"Retaining the New Generation in Your Organization -- What's Next for Talent Management", Maria Rotundo-- Rotman School -- Lifelong Learning, May 30, 2003, 10:00 a.m.

Maria Rotundo, Assistant Professor of Human Resources and Organizational Behaviour, Rotman School of Management, U. of Toronto

These participant's notes were created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the IBM Advanced Business Institute ( http://www.ibm.com/abi).

Self-introduction

• Professor of HR and OB, Rotman School
• Have been at Rotman School for about 3 years, previously at Minnesota

Issue of retaining talent

• A short-lived concern?
• Will talk about some signs that this will be a tension for businesses for many years
• Are moving, so that we can deal with retension.
• Will talk about various HR programs that can deal with retention

Literature from Conference Board, Human Resources Development Canada, Association of Colleges and Universities

Anticipated talent shortage:  what are the signs?

• Retirements, large cohorts
• Will impact education:  average age in 1999, 44.3 years, and they will retire at 56.4 years
• Half of workforce will retire in 12 years
• Nursing, will retire in 18 to 20 yearsx

Do we have the bodies to replace them?

• They take with them experience and wisdom
• Talented bodies

Proportion of graduates in science and technology not increasing

Employment rate of 5.5%, and by 2010 expecting full employment

• Employees can demand what they want.

Brain drain:  some evidence in certain occupations, education and health care

• Raises red flags

Canada is doing a great job of education, but doesn't do anything to help when they leave

Hope?  A talented workforce to replace

• #1 in % of post-secondary education, followed by U.S. and New Zealand
• Youth performs #2 in reading, #5 in science and #6 in math.
• Brain gain:  68% population increase by educated immigrants
• Are we bringing the right age group with right set of skills?
• Echo generation
• Don't want people competing for the same jobs
• Need to be careful of skills sets and age

Positive signs on the Canadian way, quality of life

• Need social programs to develop work/life
• Sustainable, but cannot support bold new programs, e.g. health care costs will increase

Aren't dealing with future talent shortage

Four practices: 

• Hiring.
• Training and development
• Performance appraisal
• Rewards and benefits

Hiring

• Will be competing for the best and brightest.  How to hire?
• One of best predictors:  cognitive ability, best for complex jobs.
• Select for life-long learning potential, and fit.
• Fit means looking at personality:  single best predictor is conscientiousness.
• Want to select capable people that fit the culture, so that they thrive and stay.

Training and development:

• Canadian employers invest less than other countries:  7th in participation of adults 25 to 64.  We want this to improve
• Which skills?
  • Research is skills associated with higher wage.
  • State agency funding:  if can identify skills with greater wages, then bigger contribution to economy.
  • Answer:  need a localized approach.  Can't look at a single skill.
  • Government surveys employers to find out what jobs will be, and skill requirements
• Who are we graduating?
  • Who wants to be a nurse, or construction trades?  Decline in enrollments, falling.
  • Have to make those jobs more attract and appealing.
  • Need to partner, e.g. healthcare 6-month programs.
  • Could select them for ability, but doesn't mean that they have skills.
• Development:  training for future jobs
• Succession planning
  • Fulfilling people's role in the future
  • People want to phase into retirement:  could have them serve as mentors
• Mentors as a career function (opening doors for proteges, spanning networks) but also psycho-social (dealing with problems they'll face)
  • People need more than one mentor
• Coaching:  not manager as coach, but working one-on-one in areas that need improvement.
• Assessment techniques, e.g. Microsoft developer promoted into management, who doesn't have interpersonal skills.

Performance appraisal

• Companies need to determine their "ideal employees".
• Over past 30 to 40 years, what is performance?
  • Had thought of as tasks
  • Has evolved to citizenship behaviours:  how people do their jobs, and how they interact with others.
  • Counterproductive or negative behaviours -- particuarly in a service economy
• What is the relative value of the three above in each workplace.  Which matter most?
• Survey of 500 general managers, what they value most:
• Found three different groups of managers
  • A task-oriented manager cluster
  • A counterproductive cluster
  • Third:  task and not counterproductive
• Citizenship always valued, but not dominant.
• No significant clusters by industry, gender, education or age
• 17 different organizations participated, delivered results by them.
• Could have two managers in the same department with very different results
• Thus, could be sending different signals on what is valued by different people.

[Comment:  what about people you hired 10 for 15 years ago, in an environment of mergers and takeover, now have people who are high performers, but are counterproductive?]

[Comment:  another dimension of adaptability?  We can't classify someone as counterproductive, but some people are not keeping up]

Managers are sometimes cautious giving extreme scores:  on a 1 to 5 scale, noone gets a 1 or a 5

• The range between 2.5 and 3.5, but what message are you giving?
• Need to reward high performers, and recognize low performers
• [Comment:  disadvantage of low performers, then you have to deal with them.  You're better to send them over to another department!]
• Consider informal reviews, more often.
• If procedures are in place, need to train people to use them.
• [Comment:  crisis in management?  Managers that hide.]

[Question: dealing with contract workers?]

• Would like contractors to work consistent with mission and direction, but can you really expect that?

Rewards and benefits

• Lots of room for change, in rewards and benefits
• Look at how people are motivated.
• Employers spend a lot on benefits, but don't spend them on people that don't value them!
• Think about cohort after baby boomers:
  • Very busy parents who were downsized.
  • They barely knew their parents, no job security.
  • Conditional loyalty:  sure, I'll do work but what do I get out of it?
  • Need to modify work procedures:  fewer guarantees, they'll be less likely to take risks
• Work / life balance.
• Think age group / career stage:  time off, development of skills.
• Example in Denmark:  collective agreements with individual options, so that people can decide how they should be spent.
• Some take money, some buy time off work, older people work 80% without an impact on pensions.
• Issues of people turning over can be handled with job design
• e.g. people going for MBAs -- response to have 3-year projects, so that they can have a project done when the leave.

Interdependence between the parts is important

• Part is aligning HR practices to business strategies
• e.g. innovator at Microsoft:  often when people go to work, they don't know what to expect that day.
  • Compare to predictable.
• Still place value on HR practices