5 ways to influence your CEO that talent management is a strategic priority _{28 January 2009}

With the current economic climate moving to one of increasing uncertainty, it is imperative that we hold onto and develop our best people. Retaining talent is one of the biggest challenges facing the HR function and organisations today and yet talent management, development and retention remains one of those key issues that never quite makes it to the top of the priority list. Why is that? What makes it so difficult to convince our organisations that this is an issue that needs to be taken seriously? Maybe we don’t believe it ourselves?

We all know that having a competent and engaged workforce is the key to delivering business results and maintaining competitive advantage. Yet poor succession planning is wiping approximately £2B a year from the stock market value of FTSE 350 companies. It’s an alarming statistic that many of us are not responding to quickly enough to convince our business leaders to take remedial action. Why is that? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that each and every one of us accounts for our own individual share of the £2B – a share that is rapidly eroded from our profit margins, a share that we have to work very hard to deliver. So why do we let it get taken away?

In order to be effective as HR professionals we need to get better at influencing the key people in our businesses. Sometimes the HR profession doesn’t shout loud enough. Quite often I see people reacting to what a business wants rather than really thinking about what it really needs to deliver business results’ comments Sally Rixon, Director of The Talent Pool.

She believes that there are 5 easy steps to influence CEO’s and Senior Managers that Talent Management is a business imperative;

1. Always translate what you want to deliver into business outcomes: ‘if we do this it will give our business this’.
2. Don’t try to be scientific about the results that you can achieve, most CEO’s and senior managers are pragmatic and will understand a quick and simple mathematical equation.
3. Equate what you are doing into cash and multiply it so that the business impact can be understood i.e. if one employee can earn an extra £200 through your actions and you employ 1,000 people explain that the true impact to the business will be £200,000.
4. Use the data that is available in the business – most businesses have systems that capture excellent business information but many of us fail to use it and in some cases don’t even know what is out there.
5. Engage the people who understand the parts of your business that turn your CEO on – most finance teams will have someone who is interested in translating data into what you do and will be all to ready to help you.

Sally Rixon is a Director of The Talent Pool and has 20 years experience working for and with organisations who have felt the impact that is caused by losing their best employees.