CRITICAL PATH – Finding, Developing and Retaining the Best Talent, by Jerry Houston

Over the past three months, we have been discussing a very important topic…CRITICAL PATH – Finding, Developing and Retaining the Best Talent.
We borrowed the term Critical Path from the Project Management world and applied it to Talent Management, a very critical path for your organization. We defined the path this way; “a critical path is a sequence of interdependent activities or tasks that must be finished before a project can be finished. It is the longest path from start to finish.”

Take a moment to think about how much management time is spent on this critical path.

How much time do you spend designing job descriptions, placing recruitment ads, reviewing resumes, screening candidates, assessing candidates skills, interviewing candidates (sometimes there are multiple interviews), selecting final candidates, checking references, background checks, verifications, offer letters, turn down letters to other interviewed candidates, orientation and onboarding, training, working through learning curve issues… and then, if it fails, starting all over again, while someone else covers the workload. And this scenario didn’t even get us to the level of longer-term development of the employee if they stay. Development should be continuous and focused on maximizing the skills and abilities of the employees who gain career enrichment while adding value to the success of the organization.

We have endeavored in our articles, during this last quarter, to provide you with a great deal of input about the selection, onboarding, retention and development of the talent for your organization (feel free to search for previous articles on our website www.hpisolutions.com and click on the Power Ideas tab). In this era of very tight employment, when it is not only challenging to recruit great talent but even more challenging to keep them, it is important that we remain vigilant in our pursuit of talent management. This, in our humble opinions, is the most important activity of management to ensure that your business or organization focus its attention on the power of people… the right people in the right roles, to assure your competitive edge, now and into the foreseeable future.