Monday, May 11, 2009

ASTD releases research on Talent Management

The American Society for Training and Development released the results of a survey on talent management. Given that a majority of the membership represents only one aspect of the spectrum that they defined as talent management (development), it is interesting an interesting read.

ASTD recognized in the late 1990's that the International Society for Performance Improvement was onto something when they starting converting ASTD members to Gilbert's Behavioral Engineering Model. Many trainers intuitively realized that they were being called in to fix problems that were not caused by gaps in skill or knowledge. ISPI's take on Gilbert's model helped trainers start to identify causal factors through performance analysis that freed the training team from very frustrating and often fruitless work. (ASTD eventually adopted ISPI's CPT certification and now offer it to their own members.) Now it seems that ASTD is embarking on an even broader view of its members' potential roles in organizations. ASTD is researching a scope of work that traditionally belonged to organizational development teams.

The ASTD study defined talent management as,
"A holistic approach to optimizing human capital, which enables an organization to drive short- and long-term results by building culture, engagement, capability, and capacity through integrated talent acquisition, development, and deployment processes that are aligned to business goals."

If you are interested, read the entire article here. Why do you think ASTD is looking into the entire spectrum of talent managment?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Darin, thanks for sharing this article. I suspect there are several drivers for this expansive view from ASTD. One driver could be an attempt to influence a broader role for traditional training and development functions. Another is an opportunity to capitalize on the growth opportunities in this sphere of HR. My own thinking is that business partners, not training and development HR, are in the best position to design and execute talent management strategies -- particularily in the area of succession planning, where the HR BP knows the talent and the executives that should ultimately own the outcomes.

Unknown said...

Companies that engage in talent management are strategic and deliberate in how they source, attract, select, train, develop, retain, promote, and move employees through the organization, and also deployment of talent.