Porter Novelli's leadership role in talent management effectiveness

Porter Novelli Case Study / Porter Novelli: Performance Management and Talent Management

Role Played by Leaders

Effectiveness of Talent Management Strategy

Critical Evaluation of Talent Management Strategy

Alternative Way

Porter Novelli is one of the world's top public relations firms. With ninety offices in about 60 nations, the firm provides best-in-class service to its customers all around the world. As the firm that started social marketing, it's heritage is anchored in influence encouraging individuals to transform deeply ingrained mannerisms and behaviors that are grounded in social and cultural conditioning or norms. This is attained through identifying and then activating thoughts that are the forces behind transformational change -- and thus Porter Novelli goes beyond simply solving a problem; their work is not just to influence people, it is also about making people believe (Porter Novelli, 2015).

Moreover, the firm has a good reputation, in that among its clients are some of the most respectable and most demanding companies and individuals, that are drawn by the quality service offered by Porter Novelli and the way the public relations firm does its business with ease. An internationally acclaimed energy council recently chose Porter Novelli to help it in a mega collaborative attempt to improve interactions and communications among its regionally spread team of about a hundred industry executives. The public relations firm was able to meet their client's specific and very detailed requirements using a unique and highly synergistic solution (Hyperoffice, 2015).

Effectiveness of Talent Management Strategy

Talent management is a special collection of integrated organizational human resources processes that are designed to develop, attract, incentivize and retain performance-oriented employees. Its goal is to build a high-performance, sustainable business that meets its operational and strategic goals (JHU Team, 2010). The five point metric for assessing the effectiveness of talent management strategy is as follows (HireRight, 2009).

1. Identify Business Goals

Identifying and defining organizational goals gives a criterion that is necessary to determine the kind of talent needed by a business for it to achieve success. For this, the HR needs to engage with business executives in order to support and promote their needs and objectives. By providing business leaders with talent management metrics and data, the HR will be assisting the internal stakeholders to make better choices such as spending significant amounts to hire quality talent.

2. Align Business and Employee Objectives

Effective talent management helps both the needs of the business and those of the employees. It is also crucial to understand the direction followed by a particular business industry in its operations and the kind of talent needed to keep an organization ahead of the competition. With this in mind, one has to assess the individual and departmental competencies, the way he or she could better employee commitment, and the manner in which they can align succession plans with the career paths of employees. And then communicate talent management organization initiatives to align every member of the organization.

3. Engage Employees

Engaging the staff is the best approach to better job satisfaction. It is also the best way to engender a performing workforce. This can be done through exploring social sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook to get information about employee passions, competencies and skills. High performers should then be motivated to take new roles in the areas of the organization in which they most qualify to work. Setting performance objectives can help employees to also perceive the work they are doing as meaningful.

4. Develop a Qualified Talent Pool

With the internal environment of the business one should always build his supply of talent using succession planning. This entails insights into the capabilities or skills required in the organization and an inventory of the available competencies and skills. The key here is to understand the kind of talent supply one has access to that will help hire the most qualified people who have the right talent. Building a talent pipeline will put an organization ahead in a competitive industry.

5. Tighten Compliance Measures through Automation

In every situation possible the Human Resources process should be done in such a way that they can be repeated, audited, and recorded for compliance matters. Paper-based structures, assumptions and data-entry redundancies are not enough to keep the firm up-to-date with the latest compliance standards. Automating, background checks, electronic I-9 services, drug testing and recruiting in general, speeds up the recruiting time and saves money and time, it also creates a process that controls risks linked to human errors and manual systems. Compliance efficiency also improves business value.

Data Collection

Business Results

It is often not easy to connect talent management directly using business performance. Intermediate metrics such as survey trends, unwanted turnover, and the likes do provide more credible proofs of efficacy. Overall Porter Novelli produced the two best ever financial performances in 2006 and 2007. The positive economic environment that existed in Western Europe and the United States up to mid-year 2007 boosted the strong performance. The focus on individual accountability can definitely be cited as one of the contributing factors to this performance (Goldsmith & Carter, 2010).

