Technical Talent Management

What does it take to attract, develop, and retain technical and professional workers such as engineers, nurses, and others whose special skills and knowledge are key to their work?

About This Program (CPE 5006)

This workshop provides an overview of key issues in managing talented technical workers, where “technical” is understood to mean a worker whose special qualifications, knowledge, and skills are essential to successful job performance. While talent management is often associated with managers and leaders, the same principles of attracting, developing, and retaining technical workers offer special challenges. This workshop addresses those challenges, emphasizing the importance of capturing and transferring special institutional knowledge of the business and proprietary knowledge of the work possessed by technical and professional workers.

Who Should Attend

This workshop is open to anyone who has interest in technical talent management and technical succession planning. That includes anyone who cares about the special issues involved in recruiting, developing, and retaining talented technical and professional workers.

You Can Learn To

• explain the business reasons why technical talent management and succession planning are so critically important even during tough economic times
• offer predictions on the future of technical talent management and technical succession planning in a difficult economy
• consider alternatives to technical talent management and succession planning—such as tapping retiree workforces, contingent talent, consultants, and others to “get the work done”
• define technical talent management and technical succession planning, showing how they differ from traditional thinking about management-oriented talent management and management-oriented succession planning
• show how a fundamental replacement planning can be applied to knowledge transfer
• summarize key steps in establishing a technical talent management program and the related steps in establishing a technical succession planning program, showing how their emphasis on knowledge transfer differs from the traditional emphasis on promotions in management-oriented talent management and succession
• define technical or functional competencies and describe how to identify and use those competencies in a technical talent management and a technical succession planning program
• explain the role to be played by performance management in a technical talent management and a technical succession planning program
• explore key and creative issues in recruiting specialized technical and professional talent
• align future technical/functional competencies with the organization’s business strategic objectives
• provide 12 practical ways to transfer knowledge
• establish individual development plans (IDPs) and show how they can be useful in knowledge transfer
• review best practices in retaining top technical talent
• evaluate the success of technical talent management and technical succession planning programs
• predict future challenges in technical talent management—and how to meet those challenges

Outline

Day 1

• Session 1: Why Are Technical Talent Management (TTM) and Technical Succession Planning (TSP) Important Even in Difficult Economic Times? How Are Key Terms Defined? How Does Replacement Planning Differ from TM and SP?
• Session 2: Models to Guide TTM and TSP; How Those Models Differ from Traditional Management-Oriented Models; and How the Models Are Applied
• Session 3: Technical and Professional Competency Modeling

Day 2

• Session 4: Recruiting and Selecting Talented Technical and Professional People
• Session 5: Developing Talented Technical People
• Session 6: Retaining Talented Technical People

Cancellation information