Aileen O’Toole, HR Manager at eBay Classifieds Group explains the importance of a well oiled Talent Management machine. In her presentation, she explains how eBay Classifieds Group’s Talent Management strategy is central to business productivity and growth. Aileen outlines the core elements of the strategy: professional development; culture and leadership; reward and recognition; job performance; and ownership and empowerment.
Everyone knows the eBay brand, but it’s not always obvious the many ways in which eBay Inc connects buyers and sellers
About 6 years ago, eBay realised that its core business, which at that time was auction, was under threat from the classifieds format.Print classifieds were moving on line and users loved that it was free, local and simple to use (no complex registration),We embarked on a series of acquisitions, supplemented by organic growth.By mid 2007 it warranted a dedicated business unit, and the challenge was to grow and scale quickly enough to realise this global opportunityWhat’s more, our geographical portfolio provided an important competitive advantage. We could quickly bring the collective wisdom and resources of eBay to compete against local businesses.Sharing ideas quickly across geographies was a key success factor.Talent would be the only binding constraint on our growth and competitive success.
Mental Agility: Curious, Able to get to root causes, Comfortable with ambiguity and complexity, Finds parallels and contrasts easily, Questions conventional wisdom, Finds solutions to tough problems, reads broadly and has wide interestsPeople Agility: Open-minded and tolerant, Self-aware, Comfortable with diversity and differences of opinion, Able to play many roles simultaneously, Understands others, Relishes helping others succeed, Politically agile, Deals with conflict constructively, Skilled communicatorChange Agility: Loves tinkering and trying new things, Easily accepts challenges, Accepts responsibility and accountability, Introduces new slants on old ideasResults Agility: Builds high-performance teams, Can pull off things against the odds, Has tremendous drive to accomplish tasks, Very flexible and adaptable, Has significant personal presence
The defining success factor is that the talent management strategy must respond to a real business need – and be viewed by the business as such. Every action & activity needs to have a link back to the business problem and deliver value – process for the sake of completeness will quickly turn people offSecondly, talent management is an eco-system. It can’t be viewed, or managed, as a set of discrete HR processes. It starts with culture and leadership capabilities. The basics must be in place: Do we have clear expectations about performance at every level and for every function?Do we calibrate performance across the business?Do our compensation decisions reinforce performance feedback?Do we invest in development?Do we have the same understanding of potential?Is the EVP clear? Do we have an understanding of how engaged our people are?Only then can we hope to embark on a talent management journey.Finally, leaders must be accountable at all levels and the process driven by the CEOSuccessful recruitment of talent, talent development, bench strength and succession planning should be part of the performance assessment of leaders Leaders must feel they own their talent and the talent management system – HR should take care to empower them and coach, and not have too much emphasis on control & compliance