Welcome to the latest in a series of brief interviews with guest experts from KnowledgeBrief’s Innovation Programme, providing a window into the experts’ latest ideas and new advice for executives.
Following the Innovation Day in November, Zoe Taylor (ZT) from KnowledgeBrief gave us an interview to discuss her latest research on career transitions in a sport setting and what we can learn from it.
KB: What’s the key business challenge that organisations need to address, that your research tackles?
ZT: My research looks at career transitions, specifically exploring releasing talent (in terms of talent departing the organisation) in a sport setting. Talent management is an increasing challenge for organisations with staff being more comfortable to job hop in the current market. This research covers the following business challenges:
- Career transitions: understanding the holistic transitions which employees simultaneously navigate
- Understanding how to manage talent differently
- Proactively creating and managing a sustainable culture
- Promoting high performance without creating a hostile environment
KB: What advice would you give to executives, based on your findings?
ZT: Think about staff leaving, from the moment they enter the organisation. Staff leaving doesn’t need to be a negative experience.
Ask yourself: what happens if you invest in your staff, improving their skills and they leave? What happens if you don’t invest in your staff, abandoning development, and they stay?
Based upon the emerging themes in the research, support employees in finding a purpose, that fits with the company but also their future. Consider that when releasing talent, the culture and the holistic individual may be compromised. Ensure strong relationships are fostered when hiring staff, to ensure that when it is their time to leave, the existing staff stay within a positive culture and the departing employee can still speak highly of the organisation.
KB: How does your latest research approach this? What do the results indicate?
ZT: Using theory from psychological safety and resilience to make sense of the themes and the approach to releasing talent, it is clear that this needs to be handled with caution. If you have a culture of high performance which releases talent, consider that you need to create an environment which is high in support and high in challenge to foster a facilitative environment. As well as this, you need to make the environment still safe for risk-taking to drive innovation and high performance. Check that the environment has high levels of psychological safety, met by high levels of accountability to create a learning culture. This research has only been carried out in sport, thus bringing the learnings to an occupational setting to challenge perspectives and approaches to talent management. In sport (rugby), the talent is aware it is being released in January but must still perform until the departure date at the end of the season (June).
What did you learn or take away from meeting with the executives at the KnowledgeBrief Innovation Day?
ZT: It was a fantastic morning and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the delegates at the KnowledgeBrief Innovation Day. The entire group were very enthusiastic and really engaged with a topic which required them to critically review the norm and the traditional approaches to talent management. I would like to thank everyone who attended for being so engaging and showing their interest in my research and contributions. I took a great deal away from the group, more specifically I learnt that most of the delegates engage in various talent retention strategies. I also enjoyed observing the leaders reflecting upon their career journey and how they can use this to support their employees.
With thanks to Zoe Taylor, Professional Learning Advisor at KnowledgeBrief.