Straight Talking From Andrew Leigh of Maynard Leigh Associates

 Approximate reading time: 2.3 mins

Is engagement more a buzz word than reality? Is it turning into a bonanza for consultants wanting to conduct free employee surveys and then offering to sell you ways to rectify the awful results that the questionnaires produce?

 Approximate reading time: 2 minutes

The test of any talent management system is first whether it throws up the leaders that the organisation needs and secondly whether these succeed in their new role. By that test BP has some heart searching to do over its present talent management approach.

As Tony Hayward heads towards Siberia, presumably consoled by his payoff from BP, it is worth reflecting on how a clearly talented employee came such a cropper. Here was a high level performer whom BP had nurtured for many years and who desperately wanted to be chief executive. Yet when the crunch finally came he did not deliver.

In fact BP has been unfortunate in its recent choice of CEOs. The much vaunted Lord Browne, often declared a role model for others, left BP somewhat precipitously a few years back after being caught lying to a judge.

 Approximate reading time: 1.4 mins

Are you blind to talent? Heaven forbid that you should be, but it could just be happening.

Let’s start with some places where talent really comes and goes at a fast pace, the BRIC Markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

Feedback from these forcing grounds shows that many companies suffer from talent blindness. Their talent management process is often short-sighted and geared too much to the organisation and not enough to the individual.

If this trend was confined to the BRIC nations those responsible for managing talent elsewhere might feels assured. But a recent survey of global high potentials showed that over a third of them had left an organisation because the talent development programme did not meet their needs.

Approximate reading time: 2 mins

Are you a conference caller addict, or a conference call phobic? Not many people seem entirely neutral about the whole business of these collective conversations, whether over the phone, via Skype or some other meetings medium.

Many people suffer from conference call hell. They hate the experience yet their lives revolve around the experience. Around three out four of all office-based workers now suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous conference calls, and over half say they are not as effective as they should be.

More than half struggle to hear what others are saying and nearly a third complain that others take too long to make their point.

Approximate reading time: 2.5 mins