Talent Management Strategy - Research Paper Example

?Talent Management Strategy Introduction This paper focuses an organization’s talent management strategy to determine how a small to mid-sized companies manage to identify organizational talent needs, recruit desired pool of human capital, select the best people, develop and train them to maximize their potential, and retain the best employees to create competitive human resource edge for competitors. The paper also identifies how an organization must tailor its talent management strategy over time to respond to the dynamics of a business environment and also to the changing organizational structural and strategic requirements. The organization under this paper’s consideration is hypothetical small service driven company, with a total of 200 employees out of which 20 are leaders. The company provides business consultancy services to organizations, and is hypothetically named as ABC consultants. Discussion Talent management is the core function of Human Resource Planning and Execution (Henry, 1995). It is a process of designing strategy for identifying an organization’s human capital requirements in pursue of business goals and objectives in the long run. Since human capital is the most fickle resource that an organization possesses, therefore, an organization faces a scarcity of talent in the market which gives birth to talent competition and rivalry (Price, 2007). Talent management transcends beyond the borders of human resource function to a holistic integration of framework for organizational values and cultural fit, competency and capability fit, and structural system fit. In order to formulate a talent management strategy for ABC Company in a manner that it serves as a competitive edge, it is crucial to first uncover the logic behind. Research has shown that for the past years the business organizations have witnessed and have embraced the fact that organizational talent has been the key driver of business value to the organization. There are two reasons for this, first is that the technological advancement has enabled and equipped businesses to acquire and replicate any and every organizational resource edge, systems, processes, marketing mix, technology etc; but only the human resource has been the vital intangible asset that cannot be replicated or acquired by the industry rivals. Secondly, human resource has been deemed as the ultimate deliverers of value to the customers and the only key sources for execution of strategies as planned and conceived by the business objectives. Thus especially for organizations which are operating globally, it’s crucial for them to sustain a consistent human resource body in diverse talent environment and manage it locally and internationally (Salaman, Storey, and Billsberry, 2005). Therefore, the power has eventually been shifted from organizations to employees and this has mandated organizations to link and integrate talent strategy with business processes, systems, technology and objectives. For designing an integrated TMS, the ABC firm must align its objectives and talent; it involves matching the organizational competencies with individual capabilities. Determination of organization’s current and future competencies along the side of organizational talent help identifies the need for fresh talent or development of existing talent to alleviate potential. This creates a company-wide mindset for developing talent focused strategies that internalize social, market and organizational changes (Ford, Harding, and Stoyanova, 2010). Once a match has been established between talent and organizational objectives, the nest step in TM process is to develop a retention strategy for retaining the most promising experienced and knowledgeable talent leaders. At ABC firm 10% of the total work force is leading talent personnel which are prime targets of ABC’s succession management, development programs and retention strategy. But ABC must determine the leadership potential amongst the rest by assessing their engagement in organizational affairs, current performance, potential and willingness to take on new roles, and their individual professional objectives. Designing a retention strategy in talent management is vital as it reduces organizational costs associated with recruitment and selection of new talent, cost of departure of knowledge & experienced sources from the company, and cost coupled with replication and redundancy of talent. Research has justified that retention initiative for retaining a company’s promising talent would increase individual commitment, productivity, customer loyalty, employees’ satisfaction and enhanced profitability (Taylor, 2010). The next step in an integrated TMS is recruitment which requires attracting, identifying and selecting the desired talent for the organization. The need for hunting new talent occurs when organizational workforce indicates vacant gaps that represent talent scarcity in organization required to pursue current or future business objectives. The recruitment process involves identifying organizational talent needs and selecting the talent which exhibit and fulfill those needs. This requires extensive job analysis for developing a vivid job description and corresponding capability requirements, so that only the right people are attracted to generate an effective talent pool and wrong ones are sidelined. In this connection a multi facet job analysis has been carried out by pioneer employers which include personality tests and traits’ identification in addition to skills and job specific capability classification (Ulrich, and Brockbank, 2005). The best outcome of this recruitment and talent identification process is when right talent with desired capabilities are selected for the right job to deliver their best in pursuit of organizational objectives and are placed at right positions to match individual competencies with organizational competency and needs. This is possible by pre-selection assessment and comparison of candidates’ abilities and performance with the desired role capabilities. At this step of talent management the ABC Company must has to engage its efforts in talent