The Differentiated Workforce: Transforming Talent into Strategic Impact Hardcover – Illustrated, April 20, 2009

There are some books that makes me yawn when someone brings up HR. HR is mostly compliance - may 80% to follow some dumb rules which either keeps changing or educating the managers about it. I mostly thought is was just like accounting. No real value add but someone has to do it. All wrong. Atleast partly, this book shows how HR function (not just HR department) can IMMENSELY change the game and how to think about changing the game. This book and the ,beyond HR' (not as good as this book in writing style...but equally enlightening) . I was riveted in reading this book while my son was playing tennis with his coach. Suddenly it dawned on me, how many people and positions we come across in live that requires talent and we take it for granted the impact (more or less) of the position and even worse, never know what such positions can 'perform' given focus and a targeted approach. Amazing book. Bring your thinking in investment portfolio into HR function. There is almost a repeated word 'strategic' which could have been avoided. Forget peanut butter approach, take a laser-focussed approach to thinking about 'your' organziation and its focus. It is better to be unfair to certain positions rather than been fair to everyone. The latter actually makes the collective worse. MUST READ.

Although the reading is a little dry in places, the structure, learning points, arguments and examples are excellent. I've derived considerable business strategy from this text which has augmented my strategic planning processes.

This was a suggested book for my Strategic Human Resource Management course for my MBA program. I have found that reading this book has given a different perspective on managing human resources in the 21st century. Linking human resources to strategic management and the mission and vision of the organization is critical in order to compete in today's markets. The authors share some great tools to do that in this book.

This was a crap book written by the worst type of academics. Those who only study but never do. Never could figure what makes peopl like this expects in anything but surfing the hypothetical tide. If you're going to read academics stick to Collins.

Chapter 2 was a waste of time, but the rest is worth a read, and I like the honesty of the book, for example when the book suggested that companies are better off paying their bottom 10% of employees (the lowest proformers) to stay at home. So true, but I will let you do the reading to find out why.

Becker, Huselid and Beatty have come up with some really important challenges to existing practice in talent management. I'd suggest that all HR professionals should consider these challenges themselves, and then develop their own responses.I don't personally agree with all the solutions that the authors themselves propose ([...] but I think they've done a great service for HR in proposing them as they're hopefully going to provoke some deeper thinking than we often see in this profession.

This is one of two books that I carry with me at all times. It is simply the most strategic of HR books on the market. While it is certainly written more like a school text book than others, it provides a model to differentiate your company's workforce to deploy your human capital in the most effective way, focusing on the strategic positions that contribute to your company's ROI most.

Excellent book; would recommend for any HR professional