Remember when our department was called “personnel”? Then all of a sudden, management teams made the decision that personnel would be called “human resources”. We got new business cards. Did our job change? Nope.
For the past few years, there’s been speculation that the term human resources is passé. I went to a seminar last week that made me wonder if that just might be true. The seminar was on Talent Management and, according to the presenter, it included:
- Analysis, sourcing and selection of the right people (i.e. talent acquisition)
- Training people to do their job (which includes on-boarding)
- Managing staff performance (as in a performance management process)
- Ensuring equitable compensation (i.e. wage and benefits administration)
- Rewards and recognition of talent (i.e. incentives and perquisites)
- Retention of top talent (including training, career development, career paths, etc.)
- Assessment of current and future staff (i.e. replacement and succession planning)
- Ensuring that staff are safe and healthy in the workplace (risk management)
Well, excuse me if I’m mistaken, but doesn’t that describe HR?? Before this workshop, I never thought of talent management as the “New HR”. I thought of talent management as well, recruiting, staffing, on-boarding, retention …that kind of stuff.
It was interesting to hear much of what HR is responsible for lumped into this big term called “talent management”. Does everything we do revolve around managing talent? There’s an argument to be made that most of our time is spent getting, training, paying, recognizing or keeping talent.
The term Talent Management has been around for a while now. But I doubt two people out of a hundred could agree on exactly what it encompasses. Is it time to retire “human resources”? Have we become “talent managers”? Love to hear your thoughts on this one . . .
Wally Bock says
I confess that I really have a problem with the term “Talent Management.” I know it’s the in thing. I know that lots of people I respect, admire and usually agree with use it, some of them in the titles of their blogs.
But you don’t manage talent any more than you manage knowledge. Both come encased in people. Both are un-measureable and, therefore, unmanageable.
TomSchulte says
Very good perspective! The term HR or Human Resources is fine with me. But on the other hand, business consultants need to keep busy; so perhaps it might be time to cycle on to the next moniker-du jour. Perhaps “Talent Leadership?” No, wait a minute… saying “I just got in trouble with TL” doesn’t have the same as “Man, I have an HR issue.”
James Irvine says
I always understood talent management to mean focusing on those few ‘special’ people in the top ten percent of employees who presumably had ‘talent’. Is this true. And does that mean the rest of us don’t have ‘talent’?
James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore
hr bartender says
I’ve always struggled with the definition of talent. As James mentions, many people define it as the top 10%…but doesn’t every employee have talent? Even if someone isn’t a star performer at Company X, that doesn’t mean they don’t have talent and wouldn’t be a star at Company Y.
Thanks to everyone for the terrific comments to this post!
HR Good_Witch says
Wow – HR folk sure spend an awful lot of energy trying to legitimize what we do – don’t you think? Frankly, makes my skin crawl. What – if we have a new label, we will be more relevant, more important, more effective? If ever there was a profession with a perpetual inferiority complex, it is ours.
“Human Resources” is just fine, thank you very much. What’s to gain by moving to a new buzz word? It will just confuse people and we aren’t fooling anyone. Of course practices evolve in HR… they do in everyfield. We just aren’t that special.