Customer Segmentation Applied to Talent Management
The “Making Talent a Strategic Priority” article in The McKinsey Quarterly referred to applying customer segmentation principles to designing different talent management approaches for segments of the workforce. This starts with recognizing that it’s more than just “top talent” that needs this kind of attention:
“The impact of top talent on corporate performance hasn’t diminished, but what’s much clearer today-not least, as a result of the expansion of knowledge work-is that organizations can’t afford to neglect the contributions of other employees….Experience suggests that an exclusive focus on top players can damage the morale of the rest of the organization and, as a result, overall performance.”
The idea is to develop employee value propositions applying segmentation principles to the process, i.e., customer segmentation applied to employees! The problem so far is that most organizations only develop one value proposition as if all employees were the same:
“Ten years ago we stressed the importance of defining and communicating a powerful employee value proposition, which is senior management’s explanation of why a smart, energetic, and ambitious person might want to work for one company as opposed to another. While many organizations now use such a proposition, most have only one.”
These value proposition projects will require great collaboration between HR and department managers as they fulfill the tactics required to support company talent management strategies. The key is to clearly communicate why talent management supports other strategies thereby making it an extremely valuable process to standardize in the organization.
How many different segments of employees do you think you have? Can they be categorized/organized to reduce the amount of value propositions required? How do managers feel about working with HR to do this? What should be HR’s role in the process?
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