Talent Management is a way of life

Do you lie awake at night wondering how to retain your best talent now the job market and wider economy are picking up? Are you doing everything you can to ensure the best people want to work for you? Are you one step ahead of your competitors?

If not, you may already be too late to catch up with companies like ABB, one of the world's leading engineering companies. Their consistent work with Talent Management during the last 20 years has helped them in good times as well as bad, making sure that only leaders with the right results and behaviour get promoted. ABB ensures that their leaders get the constant challenge and on-the-job training they need and request.

We asked Lena Eliasson, HR Director ABB Northern Europe a couple of questions:

What has made Talent Management at ABB successful?

First of all, talent is not only a process at ABB, it is more like a way of life. Every manager at ABB is aware of what strong people can do to their business, why having the right people in the organisation makes all the difference and why spending time on talent is valuable Thereby the Talent Management process is fully owned and driven by managers and HR act only as guides and facilitators.

Secondly, ABB has adopted one single global Talent Management approach in everything from a common leader profile to specific tools and methods. This very structured approach leads to complete transparency, making talent a key asset to the group as a whole. Managers who act as a role model when it comes to developing people quickly realize that this makes them even more attractive as leaders.

Finally, the focus is not so much on conducting the Talent Management process itself but on what happens as a result of what you learn from the process. ABB uses the knowledge to promote and develop the leaders that are critical in developing ABB, delivering the right results in the right way.

However, not every company has focused on Talent Management for as long as ABB, so what can you learn from their experience with Talent Management over the last 20 years?

Eat the elephant one bite at a time. Start simple, focusing on creating an honest dialogue between managers/employees. Once people have started to get candid feedback, planning their own development, you could add more complex components and analysis.

Focus on actions, not on information gathering. Many companies have got lost trying to gather exact information, thereby missing the whole point: why you invest in Talent Management from the start. Once you know who your key people are, accelerate their development further! Plan successors based on what you learn and do not promote people only based on results.

Implement Talent Management step by-step. You will not get a second chance to implement Talent Management in your organisation so make sure to get it right from the start; consider rolling it out in pilots and taking the consequences from this before covering your whole organisation.

Make the management team the owner - only then will it really work.

This Interview with Lena Eliasson, HR Director ABB Northern Europe, first appeared in Alumni quarterly.