Is your organization losing the new war for expert talent?

The demand for technical experts, irrespective of their subject matter focus, has never been higher. Demand has been accelerated by the myriad of complex problems and opportunities which almost every organization – whether private or public – faces today. If your organization is typical, its future success depends increasingly on the quality and capability of the technical experts it can attract, develop, and retain.

Furthermore, whether your organization serves the community or customers, the drive to find efficiencies and create new value is unrelenting. Innovation is no longer a ‘nice to have’. In most organizations, this innovation is driven by the potential seen through the deep expertise and knowledge of your technical experts.

Beyond specialists in science and technology, experts are everywhere in most medium to large organizations: departments such as legal, finance, risk, customer service and sales professionals, as well as education, and the social sciences.

But, according to our research, most organizations have failed to appreciate the mission-critical changing importance of technical experts to their success. Many organizations have a one-size-fits-all setting for generalists and experts alike when it comes to critical employee life cycle policies and processes – recruitment, onboarding, talent development, remuneration, career pathing, and even the way in which expert teams are led.

The failure of “one size fits all” talent strategies

Yet the data is clear: a “one size fits all” strategy is disastrous for attracting, developing, and retaining top technical experts. It is disastrous when it comes to organizations leveraging full value from their experts. It is fatal when it comes to the organization delivering on its innovation agenda.

Organizations who are missing the boat when it comes to creating the optimum environment for technical experts to create the most value, are afflicted by a range of problems. Typical are:

• Finding it more difficult and expensive to attract talented technical experts

• Finding it more difficult and expensive to retain talented technical experts

• Struggling to engage and motivate our experts to achieve their full value-creating potential

• Facing a looming brain drain

• Struggling to ideate and execute an innovative agenda

And yet these organizations are:

• Increasingly dependent on the contributions of technical experts

• Still running a talent process that focuses on people leadership stars to the exclusion of technical stars

Instead of boasting a technical expert population that drives organizational success, identifies the solutions that achieve strategic targets, and creates value-creating points of differentiation for the organization, these organizations are challenged by their best experts leaving, and an increasing difficulty in bringing in new talent.

Organizational Expertship is the answer

Deploying Organizational Expertship provides organizations the opportunity to make the changes that lead to the optimum workforce practices, policies, and strategies to attract and retain the best experts and develop them to their full potential.

The sooner your organization acts, the sooner it will be able to secure and fully leverage the expertise critical to its future.

In a recently published whitepaper, available for download below, we explore the arguments and proofs to enable leaders and organizational development professionals to design a cogent, undeniable business case to turn around your expert brain drain, and to be an employer of choice for technical experts.