ILRHR554: Talent Management · PDF filewith overall business strategy Select talent ... understanding their organization's key talent management challenges and ... talent, and an inclusive

Copyright © 2015 Cornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. 1

ILRHR554: Talent Management


This course includes

• One self-check quiz

• Two discussions

• Four tools to download and use

on the job

• Three Ask the Expert

interactives

• One investigation assignment

• One course project

Completing all of the coursework should take

about five to seven hours.

What you'll learn

Assess your organization's approach

to managing talent and its alignment

with overall business strategy

Select talent assessment and

identification tools and processes that

align with your organization's talent

philosophy

Devise strategies for developing,

engaging, and retaining key talent

Identify ways of fostering a culture

that supports your organization's

talent management efforts

Measure the effectiveness of

individual talent programs

Course Description


Organizations today face great challenges in the effective management of their talent. In mature markets, demographic

trends are forcing companies to accelerate their efforts to build a pipeline of future leaders. In emerging markets,

companies must develop talent strategies that are both nimble and effective at engaging and retaining key human capital.

The result is that now, more than ever, companies need an integrated, systematic approach to attracting, developing,

engaging, and retaining critical talent.

Cornell University Professor Brad Bell offers a learning experience that challenges students to dig deeper into

understanding their organization's key talent management challenges and uncovers the levers that can be used to tackle

these challenges. This course adopts a systems view of talent management in order to demonstrate that various talent

practices and processes need to be aligned to create effective solutions. It also examines talent management through a

contemporary lens in order to examine some of the current trends and cutting-edge thinking in the field.

.This course does make a fundamental assumption that learners are currently working within the field of human resources

Bradford S. Bell Associate Professor and Director of Executive Education, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, CornellUniversity

is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies and Director of Executive Education in the SchoolBradford S. Bell

of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Maryland

at College Park and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Michigan State University. Dr.

Bell's research interests include training and development and team development and effectiveness. His research has

appeared in a number of journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Human Resource

Management, Academy of Management Learning & Education, International Journal of Human Resource Management,

and the . In addition, Dr. Bell hasGroup and Organization Management, International Journal of Selection and Assessment

published numerous chapters that have appeared in edited research volumes and presents regularly at conferences,

including the Academy of Management and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Dr. Bell was

awarded the Early Career Achievement Award by the HR Division of the Academy of Management in 2008 and he

currently serves as the Editor of Dr. Bell teaches courses in Human Resource Management,Personnel Psychology.

Training and Development, and Work Groups and Teams to graduate and undergraduate students. Dr. Bell worked in the

management and organization development department of First USA Bank/Banc One and has worked as an HR

consultant for multiple private and public firms. Dr. Bell is a member of the Academy of Management, Society for Industrial

and Organizational Psychology, , and the Society for HumanAssociation for Talent Development (ATD, formerly ASTD)

Resource Management.


Start Your Course


Module Introduction: Examine Your Talent Philosophy

In this module, you will examine critical terms related to talent management. You will hear from Professor Bell about the

central issues of talent management today, as well as some of the defining characteristics of effective talent management

approaches. You will complete a project in which you examine the best practices of an organization considered a leader in

this field. You will assess your organization's approach to managing talent and consider its alignment with the overall

business strategy. You will also have an opportunity to participate in a discussion with your peers about a key question for

anyone working in talent management: why should you bother to develop your employees if it means they will only end up

leaving?


Watch: Links to Branding

The study of talent management shines a light on how well an organization can effectively manage its internal talent. That

is, how can you identify, develop, engage, and retain the key talent within your organization? In this video, Professor Bell

explains how talent management relates to branding and why it's critical to make sure your talent-management practices

are aligned with your employment brand and your talent-acquisition activities.


Tool: Assess Your Employment Brand

Download the Tool

Assess Your Employment Brand

As Professor Bell discussed, we have developed a tool to help you assess your current employment brand. You can

download this tool now and use it to examine how your organization is perceived by the market and by its employees. You

may also find it helpful to save this tool and use it again in the future to reassess the effectiveness of your efforts over

time.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ecornell/content/ILRHR/ILRHR554/ilrhr554_tool-assess-your-employment-brand.docx


Watch: Talent Philosophy

As you begin to think about talent management, it's tempting to dive right into the process and the design of HR systems

and practices. In this video, Professor Bell discusses the critical importance of assessing what talent means within your

organization and what successfully managing that talent would involve. This is often referred to as having an

organizational talent philosophy.