branding; which involves identification of merely what ABC firm seeks in applicants but also determining what benefit and value those applicants may avail from being a part of ABC team. The recruitment activity can be internal or external talent focused i.e. within or outside the ABC Company. The ABC firm must also determine what talent sources and recruitment channels it would pursue to keep the cost low and optimization of recruitment efforts. These channels include internal employee referrals, internet/ABC website, colleges, career fairs, 3rd party agency, direct sourcing and walk in interviews etc. Different recruitment channels offer different benefits and meet different talent hunting objectives of the company. Once hired, the new talent is subjected to the organization’s on-boarding initiatives; these involve activities which are useful for socializing fresh talent with the organizational culture, values, peers, systems. The idea behind on-boarding is to develop lasting employee relationship so that they could deliver what is explicitly required out of them through motivation, satisfaction and commitment. These socializing initiatives are designed over employee personality characteristics and organizational philosophies through exchange of information and feedback between the fresh talent and the organization. The subsequent step in an integrated TM is assessing the performance of the fresh talent to identify high potential talent. ABC firm must measure and compare the discrepant job behavior of a new employee from his pre-selection phase performance and post employment outcomes to determine whether the performance is in line with the objectives, improved or has fallen short of expectations. In either of the cases the performance assessment phase of TM identifies fresh talent’s strengths which are leveraged in future and also the weaknesses which indicate the areas for improvement and training. While assessing performance the company must develop a financial and non-financial value based reward strategy to praise an individual’s strength and efforts that he has deployed so far for the organization this is essential to induce motivation and increase willingness amongst employees to perform better in future. The introduction of reward philosophy and personality assessments stems from the influence of behavioral change theories which advocate that there are various value drivers, which are crucial for manipulating talent and job behavior, differ with individuals; and that these are essential in talent management for maximizing the talent potential (Salaman, Storey, and Billsberry, 2005). The next step is to develop the organizational high potential talent to maximize their potential and minimize their weaknesses. This is essential for organizations to sustain its internal organizational talent pool especially in labor scarcity and poor labor market conditions (Torraco, & Swanson, 1995). At this phase, the new talents who exhibit promising levels of performance and leadership traits are trained across diverse dimensions to cultivate their decision making skills, leadership capabilities in addition to the high job performance. The development efforts are designed to transform optimum performance talent individuals to leaders by exposing them to areas where they could lead. As they successfully developed as leaders the ABC firm must retain these competitive human edges and organizational assets. A fundamental element of an integrated TMS lies in the efficient use of technology. Global operations and talent management requires systems and applications that support integrated learning, knowledge sharing and performance assessments (Salaman, Storey, and Billsberry, 2005). This is because technology provides backup for ABC firm to sustain information and knowledge sharing environment even in any case of potential loss, mishap or because of workforce aging or retirement. Knowledge management applications, performance support tools, performance simulation, classroom applications and workplace solutions are different information and technology sources that have been developed to assist and support handling of issues in talent management. Finally, the ABC consultancy must always monitor and periodically align its talent management strategy (TMS) around its business objectives so that any minor or drastic change such as doubling the size of ABC firm must be coordinated with the anticipated talent needs and expected change in capability requirements of the firm in coming 5-6 years. This is important because it enables firms to proactively respond to the organizational talent needs and devise strategies that consequently support talent management (Stephens, 2010). Conclusion This paper examines how and why TMS serves as a competitive advantage, discusses the key components of talent management, characteristics of an effective on-boarding, identification and development of high-potential talent, and analyze how IT supports TMS. References Ford, J., Harding, N., and Stoyanova, D. (2010). Talent Management And Development: An Overview of Current Theory and Practice. Bradford University School of Management. Retrieved August 10, 2012 from Henry, C. (1995). Human Resource Management: A Strategic Approach to Management. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Miner, J., & Crane, D. (1995). Human Resource Management : The Strategic Perspective. NY: HarperCollins College Publishers. Price, A. (2007). Human Resource Management in a Business Context, 3rd edition. London: Cengage. Salaman, G., Storey, J., and Billsberry, J. (2005). Strategic Human Resource Management: theory and practice. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Stephens, N. (2010). Talent Management: ensuring your people give you the competitive edge. Strategic Direction, 26 (7), 3-5. Taylor, S. (2010). Resourcing and Talent Management, Fifth Edition. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Torraco, R., & Swanson, R. (1995). The Strategic roles of Human Resource Development. Human Resource Planning, 18 (4), 10-21. Ulrich, D., and Brockbank, W. (2005). The HR value proposition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Read More