The Talent Management Program Used for the Success of Bank of America - Research Paper Example

? Topic: Research Paper, Human Resources (Hr) The Bank of America The bank of America is the first national retail brand in the United States and has shown significant growth in the last two decades. Initially, it was a regional North Carolina national bank but today it is one of the largest companies in the world. It renders its services to individual clients, market enterprise both emerging, medium and developed corporations. Since 2009, the American bank is one of the prominent companies of wealth management in the globe wealth and a world leader in corporate and banking investment, (Carter & Goldsmith, 2009). It trades across various asset categories to companies, governments, organizations, and people in the globe and it company more than 150 countries of the globe. This essay seeks to analyze the talent management program that leads to the organizations success, the strengths of the program. It will analyze how they lead to achievement and opportunities for improvement. In addition, the essay will also create two effective approaches to meet the talent management challenges in the future. The talent management program used for the bank’s success was the use executive on-boarding approach. The bank accommodates international and local executives every year. This program is designed to help new executives learn to be facile in navigating the bank’s large matrixes organization. It also helps them in building and leveraging networks of relationships for career success and implementing the company initiatives. The bank utilized a multifaceted approach to establish at the executive level and the managements support to the development program of leadership. The development of the bank leadership executive activities include management, selection, on-boarding, performance, executive talent upgrading process, process of experiences development and compensation. The organizations culture promoted by Lewis encourages conduct, trust, teamwork, and accountability at all management levels. The company deeply emphasizes individual performance and believes that today’s performer is not necessarily tomorrow’s performer. To develop an effective on-board program, the firm has created a program that is categorized in to four phases, which includes the selection phase of the program. The company does not only use expertise and experience to select executives but also leadership ability and cultural fit. An executive lacking leadership and interpersonal skills as well as cultural sensitivity is perceived to cause derailments, (Bank of America, 1994). To eliminate this, the company uses partnerships with executive search firms to get the ideal candidates for the positions. The people in the recruitment position must have an understanding of culture and leadership requirement of the bank when called upon to do an executive level research. Job design is also another consideration made in the selection phase, whereby the stakeholders are given clear job specifications before they are given a mandate to conduct the executive research. This allows the hiring executive not to make a blind selection of the new employees. Additionally, the LD partner is vital to the selection phase as he serves as the main talent officer in the process of recruiting and on-boarding. This individual usually has between ten to fifteen years of experience and with a leadership or organizational development background. This experience gives them an increased level of credibility in the eyes of the executive and the stakeholders. After executives have been selected, this is the entry phase and the most critical weeks on a job are the initial weeks on hiring. The new executive is expected to accomplish dour vital outcomes; develop business acumen, learn organizational culture, master the roles of leadership demands and build critical organization relationships. The new executive must be able to learn customer and financial information in regards to his/her new roles. He /he must also set realistic goals and objectives based on the acquired information. He must understand the unwritten and the written norms of the organizational behavioral expectation form the employees. Finally, he must be able to identify the organizations expectations on the leadership capability of the new employees within their teams. However, the company has established three intervention levels to aid the new executives meet the demands. It offers tools and processes, orientation forums and coaching and support programs for the new employees. The tools and processes include an on boarding and new leader/team leader integration processes. The programs of orientation entail a new workers program and an executive program. The hiring experts, human resource experts, and the LD officials offer coaching and support to the new executives. In this phase the employee is familiarized with the main facts of the organization i.e. structure, culture, goals and objectives among others. The entry phase covers the first day at work to the 99th day at work then the new executive proceeds to the third phase of no-boarding process. The mid-point phase is the third phase of the on-boarding program and covers the period three to four months in the new job and the executives take part in key stakeholder check-in sessions. The main interventions involve receipt of written and verbal feed backs form-selected stakeholders. This experience is aimed at developing effective working relations between the new leaders and the stakeholders. It also aids in understanding the results and culture of coaching of the American Bank, which is unique in the crucial feedback condition. The check-in process is vital for it brings clarity to the management on the development of the new employees and identifies the problem areas that need to be addressed. For example, the new employee may learn that they have strong interpersonal skills and are perceived as highly competent or the vice versa. They may also receive feedback that they should spend more time on developing clear business vision and