Watch: Alignment with Organizational Goals

In a 2005 article, Cohn, Khurana, and Reeves discuss the talent management efforts of TysonHarvard Business Review

Foods, one of the largest food companies in the world: CEO John Tyson set an organizational goal of developing excellent

leaders. He experimented with different initiatives over a period of years, including an internal mentoring program and a

leadership retreat for high-potential managers. And yet the company was still not producing enough quality leaders. Why

was this so?


Watch: Exclusive vs. Inclusive Approaches

How does a company decide which employees are its "talent"? There is no single universally preferred way to think about

it. Research done at Cornell University has shown that companies tend toward one approach or another: either an

exclusive or inclusive approach. An approach looks at a very narrow segment of the employee population as itsexclusive

talent, and an approach identifies everybody within the organization as talent. Professor Bell discusses theinclusive

different approaches in this video.


Module Wrap-up: Examine Your Talent Philosophy

In this module, you heard from Professor Bell about the central issues of talent management today and identified some of

the defining characteristics of effective talent management approaches. You examined the best practices of an

organization considered a leader in this field. You assessed your organization's approach to managing talent and

considered its alignment with your overall business strategy. You also had an opportunity to participate in a discussion

with your peers about a key question for anyone working in talent management: why should you bother to develop

employees if it means they will only end up leaving?


Module Introduction: Identify Your Key Talent

In this module, you will examine some of the different ways you can approach identifying key talent within your

organization. You will hear from Professor Bell about the case for transparency and why he recommends it as a proven

approach. You will have access to a helpful and reusable tool that will aid you in identifying key talent. You will have an

opportunity to discuss a critical issue for many in HR and management: should you tell people that they've been identified

as part of the organization's key talent pool? Finally, you will complete a project that will help you identify your key talent.


Watch: Tools to Identify People

In this video, Professor Bell discusses how you can select talent assessment and identification tools and processes that

align with your organization's talent philosophy. Some of the most common techniques, such as having managers rate

people, can be very effective at low levels of the organization for broad numbers of people. As you look further up within

the organization's hierarchy and these decisions start to require a bigger investment, you may want to consider

assessment centers, testing, and gathering 360-degree feedback. Any of the tools that are available to you have their

strengths and weaknesses. Your goal should be to try to have multiple data points: to use a battery of different

assessments that have complementary strengths and weaknesses, as Professor Bell explains.


Tool: Identifying Talent

Download the Tool

Identify Talent

This worksheet will help you make plans for which combination of tools you want to use to identify talent within your

organization. As Professor Bell has noted, it is important to recognize that none of these tools alone is perfect. They all

have their strengths and weaknesses. The goal is to ask what tools you should be using at different levels of the

organization and how you should be combining these different tools to come up with a rigorous and well-defined profile of

available talent.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ecornell/content/ILRHR/ILRHR554/ilrhr554_tools-to-identify-talent.docx


Watch: The Case for Transparency

Professor Bell makes a case for transparency and explains why he's a firm believer in its value. As the data shows, high

performing firms tend to be transparent. In firms where there is less transparency, employees see unfairness or bias.

Some organizations are very transparent: employees are assessed, they discuss their standing with their manager and

find out where the organization sees their potential, and they either get tracked for development or they don't. In less

transparent organizations, only HR or managers are privy to that information.


Ask the Expert: Dale Wunder on Transparency

is an Executive Advisor to Cornell University and a former Vice President of Human Resources atDale Wunder

Shell Oil Company. Wunder has extensive international experience at Royal Dutch Shell with senior

leadership roles in Asia, Europe, and the US, with expatriate assignments in London, Beijing, and Damascus.

He has experience across a range of businesses and broad geographies, and is passionate about partnering

with senior leaders and their teams to achieve their business and people visions, and developing future

leaders in the line and HR. His current and prior Board and/or Trustee roles include Altus Foundation, Shell

Pension Plan, Aera (Shell/Exxon), Jobs for Americas Graduates, Inroads, and Cystic Fibrosis Family Advisory

Board at Texas Children's Hospital.

Describe transparency at Shell, and what that means for HR efforts.


Module Wrap-up: Identify Your Key Talent

In this module, you examined some of the different ways you can approach identifying key talent within your organization.

