Seth Godin’s recent post on Talent and marketing HR hit home on may fronts.
What if you started acting like the VP of Talent? Understanding that talent is hard to find and not obvious to manage. The VP of Talent would have to reorganize the department and do things differently all day long (small example: talent shouldn’t have to fill out reams of forms and argue with the insurance company… talent is too busy for that… talent has people to help with that.)
Seth’s point that perhaps we should just rename and market ourselves from HR to Talent seems to be a decent idea. As he points out, simply renaming is not an option. We have to throw ourselves into the endeavor with additional focus and understanding.
I however, don’t believe we should rename ourselves to talent. Talent to me is simply the latest way that HR has derived to provide ourselves with direction. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that we are focused on talent, I personally love it and think it’s great. However, in 5 or 10 years, there will probably be a new way to reinvent ourselves that may be more relevant for the next decade. “Talent” will be relevant for a very long time, but it may not be what is leading in the minds of business executives. I think the brand “Human Resources” is as generic as anything else and while it may not be the perfect brand, it may be more timeless.
