A supply-chain approach to talent management

Abstract

Introduction Talent management is the process through which employers anticipate and meet their needs for human capital. It is about getting the right people with the right skills into the right jobs at the right time. It is a lot to get right, and few organizations do. The difficulty in getting it right is a problem for firms insofar as talent-management decisions shape firm competencies and success. It is a problem for workers, because these decisions impact their careers. And it is ultimately a problem for society, because these decisions, in aggregate, ultimately affect economic growth and social stability. If there is an upside to this problem, it is that we can easily identify its cause. The central new aspects of business are uncertainty and change, yet traditional workforce-planning models were based on predictability and stability, which allowed organizations to forecast demand with a relatively high degree of accuracy. The supply of talent was assumed to be under the organization’s control, given the prevalence of internal labor markets and single-firm careers. As the external environment became more difficult to forecast and traditional internal labor markets began to disintegrate, the inability of these strategic workforce planning systems to account for uncertainty in demand and disruptions in supply led many organizations to abandon them altogether.

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