Sustainable Workforce Planning – It’s About More than Just the Green - Sustainability: business, life, environment

Much of today’s popular literature, respected research, and professional consulting advice agree that best-in-class talent management companies can generate as much as 7% greater revenue and profit performance over their less talent-focused peers. However, these same resources also report that 80% of business executives are under-committed or ineffective at talent management. This leaves our sustainability consulting with one basic question: how should today’s business leaders become talent champions and boost the sustainable performance of their organization?

"Company after company just puts a toe in the water on this. They very gingerly move incentives from one unit to the next. It should be a managed, corporate-level strategy, not just a one-off in a local unit." -Gerry Ledford, Ledford Consulting Network

Our sustainability consulting turns its attention to the Corporate Executive Board, where each quarter they offer guidance relevant to the pressing issues of the time. In a recent release, the board focused its insight on Becoming a Talent Champion. The Executive Guidance for 2011 directs business leaders to refocus on five talent activities, beyond traditional compensation structures.

• Identify and engage your high-potential staff based on traditional and non-traditional knowledge and skill sets.

• Link strategic business sustainability planning and talent planning.

• Spend less time on lower-value, day-to-day talent management activities.

• Create and hold green teams accountable for talent engagement and development.

• Enable your HR team beyond routine interactions to develop and manage sustainable talent.

Once a company identifies and attracts the right employee, building and motivating the organization becomes the real challenge. We have seen many companies live and die by the quality and effectiveness of their staff. Thus, the highly effective organizations of today are creating business sustainability cultures to create new and more relevant incentives.

Comments for Sustainable Workforce Planning – It’s About More than Just the Green

Thursday, April 5, 2012 by Lloyd Miller:: It seems you've hit it spot on. To take it a step further, the bigger or more entrenched a company is, the more heavily they lean on the academic approach. Lesser companys gravitate to the practical ways. Therefor, someone living in middle management at a large company is stuck in the much. In the beginning stages of any role out plan, practical will beat out academic only if the origionator has lean eyes for big picture.