Lately I have been having discussions with clients about talent scarcity. One of my key points when talking about the Service Profit Chain is that recruitment is a crucial step in the dream team process. If you don’t have people with the right attitude, then it’s uphill from the word go.
But then I sometimes get pushback – we can’t find them, they say. There is nobody out there; we search and search and they don’t surface.
I don’t believe them.
Yes I believe them when they say that the talent they are looking for does not surface – but what I don’t believe is that it is not out there.
Obviously, the amount of talents out there follows a normal distribution curve more or less. So there are more people in the ordinary talent group than there are in the fantastic talent group. In that sense, there is some scarcity. But if I take a calliper and draw a circle of, say, 50km round your business, are you going to tell me that within that circle, there are not the people we need?
Of course there are – that is not the problem. The problem is for whatever reason they are not interested in working for you at the moment.
Why not?
If you are paying market related wages, it is not a question of pay. It is probably a question of reputation. Because the fact is that talented individuals want to work for and with other talented individuals.
The worst thing we can do to our most talented individuals is to ask them to work alongside an idiot – it takes away their job content – it makes their workday meaningless.
So if we want to run a service business that delivers extraordinary service experiences, then we need to attract extraordinary people to deliver that.
If we are not attracting the best talent, we need to start thinking strategically about how do we become the employer of choice in our region in the future?
Strategic HR is smart marketing – wonderful employees attract loyal customers that generate raving online revues.
Is HR part of your future strategy task force?