In the current economic climate and with talent shortages in some areas, how important is effective human capital management in ensuring companies are able to attract and retain top talent?
I think next generation competitive advantage will be driven not by ‘what’ an organisation does but by ‘how’ it does it and that means its about people and culture. If we take it as given that organisations should have great products and/or services by default their differentiator will be ‘how’ the organisation behaves and ‘how’ its culture differentiates them from the competition. Although I don’t particularly like the term ‘human capital management’ it is a key driver of success and growth and organisations that understand how to attract, retain and develop talent will be the ones we admire in the future. Organisations should concentrate on building ‘amazing places to work’ so their talented ones choose to stay and the talent they want choose to join!
How significant are effective onboarding strategies for employers here? What should these look to include?
I don’t know which term I dislike more, ‘human capital’ or ‘Onboarding’. Smacks of passengers getting on to an airplane but organisations don’t want passengers they want a talent filled culture. They want active and willing contributors, entrepreneurs and leaders for the future. The passengers are what I call ‘Expendables’. They are employees who will never actively contribute to the vision your organisation is aiming for and in fact most times are actively counterproductive. The opposite end of the scale is the employee that I call the ‘Maverick Ambassador’. These are the people who absolutely LOVE their organisation. They have made a choice to think and act differently in order to contribute to its success and in turn their own. In HR terms these are your advocates and that means organisations need to start building that advocacy right from the start. However, the start for me is way before they start. The emotional connection to organisations required for this takes time so the earlier organisations start to build the required relationship the better.