Those responsible for talent management need to take more risks, according to the director of talent and leadership development, Balfour Beatty Group. Richard Gartside told a recent London HR Connection event at the London School of Economics: “It’s about getting the business to take a chance with people and recognising that it won’t always come off.”

Speaking during the panel-led debate entitled ’Talent Acquisition and Management’, Gartside said there was “a real reluctance to take risks in the talent arena”.

“The person leading Balfour Beatty in the future will not speak only English and will not be a 59-year-old male,” he said.

Gartside explained that because the company was changing so fast, for example, by increasingly looking overseas for its expansion, traditional succession planning “where finding a successor to your position was seen as a badge of performance” no longer worked.

The management of talent also involves other challenges, said Gartside. These were:

• people don’t want to be mobile when the company needs them to be mobile, ie. when they are experienced
• managers are reluctant to give up their own talented people without getting someone as good or better in return
• talent management lends itself to “a non-target regime” making it difficult to get it recognised as a key aspect of a manager’s role
• referring to Balfour Beatty a decentralised company structure meant that moving people around the company was often driven by the needs of local customers rather than the strategic needs of the company
• when business conditions are tough, talent management is often the first area to get cut. However, this is precisely the time when it is most needed.

Kathryn Wainwright, chief executive of The Talent Consultancy, highlighted key “success factors” she believed have played a crucial role in the past five years, where talent management has successfully supported business performance and business strategy. These factors were:

• CEO is a supporter of the talent management agenda
• a strong partnership between a commercially focused HR and the business
• long-term planning
• not just recruiting your ’A-list players’ but retaining them too
• making people accountable for their actions
• commonality of language within the organisation so that everyone understands one another for example, ’A, B and C players’.

Because the company was changing so fast – for example, by increasingly looking overseas for its expansion – traditional succession planning where finding a successor to your position was seen as a badge of performance no longer worked

RICHARD GARTSIDE, BALFOUR BEATTY

Denise Walker, founder and owner of Absolutely Business, emphasised the importance of employers’ understanding and targeting the audience of talent they wished to attract. She suggested one way was to build links between their organisation and organisations that will enhance their brand, such as particular universities and trade associations. She said: “These organisations can be your pipeline of future talent.”

The HR London Connection event was held in conjunction with the LSE. Recruiter editor DeeDee Doke was also a panellist.