Comments on: Managing During an Economic Downturn Using a Talent Swapping Strategy

By: Using the Economic Downturn to Teach Kids About Saving

Using the Economic Downturn to Teach Kids About Saving — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:33:14 +0000

[...] Managing During an Economic Downturn Using a Talent Swapping … [...]

By: Talent Swapping – a Threat or an Opportunity?

Talent Swapping – a Threat or an Opportunity? — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:14:32 +0000

[...] “borrowed from the professional sports industry…In sports, winning is everything, and it is a common practice for team management to externally seek out a “superior” player in a key position to replace a struggling player. When the team finds an available star, they “SWAP” or replace their struggling player…When applied to the corporate world, a S.W.A.P. initiative proactively replaces poor performers in a key job only when an arguably/measurably better candidate has been identified and successfully recruited by the talent management function.”1 [...]

By: Teresa Castano

Teresa Castano — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:12:04 +0000

Now is the time to prepare for the future and take advantage of the higher unemployment rates and lower rotation to ensure a higher quality candidate pipeline and to identify and promote talent in our Organization. This article is completely aligned with what HR should be focused on today – becoming a strategic partner for the companies future.
As the article also points out, in an economic turdown, cost reduction and process efficiency is in every CEO/ Directors head. This also rules in the HR Director’s head. All projects that are HR undertakes must be aligned with that premise and return on investment must be proved even more thoroughly.

I just have thing to point out that caught my attention: The author says:
“For socialists and poor performers this strategy seems harsh, but for anyone who has ever played a competitive sport, it makes perfect sense”

Does he mean communists? There are many countries, with older democracies than in th USA, that have been governed by socialist goverments (France, Great Britain, Spain, etc.) and have had and have competitive economies and very positive economic results. Socialism is not in conflict with having an open market where companies can compete, and where employees are recognized, promoted, and rewarded according to their performance.

By: Richard Melrose

Richard Melrose — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:33:34 +0000

Dr. John,

You are right on!

As Peter Drucker put it: “Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.”

A 2006 survey found:
“Only 3% [of surveyed HR executives] felt that their companies take quick action to deal with poor performers. A third felt their managers let people “get away with murder.”
“… 36% of respondents felt that inaction in this key area undermines confidence in management, and 42% believe it erodes the morale of their best people.”

Management must always pay attention to the huge cost of poor (“contrast”) performers. For knowledge workers, performance one standard deviation (1σ) above the mean is nearly triple that of one standard deviation below the mean. For sales professionals the ±1σ performance gap is even wider.

There are powerful tools available to systematically select top performers and to build high-performance teams. Talented individuals like being assessed; the process itself conveys that the employer truly values top performers.

There’s never a bad time to upgrade the team and a downturn can certainly expand a proactive employer’s access to top talent.

By: Martin Snyder

Martin Snyder — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:26:17 +0000

This article, like so many, fails to consider whatsoever what may be the most important factor for the success or failure of a talent swap: team dynamics.

Typically the higher the impact the role, the more teamwork is involved in meeting goals. Teams are hard to build and easy to break. Team performance is not simply the sum of the individual performances of its members, it may be a highly complex pattern of related learning and behaviors that present real replacement challenges.

Improving your teams is a worthy goal regardless of talent market condidtions- just think carefully about the actual relatonships, balances, shared knowledge, etc. among your groups. Motivation has been shown to be highly impacted by peer response.

Likewise, when you fire people these days, the real risks are not that someone will “become disgruntled and sue the organization” because lawsuits are easy to handle and well-known quantities, while technology has given individuals vastly greater voices to shred your message and reputation in ways large and small that can’t be settled or bottled back up.

There are most certainly people on your payroll making a fraction of a % of your total budget, but who have whole % point impact on your outcomes. Be very careful about that, because who those folks are is not always obvious or expected, and esp. which teams they may be members or facilitators of.

Obviously the analysis of team dynamics is where most performance management systems fall down. I think we will see that changing is we go forward.