HR's Golden Apples: How Fads can Derail Your Talent Strategy

Beware HR’s golden apples. Discover why facts trump fads for talent impact, and how evidence-based principles transform strategy.

In our team, we recently explored the Greek myth of Atalanta and Melanion to illustrate how distractions can lead us astray. The story of Atalanta and Melanion is a classic example of how love can overcome any challenge. It is also one of the stories that involve the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. According to some sources, Atalanta was the greatest female hero of the Greeks and participated in the Calydonian boar hunt. She was not interested in marriage, but she agreed to marry anyone who could outrun her in a race. Many men tried and failed, until Melanion came along. He asked Aphrodite for help, and she gave him three golden apples that were irresistible to Atalanta. He used them to distract her during the race and managed to win her hand. However, their story did not end happily, as they later angered Zeus by making love in one of his temples…….

This fable contains an important lesson for HR professionals and business leaders (not the bit that happened in the temple). We frequently encounter "golden apple" distractions - trendy new practices, fads, or shiny objects that catch our attention but provide little value. Like Atalanta, we lose sight of the goal when distracted.

To avoid the golden apples and stay focused on winning the race, we need to approach talent decisions as a science. Evidence-based HR relies on data, professional insights, and research rather than assumptions or fads. It enables us to filter out distractions and operate more logically and strategically.

In this blog post, I’ll explain how evidence-based principles can keep us on track to make smart talent decisions that create real business impact. I'll cover proven concepts like talentship and share examples of using research to improve recruiting results. My aim is to show how fact-based HR practices can transform talent strategy and prevent those tempting but ultimately meaningless golden apples from throwing us off course.

Let's get started!

Evidence-based HR uses data, research, practitioner experience and facts to guide talent decisions, rather than relying merely on trends, assumptions or intuition. As the authors John Boudreau and Peter Ramstad explain in their excellent book “Beyond HR”, evidence-based practices can help HR professionals and business leaders make smarter choices that create real value.

The Problem with HR Fads

Many popular HR practices seem scientific but actually lack evidence that they work. For example, forced ranking and stack ranking sound logical but often demotivate employees and damage culture. Self-directed teams can empower employees but require careful design and support. Even practices like 360-degree feedback must be implemented carefully to avoid confusion and distrust.

Too often, we jump on the latest HR fad without thinking through the business context or real impact. We spend significant time and money rolling out a new program only to see modest results or none at all. Not only is this frustrating, but it can breed skepticism among managers that HR adds value.

How many new 4 or 9 box models, leadership frameworks or McKinsey backed models will appear before the end of this decade?

To avoid this pitfall, we need a more rigorous approach to HR tools and interventions. This is where evidence-based practices come in.

The Solution: Talentship and Impact

Evidence-based HR links to the principles of talentship – connecting talent decisions directly to business strategy and priorities. The key is identifying pivot points where improvements in talent can really “move the needle” on strategic goals. Often just a small subset of talent has an outsized impact.

For example, improving the skills of customer-facing employees might affect customer satisfaction and retention more than training managers. Or, increasing the quality of sales hiring might improve revenue growth faster than expanding the sales force. We need to rigorously assess impact, not just implement best practices. My favourite story in “Beyond HR” is that of the Sweepers in Disney. These lower profile roles would not only keep the park clean, but also fill in all over the park maintaining the highest standards of customer service. Improving the performance of the sweepers, yielded a far bigger improvement in customer service and experience over improving the performance of the actors.

Boudreau and Ramstad’s HC BRidge framework helps map the linkages from talent to sustainable strategic success. We can estimate the expected strategic benefits of improving a talent pool and compare HR programs on their likelihood to achieve those improvements. This focuses investments on high-impact interventions. This gives us the two terms, impact and effectiveness. What is the business impact we want to have e.g. improve profitability through better market analysis, what is the most effective HR investment to do this e.g. investing in better recruitment and selection of Market Analysts.

In one area, we used this approach to reduce voluntary turnover, which had spiked to 30% among new starters. Traditional wisdom pointed to compensation and benefits as the solution as most people who left, left for more money. But by analysing the talent pipeline we discovered that turnover was highest right after training. The problem was not pay, but poorly designed on-boarding. By improving the on-boarding program turnover fell dramatically, for a fraction of the cost.

Evidence-based HR requires understanding impact – how talent drives strategy – not just judging HR programs on their own effectiveness. This prevents wasting resources on low-impact practices. A HR intervention maybe effective, but is having the business impact we need. Effective HR interventions are necessary, but not sufficient.

The Case for Investing in Selection

One area where evidence-based principles can transform results is recruitment and selection. Most organisations measure recruitment using simple efficiency metrics like cost-per-hire and time-to-fill. But this promotes speed and cost reduction at the expense of quality.

Imagine you need to invest €50,000. One option (Bond A) guarantees a 3% return after fees, so you get €51,500 back. The other option (Bond B) is higher risk but averages an 8% return, so you get €54,000 back. Just looking at fees, you might pick Bond A because it costs less. But that makes your investment worth less in the long run.

Hiring is similar. Typical metrics emphasise minimising the “fees” instead of maximising the long-term “investment return”. This leads companies to under-invest in recruiting. But there is extensive research showing that higher quality talent has a massive impact on performance.

For example, top salespeople generate many times more revenue than average ones. Software engineers with advanced skills produce code with far fewer bugs than inexperienced coders. As with financial investments, it makes sense to spend more upfront to secure higher returns later.

My recommendation is to value recruitment spending as an investment, not a cost. Calculate metrics like “return on recruitment investment” using expected differences in employee performance. And remember to use evidence – don’t rely on gut feelings about who the “best” candidates might be. How about we ask the question, “where might increasing our cost-per-hire yield the biggest effect on improving a talent pool?”

One tech company did this analysis and realised their recruiters were under-qualified to assess software engineers. They doubled recruiters’ salaries to attract expertise in the latest programming languages and technologies. It raised recruitment spending but yielded hires with more relevant skills and ultimately higher productivity. Shifting to an investment mindset changed their talent acquisition strategy.

Conclusion

In today’s economy, talent is the key source of competitive advantage. Adopting evidence-based HR practices will help you incorporate robust data, facts and research into your talent programs and processes. Avoid getting caught up in the latest fads and focus your investments on high-impact areas of talent that advance strategic goals.

Embracing evidence-based HR requires curiosity, discipline, and critical thinking. But the payoff will be smarter talent decisions that make your people and organisation more effective. I encourage you to review your current talent practices through the lens of evidence and impact. Please share any thoughts, feedback or questions you may have on the concepts in this post. I look forward to continuing the discussion on how evidence-based principles can transform HR and drive business value.

If you would like to read more in this area, Beyond HR is a must read and following Rob Briner for his work on Evidence Based HR.