Right People, Right Results… Making Talent Matter

Talent is now recognized as one of the keys to organizational success… a focal point for discussion and planning at the board and senior management levels throughout the organization. That’s because having the “right” person… the person who has the skills, abilities and experience YOU need… is essential. Putting that person in the “right” position is equally important. Such a position is one that makes good use of that individual’s strengths, while also allowing opportunity for skill development. This position would also be one that is strategically important to the organization, yet one that also affords opportunity for flexibility and team participation. The alignment of these “rights” yields high performance. And, as we know, high performance of people generates high organizational performance… or the “right results.”

Technology has long been a high value enabler of business processes. Not surprisingly, then, there has been momentum in the HR technology world, to offer solutions that cut across organizational silos to integrate HR processes in a way that will provide the alignment mentioned above. Such solutions are often called talent management suites, meaning that they address the needs of multiple and discrete talent management processes. Others are called talent management platforms, meaning that their primary objective is integration, to cut across the process silos, while also enabling the work done within those processes. Platforms take the perspective of management: the objective is to generate high performance and what is needed is to see a range of information no matter where it resides. Platforms help organizations harness the potential of high potentials, thus increasing an organization’s ability to turn them into future leaders.

According to DDI’s 2008/2009 Global Leadership Forecast, a resounding 75% of executives surveyed identified improving or leveraging talent as a top priority. This shows that some headway is being made in finding the “right” people. It also points out, though, that much more work needs to be done to draw out the potential within those individuals. Without being able to draw out or leverage that potential, there may still be a leadership shortage.

This also shows that it is more important than ever to have effective tools to support this work. Those tools do enable processes that allow organizations to identify the kinds of talent they need, to find and develop such people so that their potential is fully harnessed, and to create mutually-beneficial career paths for those people. The holistic view is what is needed in order to make better, fast and more informed decisions about talent. What is “right” for one organization, for example, might not be “right” for another. And some organizations are already doing just that… and turning their potential talent into truly strategic organizational assets.

Furthermore, the leadership challenge is both a global phenomenon and one that is particularly severe in certain industries. Healthcare and engineering head the list of fields where leadership is in great demand. A case history from healthcare, then, makes a compelling example of talent management, enabled by technology.

The National Health Service

Launched 60 years ago, the National Health Service (NHS) UK has become the world’s largest publicly funded health service and the fourth largest employer in the world. Nearly half of its 1.5m people are professionals, clinically qualified (e.g., hospital physicians, general practitioners, nurses and ambulance staff). The NHS of England accounts for the lion’s share of the overall organization, employing nearly 90% of the total. Reorganized in 2005 for more efficient service delivery as well as internal management, the NHS in England is now structured as ten Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs).

The Challenge

Realizing the importance of managing such a professional and mobile population – and one that provides critical services to the country – the NHS saw the need to focus on talent. They determined that creating career paths for key talent and developing a sufficient pool of future leaders were key steps they should take. The ever-growing need for their critical services in the United Kingdom makes it essential that future leaders are ready to take leadership roles.

They also saw a need to create a process that would be easy to use, that would provide ways to measure and ensure their leadership capacity, and would enable the sharing of talent across the organization. Leadership development programs and talent reviews were the cornerstones of this work. A technology solution to enable these processes was deemed to be essential.

Their challenge was reiterated in the NHS’ 2008 strategy document, The Darzi Report, “We will empower frontline staff to lead change that improve quality of care for patients... we will do this by placing a new emphasis on enabling NHS staff to lead and manage the organizations in which they work... Healthcare professionals expect the depth of their expertise to be recognized and rewarded, and their skills to be developed and enhanced... high quality workplaces make best use of the talents of their people, ensuring that their skills are up to date, and their efforts never wasted...”

The Answer

NHS responded to this challenge with a global directive for the implementation of strategic talent management initiatives across the organization.

Among the first of these was the North West Leadership Academy, an organization charged with the development of potential leaders for the organization. The Leadership Academy is a virtual organization that provides a sustainable approach to leadership development. It identifies, develops and tracks individuals with the potential for senior leadership roles.

The North West Academy for Leadership was strategically structured to design and deliver leadership and management development activities. In essence it was to be responsible for ensuring that leadership development activity is guided by the Chief Executive and senior leadership community. Leadership development is “owned” by them and managed from this entity, making it essential that all aspects are integrated and easy to manage.

