Talent Mismanagement?

Well, well that was quite a 24 hours in the British football transfer Market.

This past week the Premier League in England had its January transfer window come to a close,In amongst all this were two transfers that caught the attention for their combined value being in the region of £85 million. There was the £50M sale of Fernando ‘El Nino’ Torres to Chelsea and Liverpool replacing him with Andy ‘El Geordie Ponytail’ Carroll at a cool £35 million.

Putting aside the Carroll transfer for one moment, I was fascinated about what sort of insight the Torres deal gave to the ethos of Chelsea and how these seemed to run counter to their previous communications that they wanted to invest in youth development.
What I imagine the initial aim was to produce individuals of the calibre of La Masia (as described in previous posts on this blog) but it does not seem to have been the case.

Approaching the matter from a HR Talent Management perspective, what can we learn from what occurred?

1. Have a clear assessment of potential star performers and how they met your requirements
If you are going to implement a talent management process, you need to have a clear idea of the competencies required moving forward and any skills gap you can envisage. In some ways sports organisations are very sensitive to rapid change in this regard – Jonah Lomu’s career in Rugby Union is testament to how fragile some careers can be.

The sad fate that awaits all former Rugby players - they are magiced in to chairs when they hang up their boots! Image by Velvet Android via Flickr

However there is some room for manoeuvre. Outflows from the organisation can be identified . Using retirees as an example, we all have prospective ones on our books that are only more likely to be allowed more time in roles given the trend current legislation (and the longer we are all living) but that is not to say you cannot prepare for them leaving. Likewise, footballers do well to last beyond their late thirties, meaning you can identify those areas that might prove problematic and when they might start being an issue.

Didier Drogba at 28 is not an issue – Drogba four or five years older? Might be time to start to start drafting a succession plan, no? Examine the skills and experience that this individual brought to a role and then see how your culture can foster the development of this.

2 . Accept when priorities compromise your values - but admit it
What is interesting is Chelsea made a point of letting a collection of experienced employees with a record of previous seasons of success (Ballack, Carvalho, Shevchenko – ok I am pushing it with that last example!) stating they were going to rely on their youth set up to provide squad support over the coming season; with Daniel Sturridge, Gael Kakuta and Josh McEachran were held up as being standard bearers for this policy moving forward.

Following the latest transfer window the first two have been loaned out to other clubs to gain experience, with McEachran looking as though he might be given a chance in coming months. The last instance aside, what does it say about the value the club place on these employees ability that they are not willing to let them fill positions that are vacant? And, more pointedly, does it suggest that they need to have a rethink of their talent pipelines?

If the problem is identifying the talent at source (i.e. at academies etc) then examine this and how this can be addressed. Would most organisations accept under performing staff coming through their graduate recruitment programme? Unlikely – they would address the sources or nature of the programme to see why they were not being equipped with the necessary competencies and how this could be rectified.

If the issue is that you do not think the policy will generate a return soon enough (i.e. youth team players of enough ability for sustained success) then react, as Chelsea did, by making changes – but don’t suggest that there are not issues that need to be addressed in how you manage your recruitment and selection. It sends confusing messages to those staff you attracted under the previous policy - ask Sturridge whether he knows where he stands and how it has affected his motivation.

It is not something unique to football clubs, or sports for that matter. Shawn Murphy talks on the matter quite eloquently in this blog post - imbedding culture and accepted practices (expecations, performance management etc) starts from your induction and on boarding. Hell some might even say it starts when you advertise to prospective recruits!

Finding it all a bit dispiriting? Don’t worry, I am sure the individuals concerned in this post received in one weeks worth of salary more than most of us might see in a life time, so no danger of being below the poverty line yet. Not sure about what sort of state it has left their long term career goals and development mind.

Still down? Well, there is always the 6 Nations…

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Ready ... Steady ... Resign!

I received a letter from Hays Recruitment trying to push some prospective Admin/PA candidates on to me for future reference. I would normally bin circulars like this, until I saw the information they included in there about resignations in the month of September.



According to their source, Resource on Demand, the third week of September is the busiest time for resignations to occur with a whopping 37% of all of the years total in the UK (yes, 37%!!!) happening during this week. A further 24% of the year’s resignations take place in February after people start coming back from Christmas leave.


I was a little worried by the name of the firm as it conjured images of conversations along the lines of “Yeah is that Resource on Demand? Yeah I need some stats to prove my point ASAP – what you got?”. That might be a cynic talking but why not check their site and judge it for yourself? I think Hays suggestion in their letter of it taking two months (including notice) for people to find roles was a little optimistic – I would always veer nearer three months and maybe a couple more weeks on top in this climate – but it is aimed at the benefit of their marketing, so understandable.


I have always believed in the often mentioned two post annual leave peaks just after the Summer and then the new year giving a shot in the arm to recruitment, though there does seem to be a large amount of it all occurring at these two points if this data is to be relied upon – again, I stress I have no reason to think it is not (ROD and Hays please don’t sue me - I’m just writing a blog post after a hopeful fishing letter from Hays. What does that tell you? I’m not a threat!).

Image via Wikipedia

This man is acutely aware of the dangers of employment markets affected by holiday seasons. By man, I mean the guy on the right with the beard. The one on the left aint sweating any of that yet.

But assuming it is correct, what can this tell this about the current recruitment market we are in? Furthermore, is it also an insight as to the value of annual leave and the need for staff to take their full allowance?


Examining the recruitment market in the first instance, if we accept the stats from ROD we should be experiencing a slight upturn over the course of the last two weeks and the coming two or three with organisations looking to start filling the gaps, counter offers being thrashed out and people in general moving around. This sounds great but would be of real value if we were able to get some benchmarking data for this time last year… or in 2008 … or maybe even in 2006/2007 when the current markets graduate intake were enrolling at university maybe? I could go on but you get the picture.


I think the real kicker if we accept this data is what it tells us about the value of having a period of quiet reflection to look at yourself, your professional life and what you want from it – in short being sure to take your annual leave entitlement. Seems as though over 60% of us only realise what we want to do for our next career move or what we want more of from our 35-40 hours at work a week once we have been forced to take a break longer than a longer weekend from our place of work.


So next time your think your boss is giving you a hard time and you are not sure why you are doing what you are doing each day, perhaps subconsciously you are telling yourself you need a rest from the daily grind to think things through.

And what have you got to lose? Seems like more than half of us are going through it at the same time – we just leave it to people like ROD to talk about it for us!