On November 17, more than 50 participants joined the first event of the Talent Management Institute, which was hosted together with the chair organisation leadership et société at ESCP Europe Paris from the Société Générale. Under the headline: “Talent Management – une seule approche?“, Maral Muratbekova, Paris campus representative of the TMI and Associate Professor in the management department, together with four company representatives of SG, Bouygues Construction, Mazars and BPI group discussed the peculiarities of managing talent in France in their different companies.
Hélène Crinquant, Head of Talent management department of Société Générale described a sequential selection process inscribed in a worldwide approach and highly supported by the general management of this French multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in Paris. The aim of the company’s talent management programme is to build a three-segment pool of strategic talents to develop future leaders.
Jean-Francois Garrigues, Director of Talent Development explained the principles of talent development at Bouygues Construction. The identification and development of talents follow the logic of global and shared approach and aims at bringing out the leaders of tomorrow. Talent management requires an organised monitoring around a few common tools such as 9-box talent tracker, people and talent review, annual performance interview, and succession planning among others.
Caroline Haquet, Head of Partner Development at Mazars firm emphasized the particularities of the industry of professional service firms. Due to the specificity of talent-intensive context, this company considers retention as secondary. Their primary concern is to attract talents and assure their employability using “progress and learn” approach.
Thierry Majorel, innovation and digital culture manager from BPI group, a global management and human resources consulting firm with headquarters in Paris, gave a broader view of talent management, based on his professional experiences. According to him, talents must meet challenges of organisational changes in the spirit of co-opetition (cooperative competition). They have to accompany the emergence of a new relationship with the work taking into account flexibility and development of intrapreneurship.
The discussion of different approaches used by these companies to talent management (exclusive in case of Société Générale and Bouygues Construction and rather inclusive at Mazars) was rich. Participants asked numerous questions regarding how these companies define talents, what are their challenges, what are the advantages of TM, how do they deal with diversity issues, how do they see the role of HR managers, etc. The industry, size, diversity issues play an important role in designing TM programmes. However, there were some common characteristics that all participants agreed upon: Talents should embody organisational values; HR managers play a key role in TM.