Hackett: Directors dissatisfied with talent management
Global business leaders are "ighly dissatisfied with level and quality of support they receive from HR on talent management issues. The alarming conclusion comes from a report from The Hackett Group, an international consulting and benchmarking firm. The research found that business leaders are only in 33% of the cases satisfied with the talent support they receive from the HR function.
The study looked at six key areas of talent management: workforce planning and succession, collaboration/knowledge sharing, retention, managing performance, learning and development and recruiting and staffing.
Talent management below the standard
Based on research among 150 large companies the consultants observe an interesting paradox: due to the crisis, talent management has become a more important theme on the CxO agenda. "At most companies, business services functions like Finance, IT and procurement have been severely impacted and reorganized. As a result firms, face a large array of talent management issues from all angles" according to the advisory firm in a press message. Yet at the same time, the quality of talent management services from HR has deteriorated. Companies are most unhappy about HR support for collaboration and knowledge sharing and retention.
Business Partner role
Hackett Group points to insufficient ‘alignment’ between HR and business when explaining the disappointing performances. The consultants conclude that in many organizations, HR doesn't "have a dedicated business partner role responsible for communicating and understanding the talent management needs of business services functions like finance, IT and others". In other words, the business is poor at informing HR on talent needs and goals and HR isn't efficient in understanding requirements. "The poor quality of talent management services is in large part because HR and business services leaders are not collaborating" says Harry Osle, consultant at The Hackett Group.
HR respondents acknowledge the issue yet their feedback is clear: HR has over the past years faced huge budget and staff cuts, impacting their ability to deploy top-quality talent management programs.
