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ATD Blog

Book Giveaway: How Do You Protect Your Organization’s Most Valuable Resource?

Wednesday, August 27, 2014
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Congratulations, William Yeager! You’re the winner of the Aha Moments in Talent Management book giveaway! Please email your mailing address to Ann Parker at [email protected].

Most likely your organization has protocols to secure money—you make sure money gets into the bank, and you make sure it stays there. Appropriate policies and procedures also ensure money is being spent properly, and expenditures over a certain amount require approval from senior executives.

But do you have the same level of security protecting your talent?

CEOs tell me that people are their organization’s most valuable asset. Yet their people policies and procedures rarely reflect this declaration.

One reason for this disconnect is that money truly is an asset from an accounting perspective—it is something we own and can list on the asset side of our balance sheet. People, on the other hand, are not owned, and therefore don’t fit the accounting definition of an asset. But people are valuable resources.

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Think of the roles that are the lifeblood of your organization. I’m not talking about the top of the org chart, but about the engineers, product designers, service deliverers, or salespeople who truly add value for your customers. What is a top performer in one of those roles worth to your organization on an annual basis (not what do you pay them, but is their true value)? A quarter of a million dollars? A half million? A million or more?

Now what protocols and safeguards are in place to ensure that this valuable resource isn’t squandered? I’ll bet they are not nearly as rigorous as those for financial or technology security measures.

So what are the risks to your top talent? First, your employee could simply walk away (and perhaps walk right into the loving arms of one of your competitors). Ample research indicates that one’s immediate manager is the main reason she leaves an organization. Do your policies ensure that your top performers are being led by skilled managers who know how to engage and retain talent? Are your managers held accountable for retention and turnover?

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Underutilization is another risk. Research by Gallup consistently shows that fewer than 20 percent of Americans answer “yes” to the question, “Do you get to do what you do best at work every day?” What an incredible waste of talent and potential! More than 80 percent of us spend our work days doing things other than what we do best. People not only add more value when they do what they do best, but they are generally happier and more engaged. When we don’t deploy people optimally, we drive down production and engagement.

One of the other leading reasons that people leave organizations is lack of challenging work. Again, we could end up losing good people by not deploying them around their strengths. And again I ask: Do you have policies in place to ensure that your top performers are being managed in ways that play to their strengths?

The first sentence of my book, Aha Moments in Talent Management, is: “People are our most valuable asset.” It is spoken by the CEO of the book’s fictional company, Capital View. Like most CEOs, he truly means it when he says it. But like most organizations, a deeper dive reveals that the day-to-day talent practices are not consistent with this philosophy. Until we institute management policies that protect our talent with the same discipline and rigor that we safeguard our financial resources, we will not live up to the proclamation that people are our greatest asset, and we will not fully leverage the value of that asset.

So here’s the question: What is one thing your organization can do to ensure that your most talented employees are being managed in a way that maximizes engagement and reduces the risk of turnover?

For a chance to win a copy of Aha Moments in Talent Management, answer the above question in the comments section below. Your comment must be received by 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 5. If you prefer to email your response, please send it to [email protected]. After reviewing the comments and emails received, we will select and announce a winner in this post by Wednesday, September 10.

About the Author

Mark Allen is an educator, speaker, consultant, and author, specializing in talent management and corporate universities. Mark is a faculty member of Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, a senior associate with the Kiely Group, a senior faculty member of the Human Capital Institute, and regularly teaches for Vatel University and the American Management Association.

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