Talent as a differentiator on business

This webinar was organized by HR Virtual learning zone & the speaker was Mr. D P Singh who is the VP & Head HR for IBM in India / South Asia Region

His views were important for all kinds of organization irrespective of their size. Very recently ,corporate  are earnestly discussing  Talent as recruiting  top talent is a challenge Organizations  become more competitive & leaders lead bestteams with the support of talented people.As Mr. Singh says youbet on people not on strategies. Goodtalent /talent Management, as visible at every step of the pyramidin a company is one of the  strongest indicators of success.

In the past employers just filled positions and there was no recognition for talent per se.  As worldwide Industry environment changes, so do organizations need change managers. HR heads now have to lead from the front and not escape their responsibilities of sourcing and nurturing Talent.

Mr DP Singh put a pointer at the Sports Industry which has pretty much perfected the art of talent  as a differentiator and from whom all can learn how  they select ,how they train, reward, measure performance , make use of technology, take care of health , coach, mentor and finally  how they let people go and do succession planning. In sports each club has a strategy on how best they can gain from talent and vice versa.

The Football league is a perfect example of the above: Football clubs need people who have good height, ideal weight & need intelligent people to take quick decisions .The shelf life of a football player is usually three years so accordingly they do succession planning

Recently IBM Smart workforce conducted a study and found that most CEOs aspire to be a “customer activated organization” implyingthat as this is a era of crowded markets, extreme competition and growing dominance, the key differentiator is being customer centric. Hence,organizations need talent to win markets.

As part of organizations goals in the changing world need the following four cornerstones for our talent management:

Networked workforce

Transparent Value Chain

Independent Worker

An agile workforce

Leveraging talent is then the responsibility of the HR /Manager/organization

Mr. DP Singh wants every organization to focus on a three tier model which should include

1. Process

2. Technology

3. Behavior sciences

Organizations must hire talent for jobs and skills. They must identify successful talent are & what process and behavior they show in the organization. We must acquire talent which add value at the right places and be measured effectively and more frequently because this is how it will be differentiated.

He also said one must engage potential employees and make them learn from each other, let them create their own communities.He believes workforce + engagement level creates good ROI  

The session was interesting to say the least and an eye opener of sorts as I believe that the HR next wave will be that of differentiating, measuring and replicating high performance. Progress will be measured by the degree of differentiation and hence Talent will be a differentiator in business.

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