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Talent The Talent Paradox: A 21st century talent and leadership agenda A selection of recently published articles from Deloitte Review Foreword by Jeff Schwartz Talent Contents Foreword | 2 Attraction: New views of talent, work and strategy The Talent Paradox | 7 Critical skills, recession and the illusion of plenitude Talent and Work | 19 Playing to your strengths Where Did Our Employees Go? | 28 Examining the rise in voluntary turnover during economic recoveries Diversity as an Engine of Innovation | 38 Retail and consumer goods companies find competitive advantage in diversity Corporations, careers and culture Mass Career Customization | 53 Building the corporate lattice organization The Corporate Lattice | 64 A strategic response to the changing world of work Culture and the Myth of the Black Box | 77 Why you can—and should—manage your company’s culture ii The Talent Paradox: A 21st century talent and leadership agenda A world of talent Headwinds, Tailwinds and the Riddles of Demographics | 88 Talking About Whose Generation? | 98 Why Western generational models can’t account for a global workforce Smarter Moves | 108 Improving the value of global mobility by aligning strategy, investments and operations Deep Talent, Vast Distances | 119 Realizing the full value of global knowledge workers Decisions: Numbers, human nature and performance Irrational Expectations | 129 How statistical thinking can lead us to better decisions Beyond the Numbers | 140 Analytics as a strategic capability A Delicate Balance | 153 Organizational barriers to evidence-based management 1 Talent Foreword The future is already here. It’s just not “very evenly distributed yet. — William Gibson ” With the relentless march of technology- by populations that are different demographi- driven innovation, mobility and connected- cally and in their goals and expectations. ness, and a rising ocean of data redefining what Physical space, hierarchy and tenure, which is possible strategically, our industrial and together described most of what you needed post-industrial models for talent and the to know about talent in decades past, have organization are inadequate at best. The lost much of their preeminence and relevance. changes are in front of us every day and yet we Credentials and education are important, but rely on talent practices and models from earlier continual learning in the context of techno- eras: corporate ladders; organizational hierar- logical change and social collaboration is even chies; spans of control. Even the notion of more essential. “talent management” reflects an age when We are beginning to understand more much of the world’s work (and schools) were about how work will be done in this century organized on models that looked more like and the types of people who will thrive in factories and manufacturing lines than this environment. The collection of articles knowledge networks. that we present in this book will, we trust, Perhaps the 21st century for talent and inform a broader emerging view of a disci- work began with the current decade. The ’00s pline—focused on talent—that is emerging as were in many ways a continuation—the last co-equal with strategy and technology in many gasp—of the last century. In the past ten years, discussions of corporate growth and perfor- the world of work has redrawn its boundaries: mance. These articles examine several themes: we have seen three billion new capitalists join Attraction—the new retention: In the the global market place in China, India, Brazil, depths of the Great Recession, it became too the former Soviet Union and now Africa and easy to view talent as a simple in-out proposi- the Middle East; the emergence of a hyper- tion, with few people leaving and many want- connected world (albeit with spikes in global ing in. Given the critical nature and shortages creative city centers); and social and mobile of an increasing number of skills, however, technologies that have changed the way we live it has become clear that a recession is not a and work. serious retention strategy: businesses need to The challenges are clear: business is driven become better at understanding critical talent by globalization, technology, and hyper-con- and why the best decide to join, to stay – or nectedness. And yes, work is done differently— leave – and designing work in ways that seeks distributed, virtual, knowledge-intensive—and to improve the talent experience – perhaps 2 The Talent Paradox: A 21st century talent and leadership agenda much like the customer experience. Similarly, to development to deployment. The concept of the connections among the consumer market, making informed talent decisions by the num- business’s workforce and corporate brands can bers has moved from the realm of metaphor to be particular sources of competitive advantage. the realm of possibility: what is the interplay Diversity, in all of its forms, is an essential between culture and talent analytics: what kind part of this. In short, the challenge is mov- of company loves its quants and is better for it? ing beyond models of retention to