Dive Brief:
- Recruiting and developing talented employees can be incredibly crucial to organizations' success, and senior leaders are increasingly aware of this, according to HR Magazine UK.
- PricewaterhouseCooper's Annual Global CEO Survey found that 61% of CEOs saw retention of skills and talent as a key issue over the next five years, with the ability to acquire and manage talent cited as the second most critical capability for tomorrow's CEO.
- The result of this growing preoccupation has been a multitude of interpretations of what this one small, initially fairly straight-forward-seeming word means—which has probably left a fair few HR professionals confused.
Dive Insight:
According to Wendy Hirsh, an independent researcher and professor at Kingston Business School and principal associate of the Institute of Employment Studies, there isn't necessarily a right and wrong way to define talent. The flip side following from that is arriving at a definition of talent that works for a specific company isn't easy—but it is crucial.
A talent definition might mean the entire workforce and reflect how important every single person's aptitude at their job is to the organization's success. Or, it could mean certain individuals in the company who will always have greater impact than the rest.
What should, however, be the same from employer to employer is the consistency with which the word is applied, and the care taken to ensure the way it's used suits the business' needs, according to author Jenny Roper.
