Long back in August 1998, McKinsey released a comprehensive study (America-centric) on Talent Management. The study “War for Talent” became very famous. The crux of the study was: “Companies are engaged in a war for senior executive talent that will remain a defining characteristic of their competitive landscape for decades to come. Yet most are ill prepared, and even the best are vulnerable.”

The study also said that companies can win the war for talent, but first they need to elevate talent management to a burning priority. That done, the attention must turn towards how to recruit great talent, and finally develop, develop, develop.

Almost 12 years later in 2010 the phrase “War for Talent” was ditto used by Eric Schmidt while speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit. The context was a rumour that said: Google is severely hit by brain drain to Facebook and to stop that the former is taking extraordinary measures to retain its top talent.

McKinsey study stays on course. There is indeed a war for talent everywhere.

Why would someone really good want to join a job offered by your company?

How will you keep your top talent for more than a few years?

Is money the only factor to attract talent or there are other ways to retain great human assets?

Answers to the questions above are vital - specially when keeping talent becomes your biggest nightmare.

In my many conversations with CIO friends, talent retention has emerged one major area of concern. Though money is the single biggest factor for employees to switch jobs, but to me creating and continuously demonstrating a great ‘employee value proposition’ is the best way to retain your top talent. Right from the process of hiring to grooming and developing to showing them appropriate growth is what keeps an employee stuck to a company.

This issue’s main feature takes the debate to its next level. We spoke to various CIOs about their IT organisation’s hiring and grooming processes. Further, we asked them about the element of ‘succession planning’ and developing the gen-next for the coveted role.

I will let the feature do rest of talking. As ever, I will appreciate your feedback.