Why are companies losing the war for talent? Why is it so easy for other companies to poach them? Because they don't work with them, and they don't even know how to recognize them.
For a lot of companies, talent is just a buzzword. Every company knows it should have a talent program, but they often lack a real concept for it. People talk about it a lot inside companies, but hardly anyone actually knows who or what a talent even is.
What is talent? Can we even recognize it?
It's someone who, in a given area, is demonstrably and consistently faster, more productive, and more successful than others over time. On top of that, they're engaged — they don't wait around, they seek out opportunities themselves, and above all, they enjoy it. Put simply, they consistently deliver above-average results in a given activity or field.
But companies rarely define what talent actually means in their specific case. They'll often say someone is a "managerial talent." But talent in manufacturing looks different from talent in retail, or talent in sales, or talent in programming. Without specifying the exact role, we can't really define talent at all.
How should companies work with talent so they don't lose it?
They shouldn't reward mediocrity — which, incidentally, is a hallmark of Czech national culture. We see it starting in school, where instead of developing talented children, we lump them in with the average and stop them from standing out. Because someone who stands out is a threat. They might threaten their own manager, for instance, who feels threatened by them and holds back not just their use of that talent, but its development too.
On the other hand, HR departments want talent programs. But HR can't know what a specific talent should actually look like. That has to be defined by the manager who wants to attract that talent in the first place. And that's exactly where things go wrong. In most companies, the talent program ends up as "HR's toy" that managers don't really understand.
The difference between aptitude, talent, and being a grind
We're all born with a predisposition toward certain aptitudes. That's really the overall potential we have in a given area. And in some areas, we simply have an aptitude for being better than others. Talent is the result of hard work put into that aptitude through education, upbringing, and daily practice. Being a grind just means having the knowledge.
Czechia is full of gifted children, students, and people. Unfortunately, talent has to be earned through hard work. And for that, a gifted person needs space — and above all, support. Incidentally, gifted children from poorer families often get lost in the mix, and Czechia loses out on a lot of potential talent as a result. Companies still haven't understood that they should be giving these children grants and support — but then, no post-1989 government has understood that either.
Unfortunately, companies rarely know how to handle talent, because their corporate culture doesn't have room built in for it. Talent has its own internal drive. And the only way to keep it is to give it the chance to grow. In clan cultures — the kind built on everyone being the same — talent doesn't survive. I'd even go so far as to say that running a talent program in these companies is pointless. Talent needs a meritocratic corporate culture.
Show yourself
The most business-driven companies openly look for people who will help them achieve higher profitability or a bigger market share. Companies like Google, for example.
In meritocratic or innovative corporate cultures, talent gains more authority and moves up. In a clan culture, though, people stop understanding them, put obstacles in their way, or accuse them of standing apart from the team and just looking out for themselves. On the other hand, it's worth remembering that not every talented person is also great at interpersonal communication.
We always ask companies: "Why do you want talent? Why do you want a talent program? What path have you actually cleared for talent inside your company?" We rarely get an answer. Companies lack a well-thought-out process for what to actually do with the talent they bring in. That's why a useful KPI is the talent attrition rate during the probation period and the first year. Another is how quickly they move into new roles.
How to look for and find talent
A company first has to define the profile of the person it's looking for. What exactly should this talent be good at? Are we looking for talent in engineering, or in management? Or talent in programming? And will we actually give them room to grow?
Talented people are very sensitive to whether the work will be interesting and who they'll be surrounded by. Companies should communicate this openly, and they should communicate it honestly. Talented people need to know the company is genuinely open to them. Companies also need to actively seek these people out — at conferences, at schools, for example. This group of people is fairly limited, but on the plus side, it's also fairly visible.
Did someone poach your top talent? The invisible hand of the market is helping them grow
The invisible hand of the market shows no mercy. It lures people away with better, more interesting projects. There are companies on the market that don't actually need talent to deliver perfectly solid work. And that's exactly where these people end up leaving, disappointed. Where did it go wrong? Maybe the onboarding process was botched from the start, or the company thought it would put the talent to good use, but because the person had limited experience, it turned out there weren't actually any interesting projects for them — even if the original intention was good.
Process-driven companies genuinely don't need talent, because standard performance is already defined by the process. Unfortunately, the market is still fairly desperate, so companies often end up calling people "talent" when they're really just people who work at 100%. Personally, I'd only call someone a talent in these companies if they were working at 130%. So we're back to the question of who talent actually is.
It's an employee with exceptional abilities in a given area, who is more productive than everyone else.
Talent, we're losing you…
How can a company tell it's losing a talented employee? That's a management job. It's genuine leadership — and primarily, whoever hired that person is responsible for having regular conversations with them.
Unfortunately, a lot of managers have swapped regular 1:1 conversations for "empowerment" — meaning they've empowered their direct reports to come to them whenever they want or need to. Talented employees, fortunately, do go to their managers — but a manager should keep track of how many times they've said no, or the talented employee will simply stop coming.
The basic premise is that talent has its own internal drive, and the moment it starts fading, something is simply wrong.
How to keep talent — and win
Companies have to be transparent and openly say who their talent is. They have to put a spotlight on them so they're visible. Internal PR needs to make sure employees know the company has talented people, and who they are. Otherwise, over time, others will start looking at them oddly, until they push them out. Companies also need to give them interesting projects that match their talent, give them room to use it, and not stifle them with the excuse that "we've always done it this way" and new approaches won't be introduced.
In short: a company has to clear the path for its talented people to genuinely succeed and grow the business. Talented people often want to be involved in strategy — they want to help move the company forward. They simply enjoy that kind of thing.