A recent work force survey suggests
that more than half of all U.S.
workers entertain thoughts of leaving their current employer. Meanwhile,
companies are bracing for the loss of
more than half of their senior managers
in the next five to 10 years as baby
boomers shift into retirement.
“In most of the successful and employee-focused organizations, a lot of attention is being paid to developing and mining talent across all lines of business,”
said Brian Lamb, VPO and CFO at Fifth
Third Bank and director at Tampa Bay
WorkForce Alliance. “In this environment, you have to think more and more
about a business model that includes
succession planning, employee engagement and employee development.”
Smart Business asked Lamb how
implementing a talent management initiative can improve top-quartile retention
and lead to more sustainable performance and improved customer service.
What are the key benefits to cultivating
high-potential talent?
You will find a significant improvement
around your top-quartile performers.
There is an element of turnover that is
good sometimes but a lot of turnover can
be detrimental. Obviously, cultivating
young talent will allow you to retain the
top talent in your business. Cultivating
this talent pool spurs two major benefits.
First, you improve your ability to perform and generate sales, thus sustaining
the performance of your company.
Second, you start to see a higher level of
performance over time because you not
only have people who are there and
tenured, you have the best people there
and tenured. So the development of talent starts to compound in terms of the
benefit.
From a customer service standpoint,
there is a direct correlation. Your customers like to see that you are retaining
your talent. And they like to be able to
work with the same individuals and see
that your employees truly enjoy where
they work.
What attributes are hallmarks of high-potential talent?
Skilled in a particular area; highly motivated; a self-starter; shows initiative — all
of these traits are key behavioral characteristics used to describe high-potential,
talented individuals. While they’re not
really specialists, they truly understand
the business and industry they are in, and
have become highly educated and knowledgeable about their particular product,
service or business line. This allows them
to perform at an elevated level.
Top talent also makes the people
around them perform at a higher level.
You might not hear a lot of people talk
about this, but when you have a talented
individual — not good, not great, but talented — they tend to make the rest of the
team and the rest of the company inherently better. And there’s really no science
to it. They simply have an innate ability
to make individuals around them perform at a higher level.
Do some organizations lack the environment for high-potential talent to thrive?
Absolutely. While talent management
hasn’t been top of mind across every
organization over the last five to 10
years, it now is taking on a significantly
larger focus. Making the shift to cultivate
talent sounds good, but it truly is a culture change for some organizations. It’s
forcing them to not only make operation
changes and recruiting changes, it also is
forcing them to change their culture in
terms of how their employees are managed, trained and developed. It’s a culture change that starts at the top and
runs all the way down through the management and through the employees who
work there. So, the difficulty really lies in
the culture shift, not necessarily the
process of executing the change.
How are companies approaching this culture shift?
There is a global approach that is
indicative of what a lot of companies are
taking on. Employee engagement, employee development and succession
planning, or talent management, are part
of the tool kit that most companies have
embraced. These are the three prongs to
the fork that are being used to drive
retention, improve customer service levels, improve employee and individual
performance and provide better shareholder value. All of this has to tie into the
mission and vision of your company and
it must be mutually beneficial for both
the employee and the employer. If someone in the partnership is not getting his
or her fair share of the benefit, you’ll lose
buy-in from one of the sides. The employer may stop dedicating resources to it,
and the employees may feel like the
employer is not committed to their development and to their success. Create a
comprehensive plan around talent management so it is tangible and measurable,
and both sides are held accountable.
BRIAN LAMB is VPO and CFO, Fifth Third Bank, and director, Tampa Bay WorkForce Alliance. Reach him at (813) 306-2491 or
[email protected].
