Supply Chain View from the Field

A number of great presentations from today’s SCRC meeting focused on how different organizations are thinking about managing their talent supply chain.  I helped to set the stage by applying Peter Capelli’s “Talent on Demand” model and thinking about the four key elements that drive talent management.  Many of these focus on utilizing common supply chain principles to the idea of “people as product”, and thinking of them in the say way!  For example, Capelli talks about “make” (internal development) versus “buy) (external hires), and the importance of evaluating the costs of this.  He also discusses the importance of building better talent forecasts through portfolio models on talent, improving the ROI on internal development through focused development projects, and developing a pipeline of talent based on modeling and challenging assignments.

These themes were developed further by Dan Stanton from CAT Logistics, who applied these very same concepts to CAT’s talent pipeline.  He also shared CAT’s university logistics talent recruitment strategy, which involves recruiting at different universities based on varying placement requirements.

Today, Rob Sweetland from BP shared insights on the extensive pipeline development and learning process for the PSCM organization.  He shared the “fishbowl” view that illustrates the path taken by individuals who move between different functions that lead to a career in procurement.  He also discussed the importance of creating challenging assignments and on-going development as a key in employee retention at BP PSCM.

Other insights by Jason Schenker from Prestige Economics provided guidance on the relative changes in the global economy and the impact on global labor markets.  Schenker declared “cautious optimism”  based on his insights, and believes 2013 will be a better year in terms of economic growth.

Finally, Chrystal Finney from Duke Energy shared some of the challenges that exist at Duke relative to their aging workforce, the proposed merger with Progress Energy, and other issues in the energy industry.  The move to a more centralized procurement approach will also increase the demand for category management approaches in the future.

Overall, a great set of insights with plenty of ideas for people to think about as they go about managing talent globally.

Are you interested in providing some feedback on talent management?  Please click on to our talent management survey and fill it out….we’ll provide a summary of the results in my next blog!