Discussion: Evolution of Talent Management - Assignment Example

School: Topic: discussion: Evolution of talent management Lecturer: The definition given to talent and talentmanagement has been evolving by the years. Whiles Silzer & Dowell (2010) defined talent as a natural aptitude that gives a person unique capabilities, Ready & Conger (2007) saw talent to be a skill that makes it naturally easy for a person to execute a given task. In one of the earliest studies on talent management, Handfield-Jones and Axelrod (2001) explained talent management to be adaptation of strategic human resource planning to create value for businesses and make it possible for companies to reach their goals.

Silzer & Dowell (2010) later expanded this definition by stressing that talent management is a combined organizational human resource process which is put in place with the aim of attracting, developing, motivating, engraining, and retaining employees.Putting the various attempted definitions together, talent will be personally defined as a unique ability possessed by a person, which serves as a complement for professional roles at the workplace. Talent management on the other hand will be referred to as the harnessing of different talents within an organization for the purpose of achieving a common goal.

Indeed how an organization defines talent and talent management can go a long way to affect their approach to these two important concepts. For example when the organization sees talent as something that every other person can have, they would extent talent management to include all employees and not only those at the top executive positions. Also, when they see talent management as something that leads to the growth of the larger organization, they would become more committed to achieving it (Ready & Conger, 2007).

ReferencesHandfield-Jones H. & Axelrod, B. (2001). The War for Talent. London: Harvard Business Press.Ready, D. A., & Conger, J. A. (2007). Make your company a talent factory. Harvard Business Review, 85(6), 68-77.Silzer, R., & Dowell, B. E. (2010). Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.