Talent supply chain management

We are often told that industry’s most pressing need is workforce talent. According to a just-released report from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, the U.S. spends $1.1 trillion annually on postsecondary workforce training. Industry spends nearly $600 billion annually on both formal and informal educational and training programs.
In addition, the annual cost of postsecondary education at colleges and universities amounts to about $400 billion per year, and $18 billion is spent by federal job training programs. Another $47 billion is spent from various sources for certifications, apprenticeships and other forms of workforce training. Thus, for every dollar spent on formal education, industry spends an additional $1.50 to $1.80 to ensure its workforce meets expectations.
What would a company do if it had to spend this cost differential annually just to ensure that materials and components purchased from suppliers were brought up to specifications? Indeed, how long would any company keep a supplier that did not provide materials and components to the exact specifications asked for?
Industry has made great strides by relentlessly focusing, rigorously developing and assiduously applying supply chain management tools for materials and components. In the past 20 years or so, tremendous gains have been made in managing time, raw materials, quality, price and performance. Business has squeezed almost every ounce of efficiency possible from their supply chain. Many companies have tightly coupled partnerships with their suppliers and expect them to meet very detailed specifications to exacting tolerances.
But, if industry’s most pressing problem is workforce talent, shouldn’t it give at least as much attention to the human capital side of its supply chain as it has to materials and components?
Filling the talent pipeline
Of course, assessing human talent has never been simple or precise, and industry has been only too happy to accept a degree from a college and university as a proxy. But industry cannot expect to get what it says it needs unless it is willing to spend the time to better define what that is. Broad terms like communication skills and problem-solving skills are more like value statements than a definition of what specific skills are expected by a company.
What is needed is a set of talent supply chain management tools as well as partnerships with educational providers to reduce search frictions for both job seekers and employers, and to ensure that skill expectations are more precisely delineated.
Fortunately, such an approach is beginning, and professors Erin Makarius and Mahesh Srinivasan in the College of Business Administration at The University of Akron have drafted its first principles. Contact them and learn more.

Talent supply chain management: An idea whose time has come!