Chapters Six and Seven

Acquiring the Right Talent/Managing Human Capital

Chapter Objectives

By the end of these chapters, the reader should be able to discuss:

  • the pros and cons of two different employment strategies
  • the importance of having an “employer brand”
  • human resource practices that encourage and discourage flexibility
  • the issues involved in recruiting, motivating, managing, and retaining people in a b2change organization.

Built to Change Strategy: Have a B2Change Employer Brand

Built to Change Strategy: Make People Responsible for Their Careers

As with other built to change strategies beginning each chapter, these two strategies are integrative. Having a clear “employer brand” is a direct fallout of the organization’s identity. The employer brand must honor the organization’s culture and image. Similarly, making people responsible for their careers supports the decentralized and empowered structural, information processing, and decision making principles discussed earlier.

Chapter Outlines

Chapter 6 Outline / Chapter 7 Outline
1. Adopting an Employment Strategy
  • Commitment to Development
  • Travel Light
  • The Employment Contract
2. Motivation and Recruiting
  • Employment Contracts and Rewards
  • Willingness to Change
  • Performance Motivation
  • The Development of Skills and
Knowledge
3. Attract the Right Talent
  • Develop and Employer Brand
  • Communicating the Employer Brand
4. Identifying the Right Talent
  • Use Interviews to Gather Objective and Subjective Data
  • Look at Past Behavior
  • Use Temporary and Contract Employment Where Possible
5. Acquiring Companies and Human Capital
6. Re-Recruiting the Best
7. Conclusion / 1. Keeping the Right People
  • Rewards and Satisfaction
  • Turnover and Satisfaction
  • Turnover Management
2. Measuring Human Capital
  • Managing Skills and Competencies
  • Developing Person Descriptions
  • Using Human Capital Metrics
3. Targeting Critical Work and Individuals
  • Retention
  • Critical Skills
  • Changes in Criticality
4. Creating Career Opportunities
5. Managing Layoffs and Downsizing
6. Developing a Training Strategy
  • Use Just-in-Time Training
  • Reward Learning
7. Conclusion

Chapter Comments

The cornerstone for these two chapters is presented at the beginning of Chapter 6. B2change organizations should debate and decide on whether a “commitment to development” or a “travel light” human resource strategy makes the most sense. Both are controversial and have big pros and cons; there should be plenty of opinions to form a lively discussion.

Much of Chapter 6 is devoted to exploring the pros, cons, and implications of these two HR strategy choices in terms of motivation and recruitment. Perhaps the biggest complaint or objection about the “travel light” strategy is the likely emergence of an elite group – the “have’s vs. the have not’s” – that oversee the organization and have a different employment contract.

Chapter 7 is more focused around the development and retention of talent. It reviews the research on factors consistent with lower turnover, including job satisfaction, rewards, and training and development.

In support of the “no job description” structures suggested in Chapter 4, Chapter 7 describes a more flexible alternative – the “person description” – that describes the technical skills, business knowledge, and organizational, leadership, and managerial competencies each employee needs to develop. An example is provided in the slide deck.

Finally, the chapter does a good job of describing systems implemented by IBM, SAS, and others that emphasize measurement and development of human capital.

Conclusion

The management of human capital is a complicated task, even in an organization that faces a stable environment. It is much more complex when the environment changes and the organization then needs to change its strategy, competencies, and capabilities. Attracting and recruiting the right talent is a critical part of managing human capital and an integral element of the designing process in b2change organizations. But it is only the first step. It needs to be followed seamlessly by development experiences that produce individuals with the skills and abilities that support the organization’s strategic intent. These experiences need to be complemented by practices and systems that ensure that an organization’s human capital is retained for as long as it is needed. Such systems can be effectively developed only if senior management assigns a top priority to the ongoing management of human capital.

There are no magic bullets that can ensure that a b2change organization has the right approach to managing its human capital. There are, however, some practices that are generally effective. These include careful attention to the satisfaction level of employees, because it has a strong impact on turnover; careful analysis of which individuals and jobs are critical to the organization; and the strategic, at times almost surgical, use of training and development opportunities.