a “talent race.”
“The difference between a war and a race is, in a race, coming in second isn’t that bad, and you can get better every year,” she told a gathering of human resources executives at the R.I. Convention Center on Oct. 18.
O’Neale – a principal in the California-based diversity consulting firm Barnes, O’Neale & Associates – was one of numerous keynote speakers at the three-day conference hosted by the Northeast Human Resources Association.
Her presentation addressed one of the more pressing issues facing the corporate world: finding and retaining talented workers as the baby boom generation heads into retirement, leaving a void behind.
O’Neale said most companies have had few problems with finding talent and recruiting them, what she called the first lap of the talent race. It’s what happens after the new employees arrive that is the problem, she said.
“Once we get people in the door, we’ve very often lied to them to get them here – and now they’re going to get mad,” O’Neale said. “If you want to keep people after that first year, figure out how to engage and empower them. … We have managers practice interviewing people, but we don’t have them practicing engaging people.”
Essential in the “race” is to make the benefits of winning clear to the top executives, O’Neale added, noting that it can cost a company one-and-a-half to three times an employee’s annual salary to find a replacement.
“Losing doesn’t just make you look bad to your competitors; it can be costly,” she said.
The talent race should actually start with management adopting winning leadership behaviors, because “great managers lead to great hires,” O’Neale said.
It’s crucial that managers see upcoming trends so companies can react quickly, said O’Neale, who used the looming retirements among baby boomers as an example.
“This didn’t just suddenly happen,” she said. “But we’re acting like we couldn’t have seen this coming, like it’s a miracle that baby boomers are going to be retiring.”
Managers must also look beyond what they know.
O’Neale recalled a corporate client with 75,000 employees that preferred to hire graduates from only five particular schools because, the client argued, past history showed that those graduates entered the job market with the needed skills.
When O’Neale asked what percentage of the top 500 employees in that company had graduated from those schools, “the answer was zero,” she recalled.
“We should focus on the talent, and then develop the skills,” she said.
Another frequent mistake, O’Neale said: putting employees in positions for which they have no talent.
“Don’t ask somebody to do things that are outside their talent,” she said.
Good managers perform from the heart, O’Neale said, and provide a reason for employees to stay with a company.
“Among the best managers, their talent is empathy; their talent is the ability to see somebody else’s world view,” O’Neale said. “You’ve got put the heart back in it.”
If done right, employees will ultimately become cheerleaders for the company in the talent race, she said.
“New talent comes in the door with an excitement,” O’Neale said. “Our work in the race is to generate that excitement year after year, month after month, day after day. That’s what talent management is all about.” •
