Cheezhead

The talent composite of an organization is the current and potential capacity of the workforce to accomplish strategic business directives. If we assume there have also been intentional steps taken to map the potential capacity to the company’s long-range strategic plan then the attraction, acquisition and management of talent will more effectively support the business needs.

And, by applying a disciplined approach to talent management this will also guide a multitude of decisions around human capital planning, resource allocation, talent attraction and acquisition, internal talent management, and ultimately the structure of the recruitment function. The recruitment function will have a clearer view into the skills, knowledge and experiences needed and be positioned to add greater value to the organization by moving beyond a short-term, “open req” approach.

So, if this is a relatively straight forward way to look at the management of an organization’s most important assets and align with business directives to ensure competitive efficiencies and advantages why are so many of the same conversations taking place today that existed during the talent market tensions of the highly competitive dot com days?

The labor market outlook is no brighter. Competition for talent is more complex due to global market growth, continued expansion of career options and a desire for work/life balance and flexibility. Where are the C-suite leaders in not only saying this is a strategic business imperative but acting as catalysts to make it a reality? Or, at least a progressive reality! Recruitment functions are still too often confined due to structure and/or budget. In a Nov. 2006 survey by CFO magazine, 91% of 249 senior finance executives identified human capital management as the most important, or one of the top two or three most important factors in business success.

And the top three steps that these finance executives believe were needed to make improvements - 51% said greater involvement from the business line leaders; 42% said re-engineer the HR function; and, 42% said an increased use of technology. Most encouraging to me is that the combination of these three steps would lead to the type of change needed to transform the role and positioning of recruitment to better advantage an organization’s competitive competencies.

The dialogue around this topic is quite meaningful because the future of recruitment functions can be influenced by who gets involved, who leads the effort and, most importantly, how effectively human capital planning and recruitment are integrated into the core business dialogue.