Its mission is to promote the caliber and effectiveness of healthcare leaders in the North West, and to showcase their work nationally and internationally. It is committed to ensuring real time involvement of Regional Health Authority Chief Executives to nominate, champion and sponsor talent as part of this program. Other key program aspects include a robust nomination and selection process; the commission of quality, targeted development programs; the creation and completion of tailored individual development plans; access to executive mentors and to executive coaches.

With so many processes and procedures falling under its purview, a clear need to see each as it connects to other emerged. Technology was viewed as the best way to do that and, furthermore, an important driver of success.

After an extensive bidding process, they selected TalentStudio selected as the platform by which the talent in the program would be managed. TalentStudio is now utilized to manage all facets of that work.

NHS’ commitment to talent management – and to TalentStudio – has only grown over time. The Darzi Report now describes NHS as ensuring quality by “unlocking talents.” In keeping with that, TalentStudio is being used in nine of the ten NHAs, in addition to the Leadership Academy.

Requirements Gathering

The key requirements for the platform were gathered during three workshops led by TalentScope consulting staff and key NHS stakeholders. The workshops included process mapping and brainstorming to determine additional, desired functionality.

There were some processes already in place that were mapped against the TalentStudio solution. Where no processes were in place, the TalentStudio best practice approach was adopted.

In some areas, NHS required entirely new functionality and was pleased to see how easy it was to have that delivered. For example, a talent management system is not normally used to manage employee leave. However, NHS decided to utilize the TalentStudio platform almost as if it were an HRIS. Questionnaires for attendance, annual leave, and sick leave plus other forms were created. Notifications via the TalentStudio “inbox” were created, with easy access via the standard Outlook/phone email accounts for easy access. There was a link to the TalentStudio login page and the relevant notifications so that managers and program participants could make sure that all forms were appropriately completed.

The result was a solution configured to match the specific needs of the Leadership Academy.

Training

A number of special documents were developed to accompany the roll-out of TalentStudio. First, there was an introduction for users, with an overview of the solution including information on four key points – why it was being used – what it does – who will be using it – what happens to the information being held. This allowed participants and managers to understand the solution and gather support for its use as the roll-out phase began.

Three levels of written user guides were also prepared. These covered standard users, Managers and administrators. After a year of live operation, they are now considering additional user training materials, such as web delivered video tutorials.

System Use

On the heels of the success at North West Leadership Academy, one of the NHS regions – East of England – also began to use TalentStudio as tool to both support the career management and to help managers assess talent. Their Talent Review Forum began to the use the platform to track, position and match high potential leaders to career opportunities.
In particular, TalentStudio is used to:

• Capture background information about program participants
• Capture outcomes at various stages of the Institute program
• Monitor ethnicity, diversity and disability statistics of participants
• Measure the effectiveness of the program

The Result

The NHS needed to make a fundamental change in perspective so that talent management became integral to the organization. This is now happening across the Board, now that Talent Studio is in place.
NHS NW’s Leadership Academy uses TalentStudio for the management and integration of:

• Nomination and selection of program participants
• Mentoring/coaching
• Leadership development
• Performance reviews
• Career/program tracking
• Maintenance of participant/employee profiles

Even though the range of functionality was wide, the platform was above to go live in just a couple of months. Uses in the SHAs follow similar lines, in terms of both functionality and implementation time. East of England cites particularly strategic impacts, as it uses TalentStudio to:

• Plan for succession to Chief Executive in the East of England
• Give a whole system view of where capacity and succession gaps exist by geography and function
• Inform future leadership development needs
• Support the assessment of the readiness of participants for CEO status
• Demonstrate benefits of the program throughout the health economy

As a result, NHS now has a national view of talent, with information maintained in a consolidated system. In addition, any user can access the system from anywhere, making the dispersed workforce easily able to participate in the talent management programs. Furthermore, managers find the performance review process easy to execute and the reporting, especially cross-tabular reports and 9 Box Grids – to be very helpful.

Testimonial
“The NHS needed to make a fundamental change in perspective – that Talent Management is integration to the organization – and this seems to be happening across the board now that TalentStudio is in place... TalentStudio is a very flexible system. We were able to configure the system to our needs very easily. We also could have gone live in 2 months! This is pretty amazing for any major system and I think speaks to the thought that has gone into the design and integration of the solution... I would recommend Talent Studio to any organization wanting the very best in Talent Management solutions.” – Vanessa Wilderink NHS Project Coordinator