Talent Agendas Provide ‘Roadmap’ to Success

Talent agendas, strategic approaches to attracting, developing, and retraining top talent, are common cornerstones of organizational success. The question should not be whether or not to have one, but instead, is our talent agenda objective and intentional. An organization stands or falls on the resilience, creativity, and adaptability of its people. Making the most of their talents and developing those talents to the highest level just makes sense. 

Jim Scrivani, Ph.D., of Novartis, and Gina Seaton, Ph.D. of Shark Ninja, will explore talent agendas in the 2024 SIOP Leading Edge Consortium workshop Doing More With Less With Your Talent Agenda. Each has made talent agendas a significant factor in their personal and professional lives. Participants can expect a comprehensive overview that leaves them with a plan and the enthusiasm to achieve it.

Scrivani defines talent agendas as “ensuring you have the right people in the right place at the right time.” It is critical for organizations to have solid talent agendas in place in order to achieve business goals. “The talent agenda is the roadmap for ‘getting there.’ It operationalizes the what and the how.” 

A talent agenda that is thorough and well articulated, for example, ensures that everyone in an organization is aligned to a singular business strategy. “It impacts the company’s ability to innovate, compete, and adapt to market changes,” he said. Essentially, everyone pulls in the same direction. 

By contrast, although organizations without talent agendas may do well in some areas – remember the adage about stopped clocks being right twice a day – they fall behind the organizations that have robust talent agendas. 

Doing More With Less With Your Talent Agenda will help attendees evaluate, refine, and expand their organization’s talent agenda, which starts with knowing the “pockets” of talent in your organization.

“Before you can build a talent agenda, you need a good understanding of the current talent landscape and how that compares to the talent needs of the future state business,” Scrivani says. “Then, you start to form plans for how to close those gaps in a strategic way.” 

Like most aspects of leadership development, talent agendas are dynamic rather than static. They adapt to changes in staff, business, and clientele. 

“The focus of a talent agenda is on the full employee lifecycle, from talent attraction to performance management, to development, to succession, to culture,” Scrivani says.

Because talent agendas are fluid and keep changing, feedback mechanisms need to allow that change or improvement to continue. The quality of the change matters as well; it must match the business needs in a way that is refreshing and responsive, to both leaders and staff. 

Workshop attendees will hear lessons learned from highly experienced practitioners, get the chance to connect with colleagues with similar challenges, and get the opportunity to work through a current challenge they are facing.

Due to interest in these timely coaching and talent topics, LEC workshop registration is open to everyone, regardless of LEC registration. The workshops are limited to 50 registrants each. You can register for a workshop when you register for the LEC. If you have already registered for the LEC, you can go back and add a workshop by logging into your SIOP account. To register for a workshop only, call SIOP at 419-353-0032 during regular business hours.