strategies Are we ready – or even equipped as organiza- of attraction. tions – to accept the insights we can glean from Careers, culture and corporations: Oddly, data and analytics, or will we, like the scouts given the significant shifts in how work is described in Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, cling done, and in the aspirations of newer genera- to our gut instincts and tribal wisdom? tions with new expectations entering the work- The interplay between talent and work in force, the ladder model for the corporate career the 21st century is evolving rapidly, and so track soldiers on with its uniform expectations should our views on how we lead and how we – for everyone. The importance and changing think about talent challenges. Generational expectations of talent in the new workplace changes and a global workplace transformed point to a need to revisit the one-size-fits-all by technology are putting stresses on the tra- approaches. Likewise, culture impacts perfor- ditional models. But, in almost any way I can mance, and the traditional and passive notion think of, this new, flat (okay, sometimes spikey) that culture “just happens” underestimates its and hyper-connected, work-anywhere world importance as a factor to be managed: an orga- is shaping up to be a fascinating and creative nization can be a platform for performance, or place. It is different. And it demands more of a bog that impedes even the best from achiev- us as creators, collaborators, professionals, ing to their potential. specialists, producers, managers and leaders. It A world of talent: The art and science of is an exciting time for those comfortable with leading, attracting and developing talent in a new ideas. I believe the articles we have col- global context is emerging as both a challenge lected in this volume offer a taste of the oppor- and opportunity. Many businesses are far from tunities awaiting those who see the chance to proficient when it comes to deploying and change how we think about talent and work engaging with knowledge- and skilled workers in new, different, and hopefully increasingly around the world. Further, demographic issues impactful ways. vary by country, suggesting that it really is no longer sufficient to implement one talent strat- Jeff Schwartz egy – or one product strategy – globally. Global Co-Leader, Talent, Decisions: Data and analytics are poised Performance and Rewards to reshape approaches to business including Deloitte Consulting workforce and talent issues from recruitment 3 Talent 4 The Talent Paradox: A 21st century talent and leadership agenda Attraction: New views of talent, work and strategy 5 The Talent Paradox: A 21st century talent and leadership agenda The Talent Paradox Critical skills, recession and the illusion of plenitude By Robin Erickson, Jeff Schwartz and Josh Ensell > Illustration by Brian Stauffer ITH relatively high unemployment and difficult to meet skill needs while keeping labor Wlow voluntary turnover, it is tempt- costs at desired levels. ing to go back to “business as usual” and put A targeted retention strategy can help employee recruitment and retention challenges companies navigate the talent paradox through on the back burner. Many executives may an increasingly sophisticated view of what expect there to be a surplus of labor avail- employees are looking for, what they value and able that companies can swoop in and grab why they are leaving. If a company can better when the market picks up. However, this is understand why employees are leaving, it can only half of the story. Despite high unemploy- take the requisite actions to get them to stay— ment, many companies are increasingly having in effect, creating a retention firewall to keep trouble filling job vacancies, with over 3.2 employees in and competitors out. million unfilled jobs in the United States as of July 2011.1 Worse, these shortages often occur in critical, skilled roles that have high barriers A recession isn’t a strategy to entry and are crucial to a company’s success. OMPANIES face a labor market where, This points to a talent paradox: While there is a Cdespite high unemployment, they still need surplus of job seekers, some companies are fac- to focus on attracting, developing, managing ing shortages in critical areas where they most and retaining their critical employees who have need to attract and keep highly skilled talent. opportunities to leave for higher salaries and In other words, high unemployment rates do more varied job roles and experiences. As the not mean that the talent you need will be there economy improves, we expect employees with when you need it. critical skills will begin to leave their employers This talent paradox is raising the stakes in in larger numbers based on historical turnover the competition for critical talent, with organi- after recessions and recent Deloitte* research zations trying to outbid each other for a select that suggests only 35 percent of global employ- group of critical employees and the skills they ees surveyed expect to stay with their current need to succeed.

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