Advantage: Talent Management

Published by Alice Snell, on 18/10/2008

We’ve posted many times on how organizations that focus on talent gain a clear competitive advantage, revenue growth, profitability, and better business performance:

Talent Management Delivers Payoff
Talent Quotient: Quantify the Financial Impact of Talent
HR Best Practices Drive Results in Small Firms Too
The Business Case for Performance Management

Watson Wyatt’s Human Capital Index also states the case for talent management:

“Companies with superior human capital practices can create more than double the shareholder value than companies with average human capital practices.”

Now IBM and HCI have released a study of 1,000 organizations called Integrated Talent Management that further validates the value and ROI. A key finding:

“Organizations that apply talent management practices demonstrate higher financial performance compared to their industry peers.”

The research is a three-part series about the return on investment of talent management, gaps in executing a talent management strategy, and recommendations for bolstering this capability.

Part 1 – Understanding the opportunities for success
Part 2 – Surviving corporate adolescence and reaching organizational maturity
Part 3 – Turning talent management into a competitive advantage: An industry view

The papers explain how investing in talent management capabilities linked to business strategy leads to competitive advantage and better financial performance than industry peers. Specific practices that boosted business performance included defining and supporting employee engagement and performance management.