You heard from Professor Bell about the case for transparency and why he recommends it as a proven approach. You

had access to a helpful and reusable tool that will aid you in identifying key talent. You had an opportunity to discuss a

critical issue for many in HR and management: should you tell people that they've been identified as part of the

organization's key talent pool? Finally, you completed a project designed to help you identify key talent within your

organization.


Module Introduction: Devise Development Strategies for Engagement andRetention

In this module, you will identify some of the recommended development strategies that are meant to improve engagement

and retention, including ways you can support talent development through learning experiences. You will examine some of

the characteristics of great learning experiences with Professor Bell, and you will consider some critical related concepts,

such as hindrance demands versus challenge demands. You will explore what constitutes excellent development

opportunities for employees. You will also hear from Dale Wunder, a former executive with Royal Dutch Shell, about some

of the best practices used by that renowned talent-management organization.


Watch: Development Strategies

After you have identified your key talent, you need to think about how you will provide them with the developmental

experiences they need to be effective in their current role and to be able to fill larger, more complex roles in the future. As

Professor Bell explains in this video, there are a variety of developmental strategies you can use, including classroom and

online training, mentoring, coaching, on-the-job experiences, and stretch assignments.

In this video, Professor Bell references the Association for Talent and Development, formerly known as ASTD (American

Society for Training and Development).


Watch: Characteristics of Great Learning Experiences

So far in this course, you have examined the value of offering challenging jobs and assignments for developing

employees. It is important to recognize, however, that simply giving employees a difficult and demanding job assignment

does not guarantee it will be a valuable learning experience. In this video, Professor Bell discusses key characteristics of

great learning experiences and distinguishes between challenge demands and hindrance demands.


Tool: Checklist of Hindrance or Challenge Demands

Download the Tool

This Checklist of Hindrance or Challenge Demands

will aid workload analysis

Employees need to have stretch assignments and challenges in order to grow into their full potential. But how do you

know if these assignments are stretching people too thin with too many challenge demands or are making them vulnerable

to burnout through hindrance demands? This checklist will help you identify whether the tasks assigned to an individual

are challenge demands or hindrance demands. You can use it for yourself, to analyze your own mix of demands, or with a

subordinate or team member.

Note:

are challenging for employees and yet don't foster learning and development; they are seen byHindrance demands

employees as uniformly negative and they are threatening to personal growth, learning, and goal attainment.

Examples include role conflict and organizational politics. Hindrance demands decrease employee engagement.

They almost always lead to burnout.

are assigned tasks that are challenging for employees but that engender enthusiasm, energy,Challenge demands

learning, and engagement in the employee. They are seen by employees as opportunities for personal growth,

mastery, autonomy, and empowerment. They may be difficult tasks, but they serve as a meaningful developmental

experience. Challenge demands, if they are given in too great a quantity or are too much for the employee to

handle, can also lead to burnout.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ecornell/content/ILRHR/ILRHR554/ilrhr554_tool-checklist-challenge-or-hindrance.docx


Watch: Development Opportunities

Development opportunities extend beyond giving your star performers a chance to shine. Rather than just giving people

roles or projects in which you know they will excel, you want to put them into assignments that will challenge and stretch

them. If you are serious about providing development opportunities, then you need to realize that sometimes people will

fail. You need to have a plan to deal with failure when it does occur, as Professor Bell explains.


Ask the Expert: Dale Wunder on Talent Development









Question

Shell is known as a leader in recruiting, retaining, and developing talent. What do you think are some of the keys to that

success?

Question

What was the rationale behind using an inclusive approach at Shell?

Question

What's the benefit to taking the long-term view of talent development and employee potential?


Watch: Experience Matrices

How do you match employees with the right types of developmental experiences? Many organizations have developed an

"experience matrix," which lists the different types of developmental experiences that are available within the organization

and then matches that up with the expected learning that's associated with it. In this video, Professor Bell explains the

value of experience matrices.


Watch: Embeddedness

Organizations want their key talent pools to be deeply embedded within the organization, or to be so connected and linked

to the organization that they are reluctant to leave in pursuit of other opportunities. In this video, Professor Bell introduces

research on the concept of embeddedness and explains the critical factors that embed employees in their job and make it

more difficult for them to leave.


