6 Signs You Might Be A Talent Hoarder

Are you a talent hoarder? You might be if you’re doing any of the following:

  1. Keeping your top performers in their current role
  2. Not providing career planning or development
  3. Not having a written succession plan for each of your team members
  4. Can’t remember the last time you initiated a conversation about career growth with your direct report
  5. Tried keeping a valued employee who has given notice via sweetening the pot by extending a counter-offer, when you know in your heart it’s time for them to move on
  6. Forgoing training opportunities for your team because they’re too busy to attend

According to a study by Aberdeen, talent hoarding is a growing issue and is an impediment for a lot of employers who need to create a mobile workforce.  50% of managers admit to keeping the best employees in their current roles.  Developing a talent succession program is the best remedy for hoarding, but most companies aren’t taking the right steps.

40% of organizations say they rarely or never provide career planning and development

85% of organization say they fail to demonstrate key behaviors linked to effective talent agility.

Why should you care?

Retention Suffers

  • 45% of employees who changed companies in 2014 and 2015 said they left because they didn’t have advancement opportunities.

Performance declines

  • High performance companies are twice as likely to prioritize talent movement, where as low performance companies are 2.5 times more likely to say talent mobility doesn’t matter.

Here’s the irony of releasing yourself from hoarding talent: when you let go, you get more talent. Why? Because you’ll gain a reputation of being a talent cultivator and you’ll attract the top talent. The best and the brightest will want to work for you, and you’ll not have to worry about what to do when your star player leaves for a new opportunity because you’ll already have a plan for bringing in or promoting additional talent. This becomes a self-sustaining practice – the more you help others grow, the more you attract other talented people.