With all of the cost-cutting and reorganizing that has happened over the past two years, we wondered whether companies would put their talent management efforts on hold as they struggled with financial matters.

Our just-published study, the latest in series of annual studies on the state of talent management, provides some guidance on this issue.  The results show that although talent management hasn't taken giant leaps forward over the past two years, many companies have taken steps toward improvement - which is actually remarkable given the recent economic turmoil.

In fact, painful as it may be, corporate restructuring  has actually helped talent management within many companies by bringing centralized ownership of talent initiatives. Today, 30% of U.S. companies have a dedicated talent management executive, a role that is responsible for some or all of the talent functions across the enterprise. This figure is up from 21% in 2008. 

A dedicated talent management executive can help to define and implement an integrated, business-driven talent strategy by aligning resources and improving the level of coordination across processes.  Today, nearly half of U.S. companies say they have well-defined talent strategies and are in various stages of implementing these strategies. Two years ago this figure was just 37%.

So while the recession may have slowed down companies’ efforts to improve the talent management initiatives, these efforts did not cease entirely. And we expect that as the economy improves, more companies will pick up their efforts in earnest. 

Our new report contains many examples of how companies have worked to improve talent management over the past two years, in terms of new organizational structures, better integration of talent processes, and better alignment of talent initiatives with business objectives.   If you have an example of how your organization has advanced its approach to talent management, please let us know.