The Talent Management and Leadership of Southern Company - Essay Example

? Southern Company Case Study Introduction Different companies have different methods of achieving the same thing, that being success. Without the proper strategy, a company is bound to fail in its quest to make a mark in these hard global economic times. A company is comprised of members who are employed in order to ensure the effectiveness of the company, and also so that the maximum potential of a company is reached. With proper leadership, workers of a company are motivated to work as a team even though they are in different ranks in a company in order to ensure its survival. Southern Company is an electric utility company headquartered in Atlanta.   The firm possesses electric gadgets in ‘Alabama’, ‘Florida’, ‘Georgia’, and ‘Mississippi’ and services millions of customers. It also provides services in fiber optics and wireless communications fields. The brands of this company are known for their customer service, which is highly excellent, have high reliability standards, and for the best part have priced their retail electric prices below the national average. The hiring system of the company was at the entry level, and individuals were promoted internally for leadership positions to be filled. Because of this, the company had a very low turnover rate, of which the result was that an older and more tenured workforce was present. After much thought, the Company came up with a group of leaders who had a professional level of business knowledge and were conversant with the company’s organization and culture. In the late 1970s, the company hired a large number of people, and this ensured that by the year 2003, most of those workers who had remained with the company were beginning to face retirement (Goldsmith, Marshall, Carter, Louis, & Best Practice Institute, 2009). The company’s employees had and still have a retirement age of 50 years old, so many executives had to retire in large numbers, and also those who succeeded them would have to follow shortly. With this, the cthis assisted the firm to review and reform their succession planning and leadership development efforts to ensure that they had a well planned from which effective leaders would be able to meet the company’s future business needs. The company’s leadership people formed teams that assisted in the overall ratings. Leaders comprehended what they wanted after the recognizing the performance standards. They were equipped with skills of making employees work outstandingly hard (Goldsmith, Marshall, Carter, Louis, & Best Practice Institute, 2009). Leaders are tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that their companies have the maximum performance ability and also to ensure the effectiveness of the company’s employees. Leaders are tasked with ensuring that employees’ performance is effective, and also should be able to develop and integrate new workers (Cohen, 2007). Developing and retaining of existing workers is also a major concern, while also finding ways to attract skilled workers to a company is another role of a leader. Talent management is the process by which an organization finds ways and means to retain, motivate, attract, engage, train, plan, manage, and most importantly develop individuals who can make the company rise to unimaginable heights in the global market. For every person coming into working economy, they have a particular talent and qualification. The Talent Management program enables these qualifications and talents to be systematically used in the operative process of a company. Most companies have a type(s) of employee appraisal system. Many companies are at a disadvantage of experiencing the lack of manual staff evaluation systems. Many individuals have trouble differentiating between performance management and performance appraisal. Performance Management is the process whereby the employees’ activities and outcomes are in line with the company’s objective and also ensures that whatever the outcome and activities involved, they are for the success of the company (Pulakos, 2009). An effective Performance Management process ensures the company success through ways that include: Combining individual employee objectives with the company’s’ aim and plans. With this, the employee has knowledge on how they contribute to the achievement the of the business objectives. Focus on setting performance objectives which are clear and can be seen by the use actions and behaviors, which provide the required result. Clear development plans Are part of a long process towards success. Regular discussions throughout the performance management which includes things like assessment, mentoring, and feedback. Performance appraisal describes the process of looking at precedent presentation and avoiding to assess that performance. In this essay, emphasis will be put on a certain company, Southern Company, and leaders played an important role in the performance and talent management strategies. They used certain strategies to gather facts that were required to ensure that every employee achieved success. Strategic criteria’s were developed and implemented in order to from a process-focused operation (Pulakos, 2009). For strategic criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the talent management strategy, there needs to be a development and implementation of five important and fundamental strategies on which the foundation of talent management success can be built. Companies that have been known to implement these talent management practices have an advantage over their competitors since their company return goes up by a considerable percentage above others. The five talent management strategies are (Berger & Berger, 2011): 1. Identifying the company or business goals For any business, goals have to be present and they determine the main purpose of coming up with the business in the first place. Identifying certain business goals will enable leaders and their employees to come up with the required criteria. This is because there is a determinant of what specific talent is essential for the organization to attain the required success. The department concerned with the businesses’ core function, Human Resource, needs to look beyond the process of analyzing business ideas. It needs to expand beyond such processes and concentrate on engaging with business leaders in order for there to be support, which in turn helps in satisfying the needs and objectives of the company. The Human Resource department can provide leaders, them being the executives and managers of a company, with data concerned with talent management. Providing such data to leaders will help them make better decisions, such as where to look for the required quality talent so as to invest properly, or how to manage the staff in order to acquire the required outcome (Berger & Berger, 2011). 