The market is desperate and even calls someone who "only" works at 100% talented.

Why do companies lose the battle for talent? Why are they able to attract them elsewhere? Because they do not work with them and do not know how to recognize them.

Talent is a buzzword for many companies. Every company knows that it should have its own talent program, but it often lacks a concept. There is a lot of talk about it in companies, but actually very few people know who or what it is.

What is talent? Can we recognize it?

It is a person who is measurably faster, more productive, and more successful in a particular area than others over a long term. Moreover, they are engaged, so they do not wait, they seek opportunities themselves, and most importantly, they enjoy it. Simply put, they achieve above-average results in a certain activity or field over the long term.

However, companies do not have a defined understanding of who talent is in their specific case. They often say that someone is a managerial talent. But talent in production looks different than talent in retail or talent in sales or talent in programming. Without specifying a specific position, we cannot define talent.

How should companies work with them to not lose them?

They should not support mediocrity, which is, by the way, a characteristic of Czech national culture. We experience this already in school, where we do not develop talented children, but place them among the average and prevent them from standing out. Because those who stand out pose a threat. They threaten, for example, their superior manager, who is afraid of them and prevents them from not only utilizing their talent but also from developing it.

On the other hand, HR departments want talent programs. However, HR cannot know how that specific talent should look. That needs to be defined by the manager who wants to attract such talent. And therein lies the rub. In most companies, the talent program thus becomes the “toy of HR”, which managers do not understand very well.

The difference between gift, talent, and a geek

We all are born with a predisposition to certain gifts. This is essentially the overall potential we have in a certain area. And in some areas, we simply have a gift for being better than others. Talent is the result of hard work on one's gift through education, upbringing, and daily training. A geek is merely someone who has knowledge.

The Czech Republic is full of gifted children, students, and people. Unfortunately, talent must be hard-earned. And for that, a gifted person must have space and, above all, support. By the way, often gifted children from poorer families fall behind, and the Czech Republic thus loses a lot of potential talents. And companies have not yet understood that they should provide grants and support to these children, as no post-1989 government has grasped that yet.

Unfortunately, companies rarely know how to deal with talent because they do not have a built space for talents in their corporate culture. Talent has its internal drive. And one can only maintain it by providing the opportunity to grow. In clan cultures, that is, in those that base themselves on everyone being the same, talent does not last. I even dare say that it is futile to create a talent program in these companies. Talents need a meritocratic corporate culture.

Show yourself

Business-oriented companies openly seek those who can help them achieve higher profitability or a larger market share. These are companies like Google.

While in meritocratic or innovative corporate cultures, talent gains more power and rises, in clan corporate culture, others stop understanding them, throw obstacles in their way, or accuse them of standing out from the team and going solo. On the other hand, it is essential to know that not every talent is great in interpersonal communication.

We always ask companies: "Why do you want talents? Why do you want a talent program? How does the talent's path look within the company?" We rarely receive answers. Companies lack a well-thought-out process for what to actually do with the talent they acquire. Therefore, an interesting KPI is the turnover of talents during the trial period and in the first year. And the second one is the speed of progression to a position.

How to seek and find talents

First, the company must establish what the profile of the person it is looking for is. What should they have talent for? Are we looking for talent in engineering or management? Or are we looking for talent in programming? Will we truly give them a chance to grow?

Talents are very sensitive to whether they will have interesting work and what kind of people they will be surrounded by. These are the pieces of information companies should communicate externally and should do so truthfully. Talents must know that the company is open to them. Moreover, companies must actively seek these people, for example, at conferences or schools. This group of people is quite limited but, on the other hand, rather visible.

Have top talent slipped away from you? The invisible hand of the market helps them grow

The invisible hand of the market is uncompromising. It lures them with better and more interesting projects. There are companies in the market that do not need talents to deliver their work excellently. And from them, these people leave disappointed. Where did it go wrong? The adaptation process may have been botched, or the company thought it could apply the talent, but because they have little experience, they find that in reality, they do not have interesting projects for them, even though there was a good intention at the outset.

Process-driven companies do not really need talents because standard performance is described by a process. Unfortunately, the market is still rather desperate, and thus, talent in companies often refers to people who simply work at a hundred percent. I would define talent in these companies as someone who works at 130 percent. So we return to who is talent.

It is an employee who has exceptional abilities in a certain area and has greater productivity than others.

Talent, we are losing you...

How can a company recognize it is losing its talent? That is managerial work. It requires true leadership, and primarily the person who recruited that individual is responsible for having regular conversations with them.

Unfortunately, many managers have mistaken regular 1:1 conversations for empowerment, meaning they have enabled their subordinates to approach them by themselves whenever they want or need. Fortunately, talents do approach their managers, but the manager should note how many times they have said no or if the talent stops coming.

The primary premise is that the talent has its internal drive, and as soon as they begin to lose it, something is clearly wrong.

How to retain talent and win

Companies must be transparent and state who is talent. They must spotlight them so they are visible. Internal PR must ensure that employees know that there are talents in the company and who they are. Otherwise, others will start looking at them strangely over time until they squeeze them out. They must also provide them with interesting projects, for which they have that talent, give them space to apply it, and not stifle them with assertions that things have always been done a certain way and new ways will not be introduced.

In short and clear terms: the company must pave the way for talents to be truly successful, to develop the business. Talents often want to participate in strategy; they want to push the company forward. These things simply excite them.