Employee Climate Survey Results

Survey results are regarded as proprietary and cannot be divulged in detail. However, it is worth noting that a pulse survey conducted late in the year 2006 showed huge positive patterns or trends in all 13 measured business climate dimensions. Significant improvements were recorded, especially in the leadership; Quality (that includes management practice and communication); and Morale and Loyalty.

Turnover Results

The overall turnover of the firm was cut by 24% in the year 2006 compared to the previous year, before shooting up by 14% in 2007, despite the industry's competitive labor market. Turnover of selected high potential executives stood at 05 for both 2006 and 2007 (Goldsmith & Carter, 2010).

Critical Evaluation of Talent Management Strategy

The main goal of talent management processes is to enhance business performance (Wellins et al., 2015). Business results are driven by both external and internal factors; government regulations, competitor activities and market conditions make up the former, while organizational structures, business strategy or workplace policies account for the latter. One of the factors that can be influenced by organizations and has a large effect on business performance is the behavior of its staff. And aligning the staffs' behaviors with the organizations business needs is the main purpose of talent management. Employee behaviors are determined by their attitudes, knowledge, beliefs, motivations and skills which can be indirectly influenced by talent management processes such as compensation, staffing, and career development. Talent management practices promote the hiring of the right kind of employees and the maintenance of a certain kind of work environment. If these management programs are done with due consideration to organization's structure and objectives, they will ensure that the behaviors of the employees are not only aligned to the organization's business needs but also that the behavior help improve overall performance. The best way to do this is implementing a talent management system based on awareness of the factors that influence the staffs' actions at work (Sireesha & Ganapavarapu, 2014).

Alternative Way

Self nomination is an event whereby individual workers put their names forward, on their own will and initiative, for career development programs, vacant positions, or succession planning. Firms utilize it either alongside or instead of the conventional system in which executives nominate the individuals themselves. According to Frank Gierschmann, it is an alternative to the traditional methods of identifying and hiring talent within organizations. He also noted that it can be utilized not only for simply filling vacant positions but also for applying for consideration during succession planning and also for talent pools (Gierschmann & Teramachi, 2015).

Outlining the functional expertise component of this strategy and optimization of the company's ability to identify highly qualified individuals.

Self nomination basically helps firms discover hidden talents within the firm as also to create pools of potential candidates for management and specialist positions. Furthermore, self nomination not only allows the potential number of qualified candidates to grow but also improves the diversity of their pool. In many firms, employees' initiative in molding their own career development has also been improved, meeting one of the key purposes of self nomination initiatives in the process. In terms of hiring, it is obvious and expected for individuals to put their names forward. However, almost half of the firms in the study reported that they utilized self nomination initiatives for their talent management programs. The main type of self nomination entails staffs applying for internally advertised vacancies. Self nomination programs can be utilized for all types of employees. However, at present, it is limitedly utilized, for at the most filling middle level management vacancies. The further up the firm's hierarchy one goes the less common it is. The majority of the firms in the study that utilized self nomination did so for the purpose of making their employee to take charge of their personal career progression (Gierschmann & Teramachi, 2015).

Conclusion

Firms spend a lot of funds and other resources, in training activities for their staffs and in making sure they retain the very best of their talents. Talent management in firms is very important as it helps organizations save a lot of money. The main purpose of talent management is to ensure that organizations retain their valuable employees by creating and incorporating activities such as talent marketing and target training. Organizations realize the significance of making sure that they give opportunities for their talents/staff to move to the next level of leadership. Towards achieving the same, they ought to be aware of the need for transformation within the company to attain the goals and objectives set. Strategic leaders play a critical role in performance management, they help identify the right talent for leadership and look for ways to interact with or engage employees within the company who have suggestions on ways for the company to achieve its goals. Strategic leaders can do this by identifying the right individual traits and the available resources to activate the transformations and the initiate the likely benefits that the firm stands to gain (Rush Papers Team, 2015).