Finding right talent management formula

By Kwaak Je-yup

Keys to sound human resources management are found in surprisingly unglamorous and low-key solutions, says Julie Gebauer, managing director of Talents and Rewards at HR consulting firm Towers Watson.

Getting it right is, of course, not a simple matter, but Gebauer says the right talent management formula is potentially the most effective card in a manager’s hand, as people are the only assets exclusive to their employers.

“Access to most resources is pretty equal between (competing) companies today,” she says. “Talent is one of the few areas left that can bring them a core competitive edge and maintain the lead.”

The lessons she learned from her decades of experience can often be counterintuitive. Against the popular tendency to hire an expensive high-profile director-level employee to solve a company’s problems, Gebauer proposes a subtle, fine tuning process.

She cites her experience with a hospital about a decade ago to claim the bottom-level client-facing employees hold the keys to a successful business.

She recalls the particular client because it presented this counterintuitive outcome. The institution concerned had been suffering from a flagging level of customer satisfaction even with a solid team of physicians and nurses, but after a close inspection, she and her team realized janitors and other caretakers were the ones who needed attention.

Retraining them was a cost-effective way to improve the overall performance as they had more of a direct impact on the patients’ experience than the highly-trained experts had. She says the prescription worked well.

This does not mean that Gebauer discounts the basics altogether; she stresses the benefits of key principles like providing monetary incentives for performance, setting clear targets, fostering an open communication culture and increasing diversity.

“Employees want to be rewarded proportionally for their performance,” she says, pointing to the weakness of the Asian pay culture that rewards seniority, or length of one’s stay in the company. “This is the core advantage of a pay-for-performance system.”

There is a caveat, however: a stellar performance should be compensated appropriately when a collective goal is met, instead of encouraging cutthroat competition between individual employees, widely cited as the biggest drawback. Similarly, she also underscores collective target-setting among the directors — but only once every member can express their opinion.

“Everyone on the board needs to participate in the decision-making,” says Gebauer. “That is how they can stand behind their collective decision.”

She says that process can repeat itself all the way down to the bottom of the corporate ladder, enabling an inclusive decision-making process as well as facilitating working toward common goals.

Even for the sensitive subject of “the glass ceiling,” or workplace discrimination against women, Gebauer has an answer that is at once politically sensible and difficult to rebut.

“It is not about the difference in physical attributes but the diversity of thinking and backgrounds that matters to the company,” she says. “If one group is underrepresented in the decision-making process, the company is the one that loses a precious perspective.”