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Sean over at Talent Ecology recently wrote a piece that got me thinking about how we think and process our talent, nut just as people but as distinct sets of competencies.

After new accounting rules for property went into effect in 2003, about $325.1 billion in military equipment appeared on the books for the first time, according to a Treasury Department analysis.

This is something that I also find symptomatic within corporations when it comes to talent management and professional development….everyone has their own unique system or way of measuring (if they do it at all).  ((Rehder, Sean. December 17, 2006. “Government fails 10th consecutive audit.” Retrieved from http://www.talentecology.com on December 29, 2006.))

While it’s important to keep the human value of our employees, as Sean says, it’s also important to understand how we measure our talent. Understanding headcounts, FTE’s and budgets is simply not enough. We go through complex budgeting cycles to create our position management plans, but my guess however is that very few companies out there are actually quantifying their talent in a meaningful way.

During performance review cycles, we often look at competencies and the level of attainment that any particular employee has achieved. From an organizational perspective, perhaps we should understand what the aggregated level of a particular competency is and what the necessary level for that competency needs to be for our organization to be successful. For example, Sean writes that “we could get to a point where we could define successes or be able to identify where a professional is “above par, at par, or below par” amongst their professional peers” but I’m more interested in knowing that an individual contributor has a competency X value of 5 and the organization has a competency X value of 500. When compared to a requirement that the organization really needs the aggregate competency X value to be closer to 700, they know they need a particular type of talent to be recruited. Rather than simple headcounts, this gives a more meaningful roadmap than simple headcounts.

The next step of acquisition is where Sean’s comments really get interesting. If his vision of a competency ratings system amongst professional peers is viable, it give recruiters and hiring managers a way to identify competency levels at the time of hire. Currently, there really isn’t a way to identify true competency levels until well after hire. The challenge will be to create an adoption path for this type of methodology that is used and applied consistently across multiple professions, regions and industries.

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8 responses to “Quantifying Talent”

  1. HR-Related Sites Society for Human Resource Managment AllBusiness Human Resources About Human Resources Mercer Human Resource Consulting Systematic HR The CareerXroads Annex

  2. DonaldHTaylor Avatar

    Thought provoking post. I agree that you can’t meaningfully measure any gap in organisational competency without aggregating differences in individual competencies, and that the place to collect that individual data is during performance reviews. That should provide great data for inter-organisational comparisons. But there are some questions that this raises:

    1) How do you compare the competencies of all people in an organisation? Is it even possible?
    2) What do you need to do it all?
    3) Who cares about this outside HR?

    I’m going to think about this for a bit, then I’ll probably post whatever answers I come up with on my own blog.

    Disclosure: I am an executive director of InfoBasis, which supplies software in this area.

  3. systematicHR Avatar

    Donald:

    You ask “Who cares about this outside of HR?” My answer to that is everyone up to the board of directors. Currently the BOD would get detailed headcount reports, and as HR provides these headcount reports often based on a budget of positions and slots available, the report will state how far over or under any particular part of the organization is to budget. I think that a more effective way to measure if the organization has the labor capacity to get the work done would be not to measure just the total number of bodies around the organization, but also if they even have the skills to do the work.

    Today we assume they have the necessary skills through the interview process and perhaps ongoing performance and learning plans. But these really just create a rough estimate of the total volume of competency and skill in an organization, if people are even going that far.

    As for your other questions, (how, and what tools are needed), let’s continue to talk about that. Ping me back when you’ve written about it.

    -Dubs

  4. […] 15th, 2007 · No Comments Recent posts on Systematic HR,  on Quantifying Talent, and on Sean Rehder’s Talent Ecologyblog, have inspired a return to my human capital series. Both comments were prompted by the recent uncovering of $325 billion of assets appearing on the US government’s books as a result of new accounting rules for property. How would it be, they wondered, if there was some agreed way of measuring and reporting on human talent? […]

  5. DonaldHTaylor Avatar

    Hi Dubs

    Above is my blog entry, but I wanted to pick up on one point – “Who cares about this outside of HR?” You’re right that there are plenty of individuals who do, but I doubt that includes “everyone up to the board of directors”.

    Importantly, not enough people care enough. Yes, understanding whether people have the skills to do their job is more important than knowing organisational headcount. The problem – in my experience – is this is just too big a report for anyone to put the time into commissioning. So to get there, you have to start small, and with the individuals who can see that skills matter.

    This might mean (for example) improving training efficiency or resource allocation in one department by making them skills based – doing that will also produce the skills data you need for part of the big picture report. Do that for enough departments, and you will generate a substantial part of the overall skills picture report, but as a by-product of valuable point solutions.

    The only exception to this approach that I can think of at present is the British Senior Civil Service, currently undergoing a massive skills inventory precisely because someone high up has seen its importance, and mandated it.

    Don

  6. […] Quantifying Talent article details » systematichr.com Posted 9 days ago by systematicHR feed details » […]

  7. […] Technology also improves the work recruiters do with hiring managers. Companies don’t spend the time or resources needed to truly measure talent: ”While it’s important to keep the human value of our employees, as Sean says, it’s also important to understand how we measure our talent. Understanding headcounts, FTE’s and budgets is simply not enough. We go through complex budgeting cycles to create our position management plans, but my guess however is that very few companies out there are actually quantifying their talent in a meaningful way.” (From Systematic HR) […]

  8. […] Rehder, Donald Taylor and I (https://systematichr.com/?p=658) recently had a discussion about quantifying talent and how that could simplify the identification […]