Couture Choas and Talent Managment

Recently, I decided that I was tired of not having a qualified and competent internal candidate to fill a couple of open positions–as we all know, you never really know what you are going to get when you hire from the outside. As a result, I concluded that I would have to create some sort of process to ensure that I had an ample amount of qualified internal candidates from which to choose from. In other words, I would have to learn how to “manage our talent.” Hence, began my quest for learning more about this process that would hopefully get me the talent our organization needed to meet our business objectives. 

     Although I had heard about talent management before, I have to admit that I really wasn’t sure what it was, nor was I familiar with its purpose. As you can imagine, I had to do a little research. During my research, I found that one of the key components is succession planning. For those of you who don’t know, it is making sure everyone from the bottom up has a replacement–although most of the time it is used more for senior level positions. Can you imagine a company without a CEO? After all, the CEO is the one who is suppose to be leading the company. They are in charge. Not having someone at the company helm making the hard decisions would undoubtedly make investors nervous. Thus, not having a replacement would definitely have an impact on the bottom line. For this reason, it has become a hot topic in the business community.

     As I was doing my research, I came across this interesting article in the Wall Street Journal that I found applicable to the reasons for have a succession plan. It is about the death of Gianfranco Ferre. A famous Italian fashion designer, and founder of the label Ferre, who died very unexpectedly without having groomed someone to takeover. 

     The article also mentions the Chief Executive saying, in an recent interview, that the fact that Mr. Ferre still designs for the brand is a crucial part of the brand image. With this in mind, it seems that someone would have thought about preparing for Ferre’s death and maybe discussed a few what-if-scenarios. It will interesting to see how the death of this designer affects the company. 

IMPORTANCE TO HR 

     In a 2007 poll of 209 HR professionals, it was found that in ranking HR activities critical to their businesses’ success during the next 24 months, respondents put talent management at the top of their agendas, with roughly 75 percent saying it was very important.  

     I think if we were to ask the HR Practitioners who responded to this poll their reasons for putting talent management at the top of the priority list, we would find that it’s about making money. After all, people are the biggest part of costs. Thus, it makes sense that the savvy HR Practitioner would do everything they can to manage this cost by having the right amount of people with the right skills in the right jobs. If there is a mismatch, it can lead to costly layoffs and losing your talent development investments. 

     If you’re interested in reading the entire article mentioned in this blog, here is the link:  Gianfranco Ferre