The Importance of Developing Own Talent and Managing Career Pathways within an Organization - Literature review Example

The Importance of Developing Own Talent and Managing Career Pathways within an Organization Name Institution Date Introduction Succeeding in today’s complex worldwide marketplace is enormously challenging. Essentially, it requires organizations speed up the development and deployment of unique talents in order to create novel solutions and resolve versatile problems and to do so more effectively and quickly than ever before. Career building is an important aspect of talent development and it offers individuals with new opportunities for personal relevance and growth. It also provides organizations with a new paradigm for the establishment and sustenance of competitive advantage. Organizations that have effective talent development and management strategies in place are able to have he right employees with the appropriate skills in the right jobs and they also experience improved business results, entailing increased retention, higher internal promotion and hiring and have stronger and more cohesive teams. Importance and value of developing talent in organizations Talent development enables organizations to build careers to drive organizational success. For organizations, particularly those in the hospitality industry, career buiding means deliberately developing and deploying talent to generate a good market position. Career building and talent development enable companies to redirect their human resources management efforts to generate fundamental and outstanding capabilities and to strategically deploy them. Embracing talent development as a competitive strategy overwhelmingly shifts the relationship of the organization with its employees. It involves a concentrates focus on the development of the endlessly evolving skills that sharpen the organization’s marketplace difference-makers. The rapid and flexible deployment of these differentiating talents results to emergence of new threats or opportunities (CIPD, 2003). Career building for competitive advantage enables an organization to recognize its future differentiators which is essential in the identification of talents that must be developed to achieve them. Career building and talent development can’t generate competitive advantage if the organization doesn’t anticipate future and current needs. Cohn, et al (2005 argues that talent development requires organizations to identify culture, systems and leadership it will optimize development and deployment of talents. This is because career building needs an unprecedented level of flexibility, supported by solid schemes to monitor every individual’s limitations and talents and provide suitable development and deployment opportunities. Organizations also require flexible structures to support effective team building and the participation of individuals on multiple teams. Barlow (2006) argues that talent development is important in identifying the limitations, and strengths of employees. Career building requires every career builder leader to have a better understanding of his employees’ limitations and strengths and their influence on advancing the strategic objectives of the organization, and which situations will encourage the biggest contributions from and development of every individual. Through developing talent, an organization is able to identify ways of accelerating the pace of learning so as to drive better results and greater innovation. Creation and sustenance of competitive advantage via building career pathways and developing talents means acceleration of the rate of learning to enhance innovation and results concurrently. This in turn enables the organization to constantly draw on deep and broad sources of knowledge outside and inside the organization (Barlow, 2006). Talent development and management makes sure that an organization has the right individuals in the right job. Through an appropriate ascertainment of people strengths and skills, an organization is able to undertake competency or skill mapping and take stock of skill inventories within the workplace .This is particularly significant both from the employee as well as organization perspective because the correct individual is deployed in the appropriate position and productivity of employee is increased. Also, because there is a superior alignment between a person’s interest and his or her job profile, satisfaction is increased. Developing talents and their subsequent management enables an organization to retain top talents. In spite of changes in global economy, attrition is still a key concern of organizations (Farley, 2005). Retention of top talents is significant to leaders and growth in marketplace. Dowell and Silzer (2005) note that organizations that do not retain their top talents are faced with a high risk of losing out these talents to competitors. The focus of numerous organizations in the hospitality industry is charting employee retention strategies and programs to recruit, retain, develop and engage quality individuals. Growth of employees in a career is being taken care of, whilst succession planning is being undertaken to employees who are on the radar requirement to be maintained in loop so that they recognize that their job performance is being remunerated. Talent development and management results to a better understanding of employees since assessment of employees offers deep insights to the top management about their staff, entailing their career aspirations, development needs, weaknesses and strengths, dislikes and likes and abilities. This in turn makes it easier for the management to determine what motivates every individual and this assist in the job enrichment process (Dowell, & Silzer, 2005). Improved professional development is another benefit of talent development and management. When a company gets to identify who their high potential is, it becomes simpler to invest in their professional development. Because development requires investment decisions towards learning, development and training of the employee either for succession planning, growth, or performance management, it organizations remain bothered where to perform this investment and talent management. Having a strong talent development and management culture determines the way organizations rate their companies as work places. If workers are positive on about practices of talent management, they are highly likely to have self assurance in the future of their company. The outcome is a workforce that is highly committed, determined and engaged to outperform their competitors and guarantee a leadership position in market for their company (Rothwell et al, 2005). Taj Group and its methods of developing career pathways and managing its talent Taj hotels resorts and resorts develop employee’s talents by use of their world class training and development programs and makes sure that employees are continuously learning and constantly growing. Blue Sydney A Taj Hotel provides its employees with tools essential to becoming successful. Every year, Taj group strengthens its operations functions using raw talent from the best school and hotel graduates in India. The organization offers Taj management training programmes similar to an MBA in hospitality that moulds young hotel professionals into prospective business managers. A typical career path includes employees joining Taj management programs management trainees and obtaining the position a hotel general manager through lateral movement via numerous functions such as food and beverage, human resources, front office and sales (Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, 2011). The operations of Taj management training programme are the premier hospitality management training programme in Taj Group. The hotel operations programme focuses upon s careers in two major guest contact departments; front office and food and beverage. After recruitment, employees undergo an 18 month intensive management training programme which is aimed at preparing them for profit centre management at the Taj Group. During the initial 12 months, management trainee focuses upon practice on the job training as well as theoretical exposure to fundamentals in hoteliering. During the other six months, management trainee is provided with inputs that merge management elements including architectural appreciation, management development, materials management, accommodation and human resources. This is also mixed with hand on training as shadow managers to senior resources in Taj properties. The hotel operations program offers educational exposure and development corresponds with an MBA in hospitality. Management trainees are also anticipated to complete live projects during the period of their training ( Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, 2011) In Taj Management Training Programme (TMTP) food production, food production is the leading hospitality management training program for culinary education. Taj’s TMPT- food production focuses upon culinary skills as well as the managerial capability to manage kitchen operations. Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces (2011) notes that recruitment of TMPT food production is performed in all major hotel schools and it entails a two year intensive management training programs which prepare employees for the profit centre managent in Taj. In the first one year, the management trainee focuses upon on practical on the job training as well as theoretical exposure to the hotelering fundamentals. The next one year is focused upon specialization in two different cuisines, with each cuisine consuming six months. In order for the organization to sustain its position of potency in food and beverage, participants are required to undergo specialization within cuisines of the entire