Recent research from HR consultancy RightCoutts, looking at the aspirations of laid off UK workers, hasn’t provided us with any surprises – employees are still looking for opportunities for career development, and companies are still searching for talent to attract and retain. However, it has highlighted the important role that career transition services can play in any organisation’s approach to talent management; Peter Horncastle, Head of Leadership Development looks at the issues.
Findings from the ‘Value of Outplacement’ survey highlights the important role that career transition services can play in any organisation’s approach to talent management.
The trick is not to treat outplacement as a single transactional HR process in its own right, but as an integral part of an overall strategy for moving talent in, on and out of the organisation in a way that suits the evolving needs of the business.
So how can an organisation’s approach to outplacement and career transition support its talent strategy? The experience of many of our clients would suggest that there are at least three important linkages to consider.
Firstly, our research confirms once again the importance of outplacement for a firm’s reputation management and its potential impact on the employer brand.
During any restructuring or downsizing initiative, managing perceptions of the organisation – both internally (in terms of the ‘survivors’ who remain) and externally (in terms of potential talent for the future) – is key.
In terms of the ability to erode a firm’s reputation, there is an important parallel between the displaced employee whose transition out of the organisation is badly managed and the once-loyal customer who defects to a competitor, telling several others about their negative service experience along the way.
Secondly, as many organisations experiment with a more relational (rather than transactional) approach to employment, outplaced employees can become a potential talent pool in their own right.
It is no coincidence that organisations who are considered leading edge in the so-called ‘war for talent’ have fundamentally re-evaluated their relationships with outplacement and recruitment suppliers in recent years.
No longer are suppliers looked upon as providers of simple transactional services for moving people in and out of the organisation. The opportunity now exists to use these and other networks to fuel the organisation’s talent pipeline. In the years ahead, we are likely to see an increasing appetite for re-hired (‘boomerang’) employees and the establishment of external talent pools brokered by independent third parties.
Finally, the Right research also highlights the importance of individualised consulting in the career transition process. Again, in terms of an organisation’s talent strategy, this should not come as a great surprise. In recent years there has been a growing recognition around the importance of personalising ‘the deal’ between employer and employee when it comes to the attraction, development and retention of talent.
Such an approach may manifest itself in different ways: flexible benefits, individual ‘at risk’ retention programmes and personal development accounts are all examples of good practice in this area. It seems a logical extension of the move away from ‘one size fits all’ approaches to talent management that the benefits of personalisation are extended to include career transition support as well.
Overall, our research on the value of outplacement provides further impetus for adopting an integrated approach to talent management. It also serves to remind us of the need for HR practitioners to adopt a marketing mindset when it comes to their talent strategy. Concepts such as brand, CRM and customer segmentation all have great relevance for those organisations seeking to make talent management a way of doing business.
