Category: Succession Management

Employers Capitulate on Business Slowdown – The Turnaround is Coming

In our Q2 TalentWatch® research report (TalentWatch is Bersin & Associates business research on employment, hiring, talent readiness, and investment trends, available to research members) we see definite signs that business leaders in most industries have now lowered their expectations and essentially “capitulated” on the 2009 recession.  This means that companies have stopped looking ... Read more»

Talent Mobility: What it is and why organizations need it

Talent MobilityOne of the themes of our exciting new Succession Management research is what we call “transparent talent mobility.”  It’s an important new concept in talent management, and one which came to us after more than a year of research into various succession management programs.

Let me start with the underlying issue: today, and on into ... Read more»

Lessons from Yahoo: Enduring Organizations Manage Executive Succession

This week we witnessed another vivid lesson in the value of executive succession: Jerry Yang steps down as the CEO of Yahoo!. Yang replaced Terry Semel, who spent years trying to build Yahoo! into a media company, only to see it lose market share to the more innovative, technology savvy Google. Yang presided over an ... Read more»

Talent Management Challenges in the Federal Government

We have been doing a lot of research and work with the Federal Government in the area of talent management.  Let me share a few interesting findings.

The United States Federal government has more than 2,7 million employees, ranging in roles from secret service agents to financial analysts to IT specialists to scientists.   These people ... Read more»

On the Minds of HR and Learning Leaders

We recently completed our annual research conference and I had a wonderful opportuinty to meet and talk with 15 different HR and L&D executives in a special roundtable.   The theme of our research conference is The Business of Talent®, and as you will read, this theme comes through in almost every organization.  Talent ... Read more»

Are you an Enduring Organization?

As we continue to study best practices in the implementation of corporate learning and talent management, we find that high performing organizations fall into two categories:  those who endure and prosper over long periods of time (decades), and those who rapidly rise to prominence, then falter during a major business challenge, and often become acquired ... Read more»

Talent Management in Financial Services – Impact of the Slowdown

This week I had a call with five financial services clients to understand the impact of the economic slowdown on their learning, talent, and systems investments.  How are HR, talent strategies, and enterprise learning investments being affected by the credit crunch and slowdown in the US financial system? 

(The clients included companies in banking and ... Read more»

Wow. Performance Management Really Matters in Retail.

As we continue to study best-practices in talent management and talk with many organizations, we see more and more evidence that top-down goal alignment and transparency truly do drive business results. 

For example, we recently had an in-depth discussion with the Vice-President of HR at Bon-Ton Stores, a highly-successful mid-sized retailer which operates among the ... Read more»

MetLife’s Multi-Generational Workforce

I recently completed a meeting with 200 of the top HR executives at MetLife, one of the most successful and sustainable global insurance companies.  MetLife’s Vice-President of People, Deb Capolarello, is developing an integrated talent management strategy to help the organization integrate all its well-established HR processes into business solutions. 

One of the problems MetLife ... Read more»

The Death of the Performance Appraisal – Redefining Performance Management

Should we kill the performance appraisal process? 

Over the last few years as we have studied the market for performance management systems, we have talked with dozens of HR executives and managers about their performance management process.  In our discussions we find that organizations struggle mightily with the right way to craft the precise process ... Read more»

High Impact Talent Management: Top 22 High-Impact Processes

The Top 22 Business Processes which Drive Business Impact


In 2007 we conducted one of the largest-ever studies of corporate talent management:  we interviewed and surveyed more than 750 corporations to gain an understanding of their business problems, their talent challenges, and their levels of maturity and sophistication in 62 different talent management processes.

This ... Read more»

integrated talent management

What is Talent Management?

Talent Management” has become one of the most important buzzwords in Corporate HR and Training today.  In this article we will explain the history, principles, and processes of talent management and help readers understand this important area.

From Personnel to Strategic HR to Talent Management

To understand why Talent Management has become so important, we ... Read more»