Talent as Inventory and Cities as Talent Warehouses

Those of you looking for answers on the people/jobs matching issue will find a recent article in Forbes (taken from the McKinsey Quarterly) to be of interest. Some of what you read, you may not like however.

Here is what the article says:

"A systematic and continuous approach to fitting the right person to the right job at the right time has long been the Holy Grail of workforce organization. But most managers, search as they might, come up empty-handed. Few companies understand which employees are essential or how best to structure their workforce. As a result, human capital--the skills and knowledge of employees--too often remains an untapped performance lever.

All this is about to change. A new generation of tools has made it increasingly possible to fashion a more sophisticated approach to the management of a large distributed workforce. Real-time deployment tools can adjust staffing to variations in customer demand with unprecedented precision and speed. Succession-planning tools can reach deep into the company to find unsung heroes. And coming soon is software that could solve some of the most nagging challenges to the systematic organization of the workforce.

The macroeconomic implications of mastering what economists might well call human-capital management are far-reaching. Capturing these productivity gains at the company level could measurably boost economic growth. In the knowledge economy, labor is the fastest-growing expense, and talent, in cold economic terms, is inventory. Having too many--or, worse, too few--workers costs money and opportunities for growth."

What's my take? Talent as inventory...now that is an interesting way to view human capital. Sadly, from the business' perspective, that is how people are seen. What does this have to say about the race for talent that every city in America is amidst? Does that say that cities will become "talent warehouses?" Just about the time we thought we were putting a human face back on the economy, we are told that human talent is nothing more than inventory. So, now you know what "knowledge management" in the corporate world is all about.