Sustainable Talent Management - Research Paper Example

 Sustainable Talent Management The significance and value of talent remains increasingly obvious to leaders, even though they stay gradually frustrated by the current state of human resource management. Only few leaders have claimed that their judgments about talent have the same strategic depth, rigor, and logic as regards decisions about resources such as products, technology, financial capital, services and customers. Human resource continues to define achievement by the programs it provides, such as e-learning, competency models, e-recruiting, incentive programs and self-service portals. This traditional focus of developing and delivering human resource services that a consumer values remains incomplete. The new pattern must emphasize enhancing decisions about talent, not simply justifying human resource programs (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2004). This paper discusses talent with regards to performance management, talent pools and talent review process, global talent management and organizational benefits of strategy driven talent management and building a sustainable process. According to Boudreau and Ramstad (2004), sustainable talent management requires the tools and processes that enable and encourage the organization’s management to ask the right questions about their talent. This calls for a framework that incorporates effectiveness, efficiency, and impact. Impact involves resources and processes, sustainable strategic success and talent pools and structures. Similarly, effectiveness entails aligned actions, human capacity and talent pools and structures. Moreover, efficiency encompasses investments, and practices and policies. The framework remains useful in determining employee performance management process. The process starts with human resource investments, practices at the bottom, and clarifies how they connect upwards to resources, processes, and sustainable strategic success. Similarly, the framework remains useful in talent assessment starting in the middle. The framework governs a discourse on human capacity and how it links upwards to essentially aligned actions, talent pools, and business resources or processes. Hence, innovation found to have high impact on human capacity would be helpful in the identification of employee performance management process. The effects of leadership in the management of talent pools and talent review process have significant impacts on almost all elements of human resources. These elements include leadership development, human resource infrastructure, measurement, competencies, and strategy. By working one process at a time, organizations would be able to make significant improvements. Moreover, opportunities for enhanced communication and integration could emerge to generate new cooperation for the organization. The effect of leadership also seeks answers based on talent markets and human behavior to business questions. The talent review process would make the organization to evolve in the direction of decision science for talent. Consequently, organizations would achieve sustained competitive achievement through talent (Ready & Conger, 2007). Talent management professionals have become more skilled at identifying which talent profiles would be more efficient for achieving certain organizational strategies. The process of developing functional expertise, setting, and measuring talent management objectives involves the formulation of appropriate talent management objectives. For instance, the ability to adapt and learn new organizational requirements comprises an objective. Competency models that cut off a minority of characteristics said to define effective leadership in a given organization remain widely used to define and narrow the domain of leadership. Nevertheless, such simplistic models sacrifice the aspect that experts bring something unique to how they perform. Thus, there exists some style or art in leadership that cannot be held in a standardized report card of skills. While there exist some evidence that leaders should master some foundation abilities or basic skills, and that they progress as they become more capable, it would also true that leaders bring unique aspects to the role. Hence, leaders like other experts bring what they know and their selves to the growing challenges of mastery and each leader follows a relatively different pathway (McCall & Hollenbeck, 2008). Best practice includes setting specific goals for developing others, measuring progress in doing so, and sanctions for how well it has done. In addition, managers are given quality data on the talent pool, and processes from succession planning to performance management include significant developmental components. Further, best practice reflects the reality of the pressure put on managers to keep their most talented people rather than letting them take developmental assignments, and the pressure to fill open slots with known quantities rather than take a risk on outsiders or unproven though talented individuals. Organizations need to be proactive in responding to these pressures by making sure to support managers who act contrary to their perceived self-interest. Support can be found in the values of senior management when they not only model what is desired, but also see to it that people are not punished for allowing talented people to make developmental moves. You can only do what you can to provide the fertile ground, resources, and support so that those who have the desire and dedication to seek mastery can get on with it. With any luck and a lot of hard work, organizations can develop the leadership talent that is essential for sustained success (McCall & Hollenbeck, 2008). According to Scullion and Collings (2010), the key elements of global talent management include customers, demographics, innovation, individuals, and the demand for workers with motivation and competencies. Increasing global competition indicates the achievement of enhanced innovation and quality and low costs. Thus, small and large firms have the pressure to adapt and quickly respond to gain and sustain a competitive advantage worldwide. On the other hand, multinational companies in responding to the impact of globalization adapt to local differences, seek economies of scale and opportunities, and learn continuously. Multinational companies also transfer knowledge more successfully than their competitors and take advantage of ideal locations as they await future relocations. Customers demand innovation with differences representing unique features of different countries. In this regard, organizations in the present day think and act global by providing a social networking ability and focusing on services. Organizations in effect establish themselves near to the customers. Furthermore, the increasing numbers of individuals entering the labor market result from the development and spread of affordable technologies. As a result, firms have the ability to employ work force from developing countries at a lower wage rate than those from developed countries. Management processes such as the acquisition of needed competencies and motivation by the work force, attainment of consistence between human resource actions and the range of employment regulations, effective coordination of work for distributed work force affect global talent management (Scullion & Collings, 2010). Another element of global talent management includes demographics. Evidence shows that the population size of emerging and developing countries keep increasing while getting younger. On the contrary, the population size of developed countries keeps shrinking with a growing proportion of the aged. Information about the differences in demographic characteristics such as a region and age would be essential for multinational organizations while considering the ideal location and relocation of their operations worldwide. Lastly, the creation of new employment opportunities results in the growing demand for workers with motivation and competencies. On the contrary, there exists an increasing need for the willing work force to take up existing jobs under new and changing situations. The existing jobs necessitate the development of motivation and additional competencies. Management processes involving interaction with more demanding customers and the use of more advanced technology in management functions affect global talent management. Moreover, the operation of more sophisticated machinery by increased competencies affects global talent management (Scullion & Collings, 2010). Silzer and Dowell (2009) indicated that having sound talent management and robust talent remains critical to the survival of organizations. From the outcomes of their research findings, organizational benefits accrue from strategy driven talent management and help in building a sustainable talent management process. These organizational benefits include extensive orientation of new work force, the development of formal management patterns and the careful selection of Chief Executive Officer and succession planning. In addition, the work force would become aligned with organizational values with appropriate selection and rewards. Investment in human capabilities through training, recruiting, and development also constitute organizational benefits of strategy driven talent management that produce sustainable talent management process. Hence, multinational organizations have strategic and integrated talent management processes and systems focused on the achievement of set organizational objectives. In conclusion, talent management remains a leadership imperative rather than a more desirable human resource process. It would be rather difficult for organizations to succeed in the end without incorporating strategy driven talent management into the organizational model. Lastly, the rising global demand for talent together with the decreasing availability of exceptional talent makes the acquisition, development, and retention of talent a major strategic challenge for most organizations. References Boudreau, J. W., & Ramstad, P. M. (2004). Talentship and the Evolution of Human Resource Management: From Professional Practices to Strategic Talent Decision Science. University of Southern California, Center for Effective Organizations Working Paper. McCall, M. W., & Hollenbeck, G. P. (2008). Developing the Expert Leader. People and Strategy, 31(1), 20. Ready, D. A., & Conger, J. A. (2007). Talent Factory. Harvard Business Review, June, 69-77. Scullion, H. & Collings, D. G. (Eds.). (2010). Global Talent Management. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. Silzer, R. & Dowell, B. E. (Eds.). (2009). Strategy-Driven Talent Management: A Leadership Imperative. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Read More