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Why You Should Let Your Favorite Employee Move to Another Team

ILR HR Studies Professor Warns Against Talent Hoarding

Cornell ILR School HR Studies Associate Professor JR Keller warns against talent hoarding in MIT Sloan's "Why you Should let Your Favorite Employee Move to Another Team."

If you have have a superstar on your team, and you cannot imagine your work life without them but they want to find their next opportunity at the company, and you act selfishly and suggest that they aren’t quite ready for a bigger job but might be in six months, this situation is an example of internal talent hoarding.

The available data suggests that most managers have hoarded talent at one time or another. In a recent study, 75% of managers openly admitted to hoarding talent — and, given that this is not exactly a socially desirable behavior, you can bet that that percentage is actually much higher.