In this brief promotional address, Margaret Spence speaks to the Sarasota-Manatee HR Association (SHRA) and Lakewood Ranch's Business Alliance about the persistent difficulty HR professionals face in recruiting and retaining talent. She identifies the common habit of asking "why"—why recruitment fails, why employees leave—as a root cause of the problem. Spence proposes a paradigm shift: focus instead on "who" (the specific talent profile the organization truly needs) and "what" (the roles and value propositions offered). She promises to address these questions in an upcoming SHRA session on Friday, urging listeners to register, attend early, and be prepared to re‑imagine their talent development pipelines, align employee goals with organizational goals, and boost engagement and retention.
Chapters
Hi, Shra and Lakewood Ranch's Business Alliance. This is Margaret Spence. I am so excited to be speaking for you on Friday. You know, one of the biggest challenges for HR and for business owners is finding talent, getting people into our pipeline that we can groom and we can promote and we can empower them to be our next leaders. I know that this is hard. You know, the number one question that HR asks themselves, even if we don't want to admit it to everybody else, is why is recruiting and retaining talent so hard? Why is it that we can't get this right? What are we missing? What is the disconnect? If you show up for this session, I will answer each of those questions for you because recruiting and talent retention doesn't have to be hard. What we tend to do as HR professionals is we ask a lot of why. Why is this hard? Why are they leaving us? Why isn't this working? Why am I not getting the talented people that I want? I'm going to ask you to take a different view. I'm gonna ask you to look at the who and to look at the what. Who are you recruiting? Who do you want? Who do you expect to show up on your doorsteps? Because we aren't always clear about the who, and we go about recruiting this imaginary person that doesn't exist. And then we ask ourselves, what's wrong with us? The question we should be asking is who, and then we should be asking the what. So show up on Friday bright and early, ready to be energized and to view your talent development pipeline differently. I want to empower you to step it up, move the bar when it comes to talent management, when it comes to talent retention, and when it comes to keeping your people engaged so that you are connecting their goals with your goals. So, Shra and Lakewood Alliance, I will see you all on Friday. Make sure you're there. And if you haven't registered, click that button in this link and register now. It might be up there. Click the link, register now, show up for this session. I'm so excited to be there and I'm excited to meet you. So don't miss out. Don't let this opportunity to upend and change your talent development pipeline. Miss you. See you on Friday. Here I come, Sarasota. Take care.