2. Aligning business and employee objectives Both the employees’ needs, and the business have to be treated as an equal, in terms of achieving an effective result to achieve the required talent management outcome,. For an existing company, attention has to be focused on the desired course of business. Also, the desired talent has to be put in place in order to ensure that the company stays ahead of its rivals. The key things to be looked at under aligning business and employee objectives are to evaluate how company initiatives align with departmental and individual ability to perform properly. Thus, give answers to questions such as how can talent be found that meets business demands in the current market, how to improve and maintain employee commitment, and also how to develop strategic succession plans with career paths for employees? After this is done, communication should be done in order for talent management objectives that support company initiatives and objectives are aligned everyone in the organization. Doing this also sends a message to other prospective workers; that their interests are best looked into while serving as an employee of the company. This is bound to attract lots potential and skilled employees (Berger & Berger, 2011). 3. Engaging the employees Employees are the working forces that drive the company to its upmost limits depending on how they are guided to do that. Neglecting company employees on the basis that they are just the working force is the beginning of the downfall of that organization. Engaging employees is one of the best ways to enhance job satisfaction and enable a high-performing workforce that is in line with the company’s objectives. Certain steps or measures have to be taken to a comprehension of one’s employees. Exploring social networks like can give a company leader information about his employees’ skills, competencies, abilities and passions. Employee performers can be charged with the responsibility to take on new roles in certain parts of the organization with this. Performance objectives that are in line with company strategies helps employees to have a contribution to overall business performance, and this ensure that they see their work as meaningful (Berger & Berger, 2011). 4. Developing a qualified talent source A talent source should be identified in order to ensure that the company does have the required supply of talent to fill positions that might otherwise be left vacant because of certain circumstances. In case a company has limited or no talent source, then one can be built internally. Supply source of talent with succession planning should be built in order to ensure the company stays ahead of its competitors. Developing a talent source includes insight into the capabilities required throughout the company and as such also an inventory of talent competency and skills. With this, leaders will have access to get the good workers with talent. One should evaluate where the best employees came originated from, and this can lead the company on the path of developing those who were initially just candidates for the job into employees (Berger & Berger, 2011). 5. Tightening of compliance measures with the help of automation With the coming of more advanced technology, the company compliance measures should be tightened. Processes regarding employees, like analyzing and engaging should be able to be repeated, audited, and documented for compliance purposes. Ancient methods of attaining and preserving information like paper-based processes for data entry have redundancies. Insufficient assumptions keep the organization with the current standards of compliance. Using automating recruiting, doing background checks and drug testing, not only hastens the process of hiring and saves time and money, but also provides for a process that is related to human error and manual controls, which comes as a risk. By tightening compliance measures with the help of automation, costs are saved, which leads to increased business value. Implementing fundamental talent management strategies makes thee firm successful (Berger & Berger, 2011). With these five areas into play, talent management efforts are improved and thus the company is able to thrive where its competitors find it hard to thrive. All plans have disadvantages, and as for the five mentioned above, disadvantages or negative outcomes might range from; poor understanding of expectations, misdirected bonuses that send out the wrong message, employees might become too emotionally affected in case they miss an opportunity, leading to high levels of stress for managers and also employees. This can also be the problem where the manager tries to please all employees. Another issue can be the lack of alignment of performance with regards to promotions, employee dependence on the managers’ opinion, whether subjective or objective. There can also be poor development opportunities since there is much dependence. Different companies have different strategic ways on how to get results from their employees, and they are still as effective as the ones mentioned above. Other alternative ways to get acquire effective results include; business diagnosis, assessment, program design, implementation, on-the-job support, and evaluation. These ought to ensure that talent management is successful (Birds, 2010). Conclusion By using the above strategies and methods, talent management should be effective since the results that are acquired from the implementation of the above mentioned strategies are effective. They ensure that the company achieves success and that its potential is reached. References Berger, L. A., & Berger, D. R. (2011). The talent management handbook: Creating organizational excellence by identifying, developing, and positioning your best people. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional. Birds, J. (2010). Annotated companies legislation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, E. (2007). Leadership without borders: Successful strategies from world-class leaders. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia. Goldsmith, Marshall, Carter, Louis, & Best Practice Institute. (2009). Best Practices in Talent Management: How the World's Leading Corporations Manage, Develop, and Retain Top Talent, Epub Edition. Pfeiffer & Co. Pulakos, E. D. (2009). Performance Management: A New Approach for Driving Business Results. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Read More