Integrated Talent Management

According to the ASTD-i4cp Talent Management Practices and Opportunities Study, integrated talent management is a relatively new practice that is expected to become increasingly emphasized in organizations over the next three years.

The vast majority of organizations have not had functioning integrated talent management programs for long. Less than 5 percent of the responding organizations had an integrated approach in place for more than a decade; while more than a quarter of the organization in the survey did not have an integrated approach at all. A majority (62 percent) of respondents indicated that their programs had been integrated for five years or fewer.

With regards to integrated talent management, experience appears to count, as there was a significant positive correlation between the length of time that an organization has had an integrated approach in place and reported success in managing talent (r=.33). Therefore, organizations that do not have an integrated approach in place as yet, or recently developed one, will need to rapidly proceed through the learning curve in order to effectively manage talent and compete with those who have considerable experience in integrated talent management systems.

Organizations are recognizing that there is considerable room for improvement if they want to manage their talent more effectively. Just a fifth of respondents said their organizations were using talent effectively, while comparatively, more than a fifth of respondents admitted that their companies were effective users of talent to only a small extent or not at all, and more than half reported effectiveness to a moderate extent.

Not only did the findings indicate that there was room for improvement in the future, but they also revealed that integrated talent management will become more necessary over time. More than 80% of the survey respondents predicted that their firm's emphasis on talent management would grow in the next three years.

These findings are compelling for the industry and have led ASTD and i4cp to partner for an in-depth study on integrated talent management, which will be released later in 2010.

For more information on talent management consider attending the Synchronizing Leadership Development at UPS with the Demands of Global Growth session at the ASTD 2010 International Conference and Exposition!