Moving From Talent Hoarding to Talent Acceleration

While the term ‘hoarding’ may evoke images of cluttered spaces, untidy apartments, and the teachings of Marie Kondo, it can apply to more than just messy homes. In the workplace, hoarding manifests when individual managers purposefully take actions to ensure their top talent remains within their team, just out of the spotlight. Unfortunately it is an all too common practice, and in many ways, understandably so.

We find ourselves in a business climate that's ripe for Talent Hoarding. Tightened staff budgets, ongoing hiring freezes, looming organisational restructures, and persistent economic uncertainty; the challenges facing managers to hit their targets and secure their own jobs are more daunting than ever. The last thing a stretched manager needs is the potential loss of productivity resulting from lending out their star performer to a multi-day training session, or even worse, losing them entirely to another role. It’s only natural for managers to cling tightly to powerhouse talent who make their jobs easier, clipping their wings to retain a winning formula.

The Impact of Talent Hoarding

Talent Hoarding is a very real problem. Research indicates the primary barrier to internal mobility is manager reluctance to let go of valuable talent from their teams. The 2022 Global Talent Trends Report sheds further light on this issue, revealing that employees are significantly more inclined to seek external job opportunities rather than exploring internal moves, thereby hindering the natural flow of talent within the organisation. With staff looking outside the company and managers holding onto key talent as if their lives depended on it, regrettable losses are an inevitable consequence. One clear indicator of this trend is the current heavy reliance on counteroffers, which has earned London its recently bestowed title of “The Counteroffer Capital". CIPD research revealed a staggering 58% of companies had resorted to offering generous counteroffers in the past 12 months to stop their prized talent from leaving for greener pastures. This purely reactive approach merely masks the more profound, unresolved issues that prompt employees to consider leaving in the first place.

According to research conducted by Hays, 81% of individuals who accept counteroffers still depart the business within 12 months anyway, as their desires for career growth and professional development remain unanswered. This alarming statistic underscores the pervasive issue within many companies: hoarded talent feel stagnant or trapped in their current roles. We might be able to buy them off for a short while, but the plaster won’t hold. Over time, these employees will again come to believe that their best chance of pivoting their careers lies outside the organisation.

Talent Hoarding has detrimental impacts on both employees and organisations. Among its most significant drawbacks is the stifling effect it has on innovation. Confining top talent to specific teams or departments impedes the free flow of ideas and best practices across the business. This lack of cross-pollination hampers innovation and agility, embedding siloed corporate cultures and making it challenging for organisations to respond effectively to evolving business demands.

Employee disengagement is another troubling consequence. When employees feel trapped in their current roles without opportunities for growth, job satisfaction plummets, resulting in disengagement and reduced productivity. Shocking statistics from Gallup have revealed that 59% of the workforce is Disengaged, with a further 18% cited as Actively Disengaged. Predictably, high attrition rates follow as talented individuals seek career advancement and development elsewhere.

The Drivers of Talent Hoarding

Talent hoarding is rooted in various factors, most of which are driven by individual and departmental self-interest. In an ideal scenario, individual managers would naturally prioritise the organisation's and talented team members' needs over personal interests.

Unfortunately, the current corporate landscape often lacks the incentives for managers to release their top talent, as the cons of doing so far outweigh the pros. In their quest to ensure team success and to meet the demands placed on them individually, managers may inadvertently engage in Talent Hoarding due to the following reasons:

Budget Constraints: By impeding the movement of talent, managers can sidestep the challenging task of recruiting and training new talent, or even running the risk they won't secure the budget or approval needed to hire a suitable replacement.

Inter-departmental politics: A lack of trust, collaboration, or an overdrive of competition between managers can fuel talent hoarding, leading to unproductive beliefs that staff that move internally are disloyal. This notion is particularly prevalent in companies that have grown through acquisition.

Fear of Losing a Competitive Edge: Moving star employees to other departments can feed fears of jeopardising team success and competitiveness, potentially impacting a manager's brand and bonus potential.