Module Wrap-up: Devise Development Strategies for Engagement and Retention

In this module, you examined development strategies for engagement and retention, including some of the different ways

you can support talent development through offering meaningful learning experiences. You explored some of the

characteristics of great learning experiences with Professor Bell, and examined hindrance demands and challenge

demands. You explored what constitutes excellent development opportunities for employees, and accessed a tool that will

help determine whether employees are being given an appropriate level of challenge. You also heard from Dale Wunder,

a former executive with Royal Dutch Shell, about some relevant best practices.


Module Introduction: Measure the Effectiveness

Talent-management efforts work when they move from being only an HR issue to being an organizational issue. In this

module, you will examine how companies get the full organization to embrace talent management and buy into it.

Professor Brad Bell will present ways of fostering a culture that supports talent-management efforts and delivers on an

organization's employment brand. You will hear from former Royal Dutch Shell HR executive Dale Wunder about some of

his key expertise in this area. Finally, you will complete a project in which you identify your chosen strategies for

measuring the effectiveness of your talent-management efforts.


Read: How Top Companies Develop Talent

Key Points

Functionality is having rigorous processes in place

that support strategic objectives and align culturally

with the organization.

Vitality is a commitment to talent management that

is reflected in daily actions.

The companies that excel in the area of talent development excel in two key areas. The first area is functionality, which

involves having rigorous talent processes in place that support strategic objectives and align culturally with the

organization. So far in this course, the focus has been on functionality.

The second key piece of the talent-management puzzle is vitality, or a commitment to talent management that is reflected

in daily actions. Vitality can be described as the culture of talent management within the organization. Vitality is built

through multiple stakeholders. HR staff play a critical role in driving talent management within the organization. But the top

executive team, line management, and even the talent pool themselves also need to be engaged if an organization is

going to build a strong culture.

It is important to recognize that there are different levels of vitality. The first level is commitment. Commitment is a belief

that talent management is important and that the organization should focus on it. The second level is engagement.

Engagement goes beyond commitment in that it involves individuals actually devoting their own time and energy to talent

management. For example, is a top executive willing to teach in a leadership program or engage in coaching discussions

with his or her direct reports? The final dimension is accountability, which means that different stakeholders are held

accountable for their role in talent management. For the top talent pool, for example, that accountability might mean that

they seek out mentoring or seek out different developmental experiences proactively.

The importance of vitality or having a strong talent management culture cannot be overstated. Research shows that many

companies feel good about their talent processes or their functionality. They feel that they're cutting edge and well run.

They struggle, however, to build a strong talent-management culture throughout the organization.


Watch: Learn from Strong Cultures

As we think about how to build a strong talent-management culture, it is helpful to look at some of those companies that

are known as talent factories. What is it that they do to help make talent management a priority throughout the

organization? It takes time and patience to build a strong talent-management culture. The companies that are known for

this have, in most cases, a long history of commitment to developing their talent. Consider which of these practices can be

used to help build or strengthen the talent-management culture in your company.


Watch: Key Metrics

In this video, Professor Bell discusses some of the key metrics that you should look at overall for talent management

within your organization. What should your people be developing in terms of new competencies? How should they be

assessing their performance in their roles? And how should you be evaluating the efforts so that you can measure return

on investment for your organization?


Ask the Expert: Dale Wunder on Organizational Culture









What are some of the keys to building a strong culture of talent management?

Have you used specific measurements in terms of putting leaders in place who can deliver results?


Module Wrap-up: Measure the Effectiveness

In this module, you examined the reasons that talent-management efforts work best when they move from being only an

HR issue to being an organizational issue. You identified some strategies for getting an organization to embrace talent

management and to buy into it. You heard from Professor Brad Bell about some of the ways you can foster a culture that

supports talent management efforts and delivers on an organization's employment brand and some of the key metrics

used for measuring effectiveness. You heard from former Royal Dutch Shell HR executive Dale Wunder about some of his

key expertise in this area. Finally, you completed a project in which you identified your chosen strategies for measuring

the effectiveness of your talent-management efforts.


Bradford S. Bell Associate Professor and Director of Executive Education

School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Cornell University

Read: Thank You and Farewell

Congratulations on completing "Talent Management." I hope you now feel that you're more aware of strategies involving

effective management of your talent pool. I hope the material covered here has met your expectations and prepared you

to better meet the needs of your organization.

From all of us at Cornell University and eCornell, thank you for participating in this course.

Sincerely,

Brad Bell


Stay Connected


Documents

ILRHR554: Talent Management · PDF filewith overall business strategy Select talent ... understanding their organization's key talent management challenges and ... talent, and an inclusive