The practice of setting New Year’s resolutions is most prevalent in the western world.  It can be traced back to ancient Babylonian times more than 4000 years ago. The original practice involved making promises to repay debts and return borrowed objects [1]. In modern days resolutions are more personal.  According to a survey by YouGov, the most popular New Year’s resolutions in the US for 2018 were eating healthier (37%), getting more exercise (37%), and saving money (37%) [2]. The top 10 resolutions list also featured three work-related items –reading more (18%), learning a new skill (15%), and getting a new job (14%).
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It’s one thing to make a resolution but a different story to stick to it. How good are people at keeping their resolutions?  Based on the most frequently cited estimates only 8-12% are successful. A study by Norcross, Mrykalo, and Blagys explains what differentiates resolvers from non-resolvers.  The researchers recruited two groups of study participants [3].  The resolver (N=159) group included those who had committed to actively working toward changing behavior.  The non-resolvers (N=123) included those who showed an interest in changing but were not committed. The researcher tracked the participants through telephone interviews for six months.  What they found provides useful guidance for anyone looking for ways to stick with their New Year’s resolution or simply work on changing behavior. Resolvers who were successful in adhering to their resolution in week three and week four engaged in four distinct behaviors.

1. They exercised greater willpower
2. They thought about how the problem behaviors were hurting them
3. They kept things around that would remind them of how the problem behaviors were hurting them
4. They avoided situations associated with problem behaviors

​​Interestingly, the study found that rewarding oneself for changing and positive thinking helped sustain in the initial two weeks but did not contribute favorably to those who were able to maintain beyond the first two weeks.  Whether or not you set resolutions, hope these guidelines are useful for your personal growth. Whether you are looking to lose weight or find new work these four simple steps may make all the difference.

​JS: From what I can tell, these organizations are not abandoning their performance management process.  They are abandoning the annual performance ratings.  Those are two different things. I see performance management as something that happens throughout the year and involves a whole series of informal conversations, ongoing feedback and coaching, and focusing on people’s strengths.  It should focus on how to mitigate limitations and how to keep people aligned with ever-shifting organizational goals.  What we are seeing is a shift from an annual event to an ongoing conversation which is what good management is about.

SSB:  Are performance appraisals inherently bad or is it the way they are used that’s at the heart of the problem?It seems like the key players in the performance appraisal process are not getting their needs met.  (a) Employees want to feel that the organization is vested in their growth and well-being, but are not getting the developmental support; (b) managers are uncomfortable or ineffective in distinguishing performance, and (c) organizations are unable to meaningfully distinguish performance through their rewards system.  Do you see these as the underlying issues leading to concerns with the appraisal process?

Ten years in business is a long time.  Only a third of small companies make it this far which makes me feel privileged and fortunate.  While I am thankful, I continue to be restless because there is so much more that needs to be done to achieve our mission of spreading evidence-based practice in people management.  Many have asked, why I feel so strongly about this cause.  I certainly do, and every time our journey gets difficult I find myself becoming even more resolved to push harder. In this blog, I take the opportunity to explain how I came to have this firm belief. Perhaps, you have had similar experiences and may become equally passionate about evidence-based practice.

Early experiences: I grew up in a small industrial town in southern India called Shahabad. My dad worked in a mid-management sales role for the only employer in town, ACC Babcook Limited (ABL), an engineering firm that manufactured machinery for cement plants.  Although small, the city was unique in many ways. It was a planned community, pristinely clean with manicured gardens and streets canopied with laburnum trees. Most people believed it was a paradise and left only when it was time to retire. It was the only place I had lived since my birth. As a teenager, I nurtured dreams of going away to college but coming back in the summers to be with my family and friends. Sadly, things were not going so well for the company.  Employees stopped receiving their salaries. I saw first-hand the impact of poor leadership, lack of accountability and the resulting impact on a small town.  With no other options for making a living, people started committing suicide, theft, and crime increased.  What was once a paradise was no longer so. While things were falling apart for the average employee, the leaders seemed to be doing fine, still taking foreign trips with their families, presumably on the company’s dime.  It just did not seem fair.  It was during this time that I learned about the field of Organizational Psychology.  In a women’s magazine, I read how the Tata Group used practices such as testing to bring fairness in the hiring process.  I learned that a US-trained Organizational Psychologist was leading this work. At that moment it hit me that the world would be a better place if there were more fairness and people believed in doing the right thing. At that early age, I had discovered my professional interest.

