recruitment
There is a certain quote that gets attributed to numerous speak-ers
– from Albert Einstein to Sir Winston Churchill – and
it goes like this: “It is difficult to make predictions, especially
about the future.”
Regardless of the source of the quote, we naturally focus on predic-tions
for the future, or trends, that will have a dramatic effect on every
aspect of talent management – from the way that we select and retain
individuals to development and succession planning.
Google the term “megatrends” and you will find over a million results
that touch on every aspect of life.
Common themes across industries include:
■■ Growing and aging population vs. Millennials
■■ Sustainability, shrinking natural resources and significant
environmental impacts
■■ Accelerating technological change, automation and big data
■■ Changing social behavior, social media and the Internet of things
(IoT)
■■ Increasing need for diversity
■■ Globalization, customization and personalization
■■ Proactive assessment and management risk
Each of these megatrends will have some effect on your industry
and your people. For many leaders, operational flexibility and agility
will become much more critical and contribute to key competitive ad-vantages.
The increasing speed of technological change, the growing
impact of the IoT and the explosive growth of data are the most dra-matic
examples of the impact of the digital revolution. Generational
shifts are driving the demand for immediacy, transparency and person-alization.
Clients of the future will be very different from the clients of
today.
These changes will create unprecedented challenges across each
industry that will require leaders to completely reexamine how new
employees are hired and current employees are redeployed, developed
and promoted. As various megatrends accelerate and their impact is
magnified, most businesses will be faced with a completely different
set of conditions that will go beyond the level of uncertainty experi-enced
today.
As Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer stated in The Innovators Method,
“Increasingly, evidence suggests that our familiar management tech-niques
work poorly when applied to the context of uncertainty. For
example, research shows that under conditions of uncertainty, plan-ning
simply does not work.”
How can we mitigate this potential risk and uncertainty when
the positions that you hired for and your definition of success for
those positions will change during your employees’ tenure with your
company?
For managers and business leaders who all share responsibility for
selection, retention and development, it starts with an understand-ing
that personality is becoming an essential ingredient and a stable
foundation that can be established to support your long-term talent
management strategies. In order to add a consistent and measurable
focus on personality, each company or organization should establish a
common language with which to describe characteristics or competen-cies
required for success.
The term “competencies” in this context does not refer to skills and
abilities; rather, it implies competencies that can be assessed through
the use of scientifically valid personality assessments. Such assessments
will predict the degree to which an individual’s natural tendency and
motivation supports specific competencies. Here are just a few that
may be of interest as you start to think about the impact of megatrends:
■■ Managing innovation
■■ Team building
■■ Strategic talent management
■■ Influence and persuasion
■■ Decisiveness
■■ Strategic thinking
■■ Business acumen
■■ Quality focus
■■ Composure and resiliency
■■ Achievement motivation and perseverance
■■ Adaptability
■■ Comfort with ambiguity
Consider how certain trends will affect your business. Do you need
to take action now? Which areas require additional investigation and
conversation within your organization? How will the criteria for your
future hires change? n
nitsawan katerattanakul/Shutterstock.com
The Inevitable Talent
Management Impact
HIRING FOR THE FUTURE IN THE MIDST OF UNCERTAINTY
By Frank Costanzo
HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ MAY 2017 ❚ 33