Abstract for: Panel Discussion: Distributed Talent Management: Planning, Metrics and Oversight

The last decade has seen the rise in many types of distributed talent management challenges -- global sites, disrupted demand, integration problems, omnipresent collaboration and communication technologies, political pressures and threats from talent poaching and/or downsizing. In this session, we wish to host a set of presentations followed by lively discussion generated by questions and dialogue with the audience. The presentation of case studies will describe three separate system dynamics models aimed to examining policy options and allied metrics. The first case examines the challenges at an insurance company while implementing a scorecard in the face of an unbalanced evolution of a population of agents across heterogeneous geographic market segments. The second case addresses the management of software development and maintenance at another large insurance company, where "cause and effect" are separated in time and space. These characteristics make attributions about system improvement difficult and can impede the ability to manage human resources. The third case describes the unanticipated side effects of global demand growth when a leading software services firm is faced with poaching of workforce from its most productive talent segments.