Becoming an organizational psychologist: My journey to becoming an organizational Psychologist was long and hard.  With no financial means to fund my education in the US, I could only hope for a miracle.  I started working when I was fifteen, hoping to make enough money to pay for the GRE.  My professors and everybody I knew discouraged me from aspiring to study psychology outside of India.  Their rationale was not that unreasonable.  India was known for engineering talent but not psychologists.  Why would anyone want me? I wasn’t quite willing to give up on my dreams, but I did put a plan B in place for safe measures. I applied to several graduate schools in the US and also to a couple of entry-level roles in India.  As it turned out, I was one of the successful job candidates’ at Tata Motors, but they would not offer me the job because the other finalist had a family member employed by the company. I had started to receive rejection letters from graduate schools. Weeks went by when I felt hopeless. And then a letter came in the mail from the University of Central Florida.  It said I had secured admission to their masters in Industrial and Organizational Psychology program with funding.   I remember reading the mail several times to make sure. My dreams were finally going to come true.  I learned another important lesson, meritocracy wins, at least in some parts of the world. My family history, financial means, and connections didn’t matter.  Someone has made a judgment about my capacity using my past performance (e.g., GPA, GRE scores, personal essay) and it was about to change my life.

Graduate school and early career: Coming to the US changed my life. While I had all the motivation and interest, there were things I had never done before like conducting research, presenting, writing reports. I was uncertain about doing well but got plenty of support, feedback, and encouragement – all things lacking in my prior education experience. I found myself getting better every day.  I was stretched, challenged and most of all led to believe I had what it takes to be successful.  After graduating with a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Bowling Green State University (one of the top-ranked programs in I-O Psychology), doors opened up to a tenure-track assistant professor position at the well-known Illinois Institute of Technology. The attraction of solving real-world problems led me to leave academia for one of the best corporate roles I could hope for. Yet again, no personal connections, after multiple rounds of interviews I was deemed to have the capability to build all the human capital systems for Dendrite International (now IMS Health).  My reflections led me to conclude that if our development and support systems were based on what works (evidence-based), each of us can have a fair chance of reaching our highest potential.​

Mid-career and doors shutting on me: Life eventually brought me to the west coast, the center of innovation and the epitome of an accepting, free-thinking society. Sadly, that was not my experience. In all my years in the US before that, everyone and everything around me signaled “you can do it.” At work on the west coast, I became “that women” with no name. My voice became invisible, and the work I thought I was hired to do was taken over by consultants and friends of the boss.  When I volunteered to do more, I was told: “no you can’t.” If that weren’t all, the vendors and consultants who ran the show could make bold and baseless statements and be applauded. When I made recommendations for practices for which there was plenty of evidence they were seen as risky and threatening. While it hurt not to be valued for the expertise I had worked so hard to develop, it angered me even more than the organization and its employees were being denied the opportunity for achieving better outcomes.  My journey through these challenging times put a spotlight on the significance of the evidence-based practice. It became abundantly clear that fairness and accuracy in the decisions we make about people should be a business priority. Further, organizations that lean on science for answers derive better outcomes for themselves, for their employees, and for society.  This lead to the launch of Human Capital Growth in 2008.  In 2010 we adopted the tagline Excellence through the evidence to further solidify our foundation.​ I look forward to the next decade and beyond in helping business and people thrive together.​ ​ ​Thankful for the employees of HCG, our clients, and our supporters! Because of you, I continue to believe that the workplace will one day be a place of joy where each of us can pursue our passions and create a world with a little less misery and a whole lot of wonder.

​In the future, we will see talent analytics efforts pivot in three important ways: (a) mature from lending administration support to augmenting performance, (b) transition from describing the past to providing future-focused insights, (c) evolve managerial decision making about people from intuition-led, to one that is more objective and fact-based.

According to a 2013 CEB survey, only 18% of business leaders say they trust their talent data. A staggering 82% don’t believe their talent analytics focus on the right issues, and only 15% of HR leaders say they have made a business decision based on insights gleaned from HR analytics. Not much has changed in 2018 according to a survey conducted by consulting firms, DDI, The Conference Board, and Ernst and Young. Yet, investment in talent analytics globally is upwards of 600 million dollars.  How can organizations derive greater value from their people analytics practice?

​In this article, I present the thesis that organizations that avoid some of the common pitfalls associated with talent analytics, adopt an evidence-based focus, and deliver personalized insights will be better positioned to fulfill the promise that the practice has to offer. If done right, it can offer a significant competitive advantage to organizations.  Imagine a learning plan that is automatically created based on the future skill needs and aspirations of an employee.  How about the intelligent identification of rotational opportunities to grow your future leaders. Imagine automatic rescheduling of tasks for optimal time utilization, and intelligent calendar management to promote work-life balance. The possibilities are tremendous, and the journey for most organizations has just begun.

