Dan Hilbert

By Dan Hilbert

It’s one thing for business leaders to extol the value of employees as “Our most valuable asset.” Some companies make pains taking efforts to be considered a great place to work. Ask any CEO offline just how important talent is to success and you will here, “Essential!”

Many businesses literally succeed or fail solely on their ability to recruit, retain and engage their talent. Professional sports teams are one example. The average salary in baseball exceeds $4 million annually. Is talent critical? Are talent scouts valuable?

Pat Kirwin is one of the most respected talent analysts in the National Football League, formerly the General Manager in charge of talent for the NY Jets football team. The following is from a Kirwin interview yesterday. The following are real-world, best in class talent acquisition and retention practices for businesses that depend on talent. Actually, isn’t that last sentence an oxymoron? Don’t all organizations depend on talent. I guess I should have said, “When the success of companies is publicly announced and traced to the acquisition, retention and engagement of talent.”

“Take any position and give a grade to each player on the roster who can play that position. This grade takes into account what the player did last year, the players age and injury history, cost vs production analysis, and how the player looks in the OTA’s (optional, non-mandatory team activities). Maybe a veteran hit the proverbial wall with age. Maybe the young player who should have taken a step forward took two backwards. Maybe everyone stood pat, but when compared to what teams in your division did to exploit the position match-up wise, standing pat isn’t good enough.
Regardless, a GM takes that grade and looks at all options either on the open market or available for trade. And if free agent x grades out better, does his cost match what you believe he would give you on the field? If it does, would bringing him in hinder the development of a younger player. For example, if a veteran who would come at a cheap price could only give you slightly better production than an inexperienced youngster, is it worthwhile, does making that move really make you better in the long run? Is it worth keeping a veteran whose production could be replaced at a cheaper price or whose production doesn’t match his price? If the player would definitely upgrade the position and start, are his contract demands viable when taking your budget, his “shelf life”, and future contracts you need to get done into consideration?”
For most in HR, this is a scary domain. Except for the high performers and solid team players, this is a scary scenario for nearly all employees at organizations. What about fairness? Ultimately this world is extremely fair. It’s all based on performance and revenue. It’s probably not very nice. Imagine this type data above being published on all employees of publically traded and government organizations. For us Baby Boomers, this could be quite intersting, “Is it worth keeping a veteran whose production could be replaced at a cheaper price or whose production doesn’t match his price?”

CEOs of large publicly traded companies already live in this world. The average tenure of a CEO in public companies dropped to under 3 years.

I don’t know all the answers to the issues being presented in this article. From my lifetime, I do know that competition drives changes I deemed impossible years past. I do believe it’s essential that businesses get their hands on valuable Human Capital data metrics. The other side is pretty Draconian.

The NFL often carries a lot of glitz, but can you imagine being the director of talent management when the front page of the Wall Street Journal business section reads, “Galaxian Enterprise stock dropped 9% yesterday due to an unexpected plunge in talent acquisition, retention and Human Capital performance metrics. Analysts question if the Talent leadership and team has lost its direction and its competitive advantages. Loss of performance by Talent leadership is now negatively impacting core business performance and shareholder value.”

Before markets drive brutal solutions, I highly encourage HR to take the lead in business critical metrics related to Human Capital. HR has compassion. It’s totally up to HR to ensure compassion is built into strategic Human Capital metrics, and our workforce of the near future.