TALENT MANAGEMENT SHOULD BE SEGMENTED AND INDIVIDUALIZED

The talent management processes and practices of most organizations adhere to a “standardization and equal treatment approach” that is oriented toward treating people who hold similar positions in the same way. Standardization is said to be the key to fairness, and fairness is said to be the key to good talent management. Sameness also leads to economies of scale. Treating everyone the same makes training, record keeping, and a host of other talent management practices less complex and less costly.

Certainly, sameness does represent one approach to fairness, but it is not the only approach or necessarily the best one. An alternative to sameness is to define fairness as treating individuals the way they need to be treated based on their needs, abilities, and performance and what is needed to make their organization effective. Based on what we know about the future of organizations, work, and workers it is clear that treating everyone the same is unlikely to be the best approach from either an organizational effectiveness point of view or an individual preference point of view. People differ, and organizations need to focus on how to take advantage of and accommodate these differences in light of their needs for performance.

The growing diversity of the workforce immediately makes the idea of similar or identical treatment being the best treatment for everyone null and void. What is good for a seventy-five-year-old is not likely to be as good for a twenty-five-year-old, even though they may be doing relatively similar work or working in the same function or unit. Similarly, what may be the best career model for an individual with a key organizational skill set may not be the best for an individual with a skill set that is not critical to an organization’s source of competitive advantage. The same is true for an individual with a competency that is scarce and in demand versus one who has a competency that is easily available in the labor market.

Standardization needs to be replaced by a reasonable approach to segmentation and individualization when it comes to how talent is managed. The challenge is to create approaches to compensation, job security, development, selection, and other talent management practices that are legally defensible and fit the diversity of the workforce and the rapidly changing business environment that dominates today’s world of work.

The operationalization of a segmentation approach can be facilitated by giving individuals greater choices so that they can create a work environment that fits their preferences. It also can be enabled through technology that makes possible administrative systems that allow individuals to make choices about when, where, how, and why they work.

The emphasis needs to be on reasonable individualization because without clear limits there is the danger that every employment deal in an organization will become a personal deal that is constantly changing. This could result in a level of complexity so great that it overwhelms any administrative capability that an organization can create and manage—even while taking advantage of the power of modern information technology.

There is no simple, generally applicable solution to the challenges that are created by the need to treat different segments of the workforce differently. But it certainly is much more important and possible to do it efficiently and effectively today than it was before the web-based talent management systems that currently exist were available to help companies administer their human resources (HR) programs.

It is increasingly important that organizations develop and implement segmented, individualized management practices in all areas concerned with how they manage talent. There are few organizations that should promise the same treatment to all employees when it comes to key talent management issues. Of course, to some degree organizations never have; executives have always been treated differently from other employees; hourly and salaried employees have always been treated differently. The reasons for this range from legal requirements to the difficulty and cost of implementing different practices for multiple groups of employees.

The difference today is that organizations have a greater need to adapt and expand their approaches to treating people differently than they did in the past when they treated employees the same under an umbrella of fairness and efficiency. They need to communicate that the traditional job-level-based approach is no longer effective; it cannot be made to fit a workforce that varies as much as the individuals in today’s workforce do—not to mention differences in when, where, and how they work. Companies need to replace the old approach with one that provides more choices and is aligned with the work to be done.