communicating to their team. This phase helps measure the competence of the new employee. The final phase comprises of one on one, half years of work and this is usually twelve to eighteen months after the stakeholders review, and the employees receive a 360-degree feedback assessment. This offers the managers their leadership competencies and the timing design gives the executives an opportunity to make progress on the problem areas identified in the previous stage on the stakeholders review. They also have had a complete cycle performance on their new assignments. At this stage, the employee is now completely ready for competent performance in the organization. The program has several strengths that lead to success in the goal achievement. One, the employee are given opportunity to interact with the existing employees and learn about the organization from a firsthand information. Two, the selection process ensures that they select highly competent employees with the desired skills. This will easily understand the organizations demand sand fit in to the systems in the shortest time possible; no major loss of resources in new employee training. Three, the program was put in the hands of competent employees with tangible years of experience in leadership and development programs. This ensured that the selected individuals for the executive positions are highly qualified since the individual responsible have the expertise in the field. The program has opportunities of improvement especially by allowing the new executives take part in the improvement of the program once they have completed their on-board process. This is because they have had firsthand experience with the program and can identify the areas they had difficulty grasping during their recruitment process. Through this, the organization is able to identify the program loopholes and make adjustments where necessary. The program can also be redesigned and readjusted to meet the market demands as well as the changing banking field. For any organization to have quality performance, it must ensure flexibility and adaptability to the market changes and demands. The reward system should also be designed to ensure adequate motivation for the new executives to perform their duties and meet the organization demands effectively. Employees tend to focus more on the rewards and measure if it matches with the efforts exerted in work carried out. The organization can also involve the existing employees in making better the on-boarding program for the benefit of the organization as a whole. This would make them feel like they are part of the recruitments and encourage them offer the necessary support to the new executives. Talent management has its own challenges and an organization can use an effective reward system and motivation strategies to encourage performance and retaining of employees. An effective reward system motivates individuals to show case their talents willingly. The reward and recognition programs emphasizes on the definition of schemes of reward and communicating them in a clearly comprehensible manner by the workers, (Bank of America, 1994). In tasks, providing intrinsic rewards, the program of recognition and rewards establishes a better feeling condition in the working people. Regardless, many organizations reserve recognition for an elite few and rewards are defined in terms of salaries and wages. An effective recognition scheme enhances employee’s motivation and increases their productivity hence improving the organizations performance. Rewards and task performance are closely linked, for instance, if successful performance leads to organizational rewards, then that performance could be a motivational factor to the employees. In these conditions, they see their own efforts resulting in rewards and they may be motivated to put more efforts on the job. The incentive programs mainly applied are a means of payment - the more the production the more the pay. The incentive definition has expended to entail paying and rewarding workers and lowering the managers cost. Various nations in the last decades have copied a pay for performance strategy traditional sales of salary modification. In the past, reward was just a pay and reward programs used to attract and retain competent workers, therefore, in modern days organizations reward system should provide and maintain appropriate types and levels of pay, benefits among other forms of rewards. The organizations in the world are recognizing the vital opportunity in improving the return on their human resources investment through alignment of organization plan and business strategy, (Carter & Goldsmith, 2010). This is a crucial process to organizational prosperity and company’s capacity to attract and retain competent workers in a highly competitive environment. Researchers have shown that although many strategies can be employed to reward employees, they have different motivational effects on different people. To get optimal results therefore, a manager should realize and understand issues requiring recognition on each individual’s unique values, beliefs, and practices. Different motivational strategies affect employee differently at different points in time because conditions, needs, and objectives vary. References Bank of America. (1994). The Bank of America journal of applied corporate finance. New York: Stern Stewart Management Servic Carter, L., & Goldsmith, Marshall. (2009). Best Practices in Talent Management: How the World's Leading Corporations Manage, Develop, and Retain Top Talent. John Wiley & Sons. Effectively Managing Performance Measurement Systems Bank of America Case Study. (2004). S.l.: American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC Goldsmith, M., & Carter, L. (2010). Best practices in talent management: How the world's leading corporations manage, develop, and retain top talent. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. Goldsmith, M., & Carter, L. (2010). Best Practices in Talent Management: How the World's Leading Corporations Manage, Develop, and Retain Top Talent. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Read More