National Learning Institute

Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business is Down

Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Reviewed by admin Fri 25 Sep 09

Bob's Rating:

"A recession is a terrible thing to waste", so says author Sylvia Ann Hewlett in her new book "Top Talent".  Her thesis is that people, particularly top people are more likely to change organisations in a recession than at other times.  This presents both an opportunity for enterprising organisations to gain some good talent and a challenge for those organisations who are perhaps not so good at hanging on to their top talent, to keep them.

In part 1, Hewlett presents the evidence that suggests top talent are more likely to move during a recession than at other times.  Fortuitously, Hewlett and her colleagues had set up a research study prior to the recession to look at the issues (challenges in work, motivation, engagement,  life/work balance etc) facing top performers.  Thus they have been able to look at before and after statistics, comments and trends amongst a wide range of top talent people.  This provides much credibility to the book's conclusions and recommendations.

I found some of the statistical information fascinating and quite illuminating.  For example:

• 31% of people who survive a layoff, subsequently "walk out the door".
• Between June 2008 and June 2009, 14% of college graduates in the US lost their jobs. Of these, 32% were fired and 68% voluntarily left.
• As at June 2009, 22% of "high potentials" are now working an extra 9 hours per week.

But for me, the really interesting stats were around trust, loyalty and engagement and the differences between high performers employed in Wall Street firms and those employed elsewhere both pre and post the recession:

In part 2, Hewlett outlines the steps to take to retain top talent.  There are eight strategies which have been developed from the discussions with the study group of top talent and 55 one-on-one interviews with top performers.  As well as Hewlett's observations and recommendations, there are numerous verbatim comments from managers that provide excellent examples of what managers need to do to retain top talent.  

This is a great little book.  132 pages in total, well written and easy to read.  I have one criticism.  For a visual person such as myself, there were not enough graphical representations of the stats in Part 1 to provide the "big picture" clarity I needed.  It was often necessary to re-read a paragraph to gather the stats and their implications.  

That said, I would highly recommend this book to any HR person serious about people development and to practising managers and particularly senior managers who have an influence on acquisition, development and retention of top talent.