Talent Management Program - Research Paper Example

? Talent Management Program Number That talent management is inextricably interwoven into an organization’s lifeline is a matter that is underscored by the fact that organizations must possess the best talent to thrive and succeed in an increasingly complex and hypercompetitive economy. This is because talent management determines directly, the extent of employee competence, motivation and productivity. Likewise, it is only through proper talent management that an organization such as McDonald is able to recruit, nurture and consolidate the much needed talent as a resource critical to the realization of organizational goals. 1. Outlining the Talent Management Program That Led to Success for the Company McDonald's talent management program is behind the company's success, and its multipronged nature can be divided into five stages, as shall be seen. The first step of McDonald's talent management program is the redesigning of the company's performance development system for McDonald's rank and file, as a way of instilling accountability (Goldsmith and Carter, 2010). According to Goldsmith and Carter (2010), the second step of McDonald's talent management program involved designing the global talent review process, in order to help the company's staff align itself with changes that are taking place in the global market. There is the diagnosing of individual employees' ability and actual performance in different circumstances, as a way of determining an employee's inherent skills. The step above will be followed up with the analysis of the results that have been displayed by the employee being examined in order to interpret the actual extent of the employee's talents and skills. The final step may involve action planning which portends, factoring the manner in which the displayed talents and skills by a particular employee can be consolidated and nurtured, so that newer skills are acquired without nascent talents being forfeited. This step may also involve integrating the talents detected into organizational (or McDonald's) synergy and operations. 2. Identifying Strengths of the Program and How They Led to Goal Accomplishment According to Handfield-Jones, Michaels and Axelrod (2001), the strengths attributable to the programs above led to the accomplishment of McDonald's goals. Particularly, redesigning the company's performance development system for McDonald's employees helped foster accountability at the intrapersonal level. Thus, this paves way for the eradication of abuse of office, underperformance, and professional negligence. In the same manner, the step served as an important artifice to encourage efforts towards the attainment of goals relevant to a particular office and officer, since these officers are accountable. All these are factors that fast-track optimal performance and thereby helping in the realization of the previously set performance target. Designing the global talent review process also serves as a point of strength, for talent management, since it gives talent management a wider and more global scope. Instead of focusing on employees' performance ability and skills at the intra-organizational level, employees' talents and abilities are weighed against global expectations and thereby helping McDonald's employees focus on maintaining the competence that is needed to thrive in a competitive global business environment. In the same wavelength, embarking on the global talent review process empowers employees to be abreast with the challenges and requirements that characterize the global market. In this case, by engaging its employees in the global talent review process will help McDonald employees navigate complex matters in the global market, with these matters ranging from cultural restrictions on diet, local trade laws and commercial laws on multinationals, regional technological disparity, the local market's structure, competition and purchasing power. Another strength in engaging employees in designing the global talent review process as a way of observing talent management is that the individuality of the employee is upheld, so that it becomes possible to ascertain the employee's skills, competence and abilities, in light of his counterparts across the globe. This practice empowers McDonalds to: respect individuality; identify key desirable traits in an employee; identify the best approaches that can be used to inculcate desirable qualities and abilities; realize optimal harnessing of desirable talents; identifying the learning curriculums and institutions that best bring out desirable talents in light of oncoming recruitment drives; and by extension, liaise with tertiary-level learning institutions on how best to bring out business, organizational and administrative talents in learners. All these are important for McDonald's success. Diagnosing of individual employees' ability and actual performance in different circumstances is also a point of strength for McDonalds since it helps McDonalds determine an employee's ability and the employee to also come face to face with the reality of his strengths and limitations. In this case, both McDonalds and the employee will be interested in rejuvenating a particular employee's initiative. This initiative is bound to realize great success since its motive will have been coupled with the employee's personal initiative (Wellins, Smith and Erker, 2009). Analyzing the results that have been displayed by the employee being examined will help in interpreting the actual extent of the employee's talents and skills. It is only by interpreting the actual extent of employee's talents and skills that an organization can determine corrective measures on (an) employee(s) with an effective precision. Action-planning has several points of strength, in that by it, the human resources (HR) department is able to integrate the talents detected into organizational (or McDonald's) synergy and operations. Action-planning helps the rest of the organization to determine the employee who best fits an office, courtesy of merit. Work is done and duties are more effectively and efficiently discharged when handed to people with the most appropriate talents, skills and ability. Thus, action-planning is the very point at which the talent management program meets organizational relevance. 3. Describing Opportunities for Improvement in the Talent Management Planning Process There are other measures that McDonalds can exercise to improve on its talent management planning process. For instance, McDonalds can improve on its sabbatical program so that instead of extending employees an eight-week leave after every ten years of employment, this leave should be made more frequent (like 3 years). Making sabbaticals more frequent presents employees with the chance to rejuvenate and hone their skills and talents. Making employees go for ten years without sabbatical expedites mental fatigue and exacerbates psychological stress (Rudis, 2007). McDonalds can also inject a sense of transparency into its talent management program. To this effect McDonalds can introduce biannual sessions wherein managers, with the help of their peers, review the best replacement candidates. The replacement candidates should be allowed to have a familiarization session with the senior managers in the form of a dialogue. The incorporation of managers and their peers will help attenuate room for subjectivity and its manifold manifestations such as favoritism and bias. The aforementioned aspect of transparency can be fostered further by incorporating State of Talent report in McDonald's talent management programs. The report is to provide a lot of metrics on how the managers should go about diversity, replacement depth, interpreting feedback and ratings. These reports can be presented to McDonald's top 200 executives, as a way of excising black box from succession planning, since participants are too many to engineer an employee's promotion or demotion. 4. Creating At Least Two Effective Approaches to Meet the Talent Management Challenges In The Future McDonalds can also opt for the use of current information and technology (IT) to make its talent management more effective and more transparent. This is to the effect that the State of Talent report can be computerized to allow room for faster, easier and wider retrieval by McDonald’s top 200 executives. To this effect, the executives can access the report and follow the process of talent management program, the benchmarks that were used in the entire process from their individual offices, for future reference. This will help remove the challenge of subjectivity which readily accosts talent management, especially when the HRM department is responsible over the entire process (Conger and Fulmer, 2003). Alternatively, McDonalds can start with the end of talent management in mind, with the end being, the need to align talent strategy with business strategy. This may mean that in order for McDonalds’ lent strategy to work, its business strategies and goals must determine and drive the quantity and quality of the talent that is being sought after. References Conger, J. A., & Fulmer, R. M. (2003). Developing Your Leadership Pipeline. Harvard Business Review, 81 (12), 76-84. Goldsmith, M. & Carter, L. (2010). Best Practices in Talent Management. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Handfield-Jones, H., Michaels, E., & Axelrod, B. (2001). Talent Management: A Critical Part of Every Leader’s Job. Ivey Business Journal, 66 (2), 53-58. Rudis, E. (2007). CEO challenge: Perspectives and analysis. New York: The Conference Board. Wellins, R., Smith, A. B. & Erker, S. (2009). Nine Best Practices for Effective Talent Management. White Paper, 3 (5), 6. Read More