Executive Summary

Getting talent right is getting business right. Aberdeen's Human Capital Management (HCM) research has continually shown that businesses must hire, retain, and deploy the right talent to meet business challenges, grow the organization and keep customers happy. This study of nearly 300 organizations, conducted in November and December 2011, looks at the key strategies, technologies, and capabilities deployed by Best-in-Class HR and talent management practitioners, and the positive impact of those activities on business performance.

Best-in-Class Performance
Aberdeen used the following three key performance criteria to distinguish Best-in-Class companies for Human Capital Management:

• 81% of employees rated themselves as “highly engaged” in their most recent engagement survey


• 71% of key positions have a ready and willing successor identified


• 13% year-over-year improvement in hiring manager satisfaction

Competitive Maturity Assessment
Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance shared several common characteristics, including:

• Knowing how talent impacts the business by understanding which roles are critical to business growth and performance;
• Holding the business accountable for talent management activities as part of everyday business; and
• Providing the right data to all stakeholders to understand, measure, and monitor the effect of talent decisions on the business.

Required Actions
In addition to the specific recommendations in Chapter Three of this report, to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must:

• Understand how the business measures success, how the definition of success is changing, and be able to track and communicate performance on the impact of HCM efforts in the business language;
• Automate, integrate and share HCM data with the business and with managers to empower better decision making; and
• Create differentiated hiring, retention and development plans for critical talent and critical roles to better manage talent risk and support organizational growth.