As a mentor of the Junior Achievement Company Program, an afterschool program that provides high school students an entrepreneurial experience to operate a business within a sixteen-week timeframe, my team and I have recently interviewed nearly thirty candidates within one night and appointed the qualified individuals as the executive members of their company. Not only will the executives be working closely together to establish their business’ success, I also feel responsible for paving the path and guiding the students to success. One of my first steps is to find the rightful candidate for each executive position.
I came across the article “Your Corporate Strategy is Your Talent Strategy” on the website CEB Global, and I strongly agree with the result of the research. CEB and other firms together, over a research time span of fifteen years, have observed large corporations on six continents and how their employee talent management has corresponded with the company’s growth. It has been observed that CEOs and other board members often implement decisions base on the business’ talent pool as they believe “talent is central to every plot”. Obviously it is excellent when a company has brainstormed the most brilliant idea that will shoot the business to a rocket-high value, but does the company have the rightful skilled employees to implement the idea? In the absence of talent management, a corporate goal will never be achieved.
The article continues summarizing the research result and demonstrates examples of talent strategies, such as how to motivate employees and maximize each worker’s productivity. Senior managers with a good understanding of the talent data will allocate talents and assign workers tasks more efficiently. This reminded me of my mentor role as I was trying my best to understand my interviewees and allocate the most suitable candidates to each executive position. Then, the newly appointed executive members will understand their department members and appoint them to their most compatible department positions. In a retail store environment, this is similar to mangers training shift leaders and shift leaders assigning workers to their responsible zones, such as the best store ambassador, floor selling salesperson, cashier, fitting room expert etc.
Human resources is beyond motivating employees, human resources is also about talent management and allocating each employee to maximize their productivity for the corporate’s success. Like the article has said, “Your Corporate Strategy is Your Talent Strategy”.
“Your Corporate Strategy is Your Talent Strategy”