1. Career Assessment &
Transition
Internal Career Development and
Talent Management

2. Internal Talent Management is becoming more and
more important
 The UK’s talent crisis has deepened.
 Employers facing more difficulty filling vacant positions than at any time
since 2007
 More than half of businesses globally say unfilled positions are having an
impact on customers and investors.
 One in six UK employers is finding it difficult to fill critical
positions (2011) compared to one in 11 (2010) despite over more than
2.4 million people unemployed. Engineering jobs are the most difficult to fill.
 Employers are not addressing the root of the talent
mismatch.
 Only 12% of UK employers are providing additional learning and
development to enable internal talent to move into hard-to-fill positions.
 This compares to 21% internationally.
Source: Manpower Group, Sixth Annual Talent Shortage Survey,
May 2011

3. Recruitment – The internal labour market
 Internal recruitment is the most (cost) effective method of
providing talent.
 The individuals are already perfectly onboarded and
culturally aligned.
 An effective Internal Recruitment Policy is a strong boost to
the overall employees’ morale and engagement.
 It plays a vital role in the CSR efforts of an organisation.
 Previous investments made in terms of education and
training receive a further pay off (ROI) as the knowledge
remains within the company.

4. Talent identification – the backbone of internal
Talent Management
 Knowing who your key players are is crucial
 Engagement efforts go wrong if you engage the “wrong
talent”
 Job profiles, classifications and competency profiles are
essential.
 Regular performance reviews are crucial.
 Look beyond the actual job needs:
 What is your talent good at above and beyond their current
duty?
 What are their ambitions and aspirations?
 Engage your line management to keep talking to their talent.
 Keep a data base on skills and resources beyond the current
job role.

5. Succession Planning – a great source for internal
career opportunities
 Do you keep track on internal demographics?
 How old are your present senior managers?
 What is the number of people who are likely to retire in the
foreseeable future? (No, asking yourself this question has
absolutely nothing to do with age discrimination.)
 How will the job roles change in the future?
 What competencies and skills will be required in specific
positions in the future?
 Are you aware of the great opportunity that a “generation
shift” may give your company to evolve?
 Do you value you the opportunity to retain current “future
leaders (or principals)” in your organisation by offering
them a succession role?

6. Workforce planning – that’s where business
strategy and people strategy (should) meet!
 How do you reflect planned changes of your
 Product / service offering
 Organisational structure
in your qualitative and quantitative workforce plan?
 How do you reflect changes in demographics and society in
your future workforce plan?
 What alternatives do you have in store instead of the
traditional “we are hiring – we have to make people
redundant” strategy?
 Does your HR just react to short term business requests or
does your HR give strategic input?
 Has your HR “earned” the seat on the Board yet?

7. Competency framework – how specific are you?
 Many organisations tend to be terrifically unspecific when it
comes to define the competencies needed for their
workforce (all levels, from blue collar up to senior
executives)
 Do you discuss the compentency needs for each job
category specifically with all stakeholders involved?
 Are your frameworks “living” – or just a paper exercise,
ticking boxes?
 Do you regularly review the framework against the needs
arising from the workforce planning?
 Is your competency framework supported by observable
and measurable characteristics (i.e. how do you define
“flexibility”)

8. Learning & Development – needs or treats?
 When you have done all the exercises from the chapters
above it is essential that you prepare specific L&D plans.
 For every L&D measure you need to define a “feed forward”
expectation
 What is the expected outcome of the training and how can
we measure the effectiveness?
 Keep track on that and
 Monitor the performance of your training providers
 But also monitor how your employees make efforts to utilise the
opportunity they were given back at the workplace

9. Career planning – creating a roadmap for success
 Make sure that your HR drives regular career planning
reviews with line management and senior management.
 Question the suggestions of line managers in a constructive
way
 “more of myself” and “no one must be better than me” is the
path from talent growth to mediocrity (or worse)
 Keep talking to your talent
 Let them know that they are considered for more
responsibility
 Manage their expectations by setting clear targets and
boundaries
 Keep listening to their ideas and aspirations (or even
frustrations)
 Allow your talent opportunities to get exposed, i.e. as
project leaders etc.

10. Performance management – not carrots and sticks
 Performance management has become seen over the last
few years as a key process to reward (or not) performance
by (fiscal) incentives.
 That model has outlived itself – especially in the wake of the
post-financial crisis
 Bonus oriented performance management has not stopped
bad (company) performance and not helped the growth of
internal talent.
 Values are most important
 If there are no other values than the monetary ones, than
remuneration becomes the only driver of performance
 The performance management process should focus on the
skills and competencies of your talent and help them (and
you) to grow steadily and sustainibly.