Companies can no longer afford to play fast and loose when it comes to skills retention; too many professionals are leaving for greener pastures, whether locally or abroad, and taking their talent with them. "Talent management" is the skill which leaders and managers now need to cultivate.

I had the privilege of listening to Peter Cheese talk the other day. He’s the head of HR for Accenture International, based in London, and co-author of the book The Talent Powered Organization. I mention his name, title and place of location because he says the same things as me, but you may be more impressed if you hear the words coming from a big international corporate guru, than simply a local ‘people management’ specialist.

He says, as I do, that talent management is something that the whole company must be responsible for, and not just the Executive and HR team.

Let me explain: you will have noticed that every second conversation around the boardroom and cafeteria table nowadays is about the lack of specialized skills. I have clients in finance, construction, engineering, mining and large-scale manufacturing who are nervously chewing their nails, not really knowing how they will remain sustainable as they watch their skills leaving the building, and sometimes even the country! Many of those same clients have had ‘talent management’ teams in place for years now: they’ve been applying solid academic principles, identifying top talent and ‘fast-tracking’ them through expensive and rigorous development programmes, throwing truckloads of money and shares at them in a desperate attempt to make them stay! There have been some (temporary) successes in this approach, but I want to warn you that there is much more to the challenge than simply locking in scarce skills. We are in a changing workplace: don’t blink or you might miss it!

Something important that has changed is that the word “talent” actually means something different now. It applies to all the core skills that your company needs to keep itself sustainable. It includes all the experience that people gain over years of work in the career path that sometimes starts near the bottom of the organisation, and works its way to the top. That’s if it doesn’t leave somewhere along the way - which it often does. The stats tell us that people join companies but leave bosses; that 60% of people who leave, leave their bosses.

Now, most talent development spend at present goes to two places: the senior management and exec teams get as much development as the company can afford, and then, in progressive companies, there is also a ‘talent identification’ process which also ‘cherry picks’ individuals through the lower bands in the organisation who show great promise, and develops them too. Typically, they will be sent to business school, or top notch technical institutions to advance their ‘hard’ skills.

But here’s what Peter Cheese and I are saying about the mistake in this approach: if people are leaving their bosses, then it is time to teach their bosses how to retain people. And almost 90% of any organisation’s workforce is managed by frontline team leaders and supervisors. The frontline bosses are usually the least developed band in organizations, and often, when they are developed, they are not taught how to manage people well. I am completely convinced that the answer to the skills retention crisis sits largely in the frontline manager space. Technical training isn’t enough. Business and academic training isn’t enough. Teach new managers to be better managers of people, and the people may stay long enough in your organization to add the value that you’ll need to keep your company thriving and growing!

About the author: Jules Newton is the MD of Avocado Vision, a learning and development company that teaches managers how to be better managers of people.

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