 

In the business world, talent management (TM) has been hailed as a pivotal practice that enables firms to compete, reduce costs, and boost performance and profits.  It often is cited among the top 10 priorities of senior leaders and frequently features among the top concerns keeping the organization from achieving their goals (CEB, 2016).  This is a curious situation considering growing investments to advance human capital.  The persisting challenges indicate that talent management, as currently practiced, has done little to drive business outcomes, employee well-being, or meet organizational goals.  This lack of success may in part be due to an inadequate understanding of what talent management is, how it can be best used, or what constitutes good practice.
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Owing to its emergence in practice rather than science, talent management is often perceived as trendy or fad-based practice rather than rigorous decisions making methodology about talent. Considering the parallels in topical focus with research-based disciplines such as management, industrial-organizational psychology, and strategic human resource management, there is significant potential to advance the practice of talent management as a decision science. This blog reviews the current status of the practice, highlighting gaps and opportunities. Based on this analysis, we present a new definition of integrated talent management. By linking the framework to existing bodies of academic research, we hope that the practice will flourish alongside the advancements in the underlying fields.

​Lewis and Heckman, upon reviewing several definitions concluded that the term Talent Management lacks a clear definition and specificity. That is, TM has been used as a sort of trigger word but is rarely given real thought and consideration.  It is mostly seen as a process (e.g., talent acquisition, learning, and development) and fails to adequately address the importance of the employee in the context of the organization’s strategic goals and priorities. Many of the definitions take a narrower perspective about when TM practice should be implemented, essentially leading to an uncoordinated effort in maximizing the human potential. Leading thinkers on this topic have offered useful guidance to evolve the conceptualization of talent management. In 2008, Capelli argued that talent management should involve anticipating and planning for human capital needs in the face of an uncertain external labor market.  Dries (2013) argued for differentiating TM from HR.  He felt that TM practices should be comprehensive in addressing the entire employee life cycle as well as balancing bottom-line performance goals with the interests of the employees. Boudreau and Ramstad (2005) describe talent management in terms of job segmentation and the disproportional impact of certain jobs to the bottom line.

It is clear that even authors who attempt to define TM differ in their focus. The various conceptualization of TM currently available are useful, but none are complete.  Talent management, in fact, needs to account for all of the above, and integrate these varied approaches.  Taking guidance from Capelli and Dries, TM should incorporate internal and external pools of talent and consider the uncertain nature of the business.  It should also link talent to the organizational strategy and goals (Lewis & Heckman, 2006).  Finally, based on Dries’ (2013) review, Talent Management must include all aspects of the employee life cycle and address employee experiences at critical junctures such as during hiring, development, transitions, and performance evaluations.  Addressing these needs necessitates a more integrated approach to talent management. It is crucial to cast talent management as a comprehensive strategy that involves multiple touch points with employees during their tenure in the organization.  The failure to take a lifecycle perspective can limit the types of outcomes TM can deliver. Our review of the current definitions points to the need for an updated conceptualization of talent management and a revised definition.

The gaps identified provide a set of guiding principles of what should be included in a more holistic definition.

1. It must address multiple touch points with employees along the life cycle including attracting, retaining, developing and motivating the workforce.
2. It should involve systematic identification of key positions which differentially contribute to the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage.
3. There must be a consideration of internal and external talent pools to fill the talent pipeline.
4. There should be a clear linkage to the business strategy with guidelines on the deliberate utilization of resources to achieve business objectives.
5. It should include considerations to balance bottom-line performance interests of the organization with the interests of employees.
6. It should take into consideration the uncertain nature of the business and build capacity to adjust and realign while working with the talent that exists in the organization.

These guidelines direct the need to be broad and comprehensive in the approach to addressing matters about talent.  It heralds a similar shift in focus as seen in the medical science. Historically, treatment procedures took a singular focus addressing symptoms or organ level failures. Current day practices are increasingly moving toward holistic medicine where the scope includes mind and body.

A review of the available definitions of talent management against the above guidelines points to the need for a refresh. Many definitions represent an industrial era view of input and output. Pascal defined talent management as managing the supply, demand, and flow of talent through the human capital engine.  Similarly, Wharton Professor Peter Capelli views talent management as inventory management which requires anticipating the need for human capital and establishing plans to meet the needs.  Collings and Mellahi improved on previous definitions by including a consideration of the key position but restricted their focus on the identification and development of high-potential employees. The definition offered by Silzer and Dowell is the most comprehensive till date. It states talent management is an integrated set of processes, programs, and cultural norms in an organization designed and implemented to attract, develop, deploy, and retain talent to achieve strategic objectives and meet future business needs.