Smart ‘talent management’ needs strategic leaders to drive it – rather than process-driven, competency-obsessed functionaries
Public service organisations must maximise the contribution of staff and volunteers. This requires knowledge of the talent already available to them – and in particular those of the people working for them. And this applies to private, third, social enterprise and public sector bodies alike.
The mantra of 'doing more for less' is beginning to ring hollow. More realistically, we shall have to do different things in very different ways with much less money.
There is a fundamental need for strategic and operational leaders and managers with the skills and capabilities to develop new strategic approaches as well as manage declining budgets, de-commission and re-design services. They need to be ready and able to challenge, foster innovation and be willing to cede control. And more often than not, changing attitudes of managers and professionals will be as critical, if not more so, than training new skills.
Skills and abilities like these are in frighteningly short supply across the public sector. And of course, the vast proportion of serving senior public service managers have only held their roles in times of expanding budgets – the total reverse of the prevailing economic context. This fact is itself a huge challenge for the public sector and much of the third sector.
Public services need to become much more entrepreneurial – taking calculated risks; making scarce resources go further; and innovating. This includes effective risk management, cost control and revenue maximisation as well as the ability to contract. Agencies have to explore how they can create this expertise within their organisations or access it from other sources in an affordable and effective manner. This has to be a priority for the public sector.
Increasingly managers and leaders across the public services will have to be able to secure outcomes without having direct control over provision. This requires expertise in areas such as influencing, networking, persuading, and collaborating as well in the more technical activities like performance management, commissioning, procuring, negotiating, contracting and client management. Managers need to be outward looking and relentlessly focused on outcomes.
Front line and the range of professional staff working across the public services will increasingly have to work with colleagues from other agencies and other professions. In many service areas, they will also have to respond to and be under the immediate direction of individual service users deploying personal budgets, direct payments and often their own money to purchase services. ‘Co-production’ requires a particular and very different set of relationships and partnerships between service user and the providing professional.
All of these new demands require training and development but also senior leaders to empower their colleagues and allow them the room, permission and scope to experiment – and to fail, and learn from those mistakes, rather than be penalised for them. Traditionally, when new tasks and new skills were required, organisations would recruit new personnel. At a time of major redundancy and reduced budgets, this will often be impractical and politically difficult as will be the use of consultants – although the enormous benefits of new ideas and skills that new hires and interims in particular can bring must not be underestimated.
Therefore, more than ever, it is essential to understand and map the talent and skills available within the current workforce, amongst volunteers and in partner agencies. Tragically, however, it’s my experience that very few public service organisations have bothered to assemble, retain and maintain comprehensive profiles of people’s skills, talent, experience, interests and ambitions. So much for the adage, ‘People are our greatest asset and investment’.
And yet, such profiles are powerful tools for strategic people development and talent management. Why there are few such data bases maintained? Why are chief executives not asking for them?
Public services agencies should share this information locally, so they can all be aware of the resources, skills and talent available, to avoid duplication and ensure local talent can be maximised for local benefit. It can then be used to inform recruitment and possibly to avoid redundancy; and allow agencies to 'sell consultancy' services or to second staff to each other. This is a natural extension of the 'Total Place' concept. If we can share buildings and other resources, why not people? And why stop with the public sector? This is a means of building third and community sector capacity.
Indeed with the growth of social enterprises, public sector trading companies and employee co-operatives this approach of pooled talent and skills becomes even more relevant.
Properly explained, this approach is inherently attractive to staff and unions. It is sensible to ensure that talent programmes are designed and developed with staff and unions, rather than in isolation. They can then be part of both a defensive programme to protect employment as well as contributors to transformational programmes.
The success of public services depends on the quality and the motivation of those engaged in their delivery – be they employees or volunteers (and the two can and should complement but not replace each other). This means that we should nurture, develop and value talent. Public service leaders have to put this at the top of their agenda, rather than ignore it all together or push it off to process-driven HR functionaries.
