Talent Management Part I of 4

Over the summer months starting today I shall be republishing some blog entries from the past. As a starter, I am republishing the 4-parter on Talent Management, updating where appropriate.

Here it is........

Whatever your thoughts on Wikipedias, one word that has become associated with it is the term 'disambiguation'. Essentially it is the process of defining the sense of a word in order that when searching for meaning, people are guided to the appropriate place.

It would seem that the HR profession could do with a little 'phrase disambiguation' to help in information dissemination and education. It could save a lot of time and money. Having spent quite some time in defining terms in HR, I am getting alarmed at the way in which talent management's meaning seems to have 'stretched' from recruitment through to strategic measurement.

In fact some definitions suggest that it's meaning is as comprehensive as human capital management which is very troubling..........

So, in the market, if talent management = human capital management then I'll have to accept that in the striving to provide clear and concise technical appreciation...for now. For what it's worth talent management is a sub-set of Human Capital Management if you follow our technical appreciation of the profession.

Our definition of Human Capital Management is 'the term which is used to describe an organisation's multi-disciplined approach to optimising the capabilities and performance of its management and employees.'

Some definitions of talent management would suggest similar. It may be of use in terms of thinking what 'talent management' is not or does not include. For at its heart, the term talent management is a 'cluster term', i.e. it is a collective descriptive term which is where the trouble starts - because it can mean what you want it to mean - if there is no technical underpinning.
And as the great Yogi Berra once said 'it's deja-vu all over again.'

Because we've just been through the same process with employee engagement (and still are).
The danger,if we are not careful, is that confusion will reign and time and money will be potentially mis-spent. Many will be potentially disappointed.
Next time I will look at a working definition of talent management. Today I am just going to jot down what it isn't......

Talent management isn't a piece of software.

TM isn't rebadged HR (though it is looking very similar).

TM isn't a new recruitment solution.

TM isn't a fad.

I do hope that TM isn't becoming another- fuzzy word- a nice word to use instead of human capital management- a means of staying vague but 'hip'- another marketing buzz-word.....until part II next week...

[Originally published November 20 2007]