Performance Metrics: Managers are frequently incentivised and rewarded based on their ability to meet team objectives rather than their role as talent accelerators. This misalignment of incentives may result in managers repeatedly listing a team member as ‘ready in 1-3 years’ during succession planning discussions to keep their talent off the acquisition team's radar.

Talent Mobility

Talent Mobility is the polar opposite to Talent Hoarding. When you have an internally mobile business, talent is exposed and available to the entire company, wherever it may have been discovered. Orchestrated movements allow people to expand their skill sets exponentially, enhance their leadership and coaching abilities, and positively impact numerous teams by sharing best practices and cross-pollinating innovative solutions. This approach may seem like a far-off dream, but it's precisely what true talent mobility looks like. In this paradigm, identified top talent is encouraged and empowered to diversify their skill sets and gain valuable experience in various parts of the business, enabling pipelines of diverse talent to lift underneath them.

Talent Mobility is the gold dust of talent retention. If you are a highly talented individual who is being given opportunities to grow and develop, you are far less likely to seek new pastures. After all, if you’re already being allowed to explore all the grass, you don’t need to wonder if it’s greener elsewhere. This mobile working environment equips organisations with a highly adaptable workforce capable of swiftly responding to evolving business needs.

An impact that may be less obvious but equally important is the effect on a company's reputation. Organisations that actively promote and facilitate employees to diversify their skill sets and gain experience across various business areas earn a reputation for fostering career growth and a culture of continuous learning. True talent mobility becomes a magnet, attracting top talent to join an organisation, further bolstering its reputation, and ensuring its long-term success. In many ways, creating an organisation where Talent Mobility is a priority is like creating perpetual motion; the more you use your talent, the more talent you attract and create.

Breaking Free from Talent Hoarding

For HR professionals, winning the Talent Hoarding battle is crucial if we want to truly serve both the company and the employees, and our biggest weapon in this fight is simply visibility. If talent can’t be hidden, it can’t be hoarded. Technology and data solutions can revolutionise the way we manage and deploy our talent, unlocking their full potential and providing rounded careers that drive retention and fortify business competitiveness.

Transparency and Visibility: Talent Hoarding persists because organisations lack a comprehensive view of their talent pool. When HR lacks the ability to data mine staff skills, competency strengths, career aspirations, and potential flight risks, we can only be reactive in responding to problems these issues cause. Alternately, if we have access to this information before we’re dealing with a resignation or engagement issue, we can prevent the problems occurring to begin with.

Strategic Talent Deployment: Armed with the right tools, HR can facilitate the strategic deployment of talent to where it is most needed. Be it supporting underperforming teams, leading growth in new markets or steadying the ship after transformation. Talent Assessment software can enable the identification of skills gaps, succession planning opportunities, and cross-functional team-building possibilities. This essential people data makes it easier to match talent with created opportunities.

Career Development Agility: Company-wide assessment of staff behaviours and competencies allows HR to address areas for growth, and enables targeted access to training and development opportunities to build staff readiness for horizontal and vertical moves.

Improved Succession Planning: Possessing the right metrics to track staff progression enables stagnated talent to surface whilst recognising and rewarding managers in their roles as ‘Talent Launch Pads’. Cross-functionally exposed talent, therefore, creates deep reservoirs of talent agility to ensure smoother transitions when key leaders depart.

Encouraging a Collaborative Culture: Facilitating the exchange of budding talent breaks down departmental silos and promotes deeper business understanding and fortified networking. Talent mapping software enables a more fluid talent ecosystem that fosters innovation and adaptability, delivering a more collaborative organisational culture.

Your Action: Spearhead Transformation

Talent Hoarding is a detrimental practice that undermines growth and stifles organisational innovation. Talent Mobility is the key, supported by talent assessment software to provide clear visibility of the talent landscape and succession metrics to drive talent accelerator behaviours.  It's time to unshackle the chains of Talent Hoarding and utilise the full potential of your organisation's most valuable asset—its people.