Is it Time to Change your Talent Strategy?
Strategic leaders understand the big picture.
The big picture means looking at the resources it takes to run your business. Raw materials. Intellectual property. Talent. Technology. AI. Your business works when you achieve balance across all of these.
Big firms made big headlines this year by proclaiming AI justifies a reduction in talent investment. Big savings would come from eliminating entry-level jobs that AI could potentially perform — savings created by shifting money away from human talent investment.
Whether that math holds for every organization is a separate question. We should assume these firms did their financial due diligence in making these decisions and balancing AI investment against human talent investment. But does that same business case work for all organizations? Likely not. Each organization needs to spend the time assessing what's working and where they can improve. For this post, we'll focus on talent — the people who operate your business.
Talent across your organization sits at different stages of career development, skill, and years left to work — and stays balanced when you're developing replacements at a pace that supports your succession needs.
What if we change?
If we consider one change in this strategy — eliminating investment in entry-level talent — here are points to consider:
If you don't grow your own talent pipeline, you're outsourcing it.
You're betting that other organizations or industries will train and develop the people you'll need to acquire later.
Whether that bet pays off depends on the type of role:
Highly transferable skills may move easily across firms or industries, making that bet more viable.
Specialized, highly-trained roles are less likely to be able to quickly accommodate this.
Is that the strategy your organization can rely on? Can you depend on future leaders and skilled workers being there when you need them?
What if you invest?
I recall hearing a business owner tell an audience that he preferred to train new workers on best practices for the job instead of untraining bad habits. He chooses to invest in growing talent from the entry level up — that's his business model. Does he still use new automation and techniques? Of course he does — and he trains his team to use them.
By conducting a situational assessment of your talent and team, we can develop a strategy that works with the other resources your organization needs. If that's a conversation worth having, reach out — we'd welcome the chance to talk it through.