New Talent Management Survey Findings on Spending and Talent Management Effectiveness

The New Talent Management Network recently released their 2nd Annual Talent Management Survey. The study has some great insights that are incredibly relevant in the current economic climate, and are definitely worth a look.
 
If you aren’t familiar with the New Talent Management Network, it’s a free network of more than 700 senior talent management professionals working to advance the field. The group’s focus is on research that benefits the talent management community, and networking and increasing the capabilities of TM professionals, raising the bar for this profession. You can learn more about the organization here.

Here are a couple of the report’s highlights:

• One of the key findings is that “amid deteriorating global economic conditions” 75% of surveyed organizations plan to increase or maintain spending on talent management in 2009. Not what the researchers expected, and probably not what many might expect in a time of cutbacks. That said, this is good news, as it means organizations have come to value talent management and understand how critical it is in a bad economy. Hopefully, this reflects a shift, where talent management is seen as an all-the-time priority for businesses of all sizes.
• Another key finding that isn’t so positive: HR and TM professionals are not delivering “acceptable results” to business leaders and executives. Clearly this is an issue for any organization – it is difficult to maintain or increase investment in talent management when executives don’t see the value of the investment. The report points out that this may be a matter of unrealistic executive expectations or a matter of simply not getting the job done, and that individual TM professionals need to address this in their own organization. A bright light in this: the study does indicate that the more integrated the different TM functions are, the higher levels of satisfaction are seen with the TM programs. Given the growth of talent management systems in the market and the sheer number of organizations beginning to deploy them, it’s fair to say that more and more organizations will be measuring and increasing their effectiveness!

You can check out the whole 17 page report. There are a few other areas discussed you may find interesting. So, after reading the report, the big question is what does this information actually mean to individual HR and TM professionals? I think it means that TM is viewed as important, but often there’s a struggle to see tangible, measurable value from these programs. Integrated talent management processes and systems can help, while managing expectations about what can actually be achieved.

I’d love to hear from you, the readers on this one. What do you think this means and what do HR professionals need to be doing more (or less of) to address this perceived ineffectiveness?