Talent Management – #oneword #HR #CIPD

In 2015 100s of HR professionals were asked a simple question in a survey… in one word describe…TALENT MANAGEMENT

Participants were invited from the CIPD Members LinkedIn group, the CIPD communities, and the CIPD Facebook group. 613 participated. Of those, over 70% have been in HR for more than 11 years.

Not all questions were mandatory

The demographics for this were:

Processing of one word data.

During data analysis, spellings were corrected, and capitalisation resolved. No words were merged.

Responses to the one word survey

1. Talent Management
   1. Advantage 8%
   2. Future 8%
   3. Succession 5%
   4. Potential 4%
   5. Strength 3%
   6. Retention 3%
   7. Growth 3%
   8. Development 3%
   9. Planning 3%
   10. Competitive 2%

When you look through job adverts, you will notice a great deal of difference in the roles listed under “Talent Management”, these can range from training through to recruitment and “high flyer” schemes. Curiously in comparison, there is considerable alignment in the top terms used for this survey.

Summary Conclusions

There appears to be a focus on the future rather than the “here and now”, along with some bias towards specific populations, rather than the concept of “talent is in everyone”. From the terms used, talent management appears to be considered a strategic approach and advantage to a business, looking to the future in terms of people and positions.

Other words used included:

Ability, advantage, aspiration, aspirational, bullshit, capability, career, challenging, competitive, competitiveness, developing, development, diversity, drive, edge, empowerment, engagement, enhancement, essential, exceptional, fad, fit, focus, foresight, forward, future, grooming, growing, grown, growth, guidance, high-performance, home, identifying, improvement, inclusive, innovation, investment, maintenance, maximise, misunderstood, motivation, needs, nurture, nurturing, opportunity, optimisation, people, performance, pipeline, planning, positive, potential, power, progress, progression, progressive, proof, proofing, resources, retention, security, shaping, skills, strategic, strategy, strength, success, succession, sustainability, thinking, utilisation, value, vision, vital

What do you think?