High Touch Talent at Prudential

Laura McNair, Associate Director, Frazer Jones

Laurence Barrett, Group Development & Resourcing Director at Prudential PLC joined us at our latest HR Director Circle event held in London on 26th June to deliver a speech on managing talent. Attended by senior HR professionals across a number of different industries, it provided a lively forum for debate about an increasingly important and complex area of the profession.

Laurence certainly had a challenge on his hands when he joined Prudential five years ago, not least of which was the scepticism internally around HR Consultants and their theories. Laurence's view is that development is an end game that may or may not work and most development work doesn't work very well! People are dropped into programmes because we think it will be good for them yet the typical response from those people is that they don't know why they are doing it. Laurence was keen to show that development is not something that is done to an individual, but something that the individual participates in. If the individual feels engaged in the process then this will lead to strong self-insight - they will then find a way to make it happen or simply leave! Organisations need to engage and focus with individuals with conversations that create meaning and purpose rather than using a sheep-dip and scatter-gun approach to development.

But is everyone worth the investment? We are not talking just cash here, but time. Some people are just too big a risk and organisations need to focus on the priorities. Talent management IS risk management but if organisations can get the assessment right they will be able to define and identify their top talent and will know what development is needed. Organisations also need to recognise the full picture - are the capabilities and aspirations of the individual in line with the needs of the organisation therefore making them worth the risk? There is no right answer to this!

And what about buy-in from senior employees? How do you persuade your leaders that talent is worth investing in? Laurence believes that participant commitment trumps senior sponsorship and that starting with your middle management is the way forward. If those people benefit from the development and speak positively about their experience then this will have a ripple effect across the organisation and change the way that people think about talent. At Prudential, these line managers are then trained to identify raw talent (i.e. their successors) thus creating a longer term pipeline and building a common language around talent with a clear purpose and clear methodologies. They become ambassadors for your talent programme.

So where does HR fit into this? The bottom line is that HR not only need to invest the time in talent, but must have the skills and inclination to do this. Organisations need to build HR capability in order to develop line capability. At Prudential, a large part of the success of the HR team is that their work is incredibly embedded in the business. And finally, you need patience and persistence when creating talent strategies (Prudential are currently 5 years into a 15 year strategy). According to Laurence, a 3 year talent strategy is not a talent strategy at all, it's a hiring strategy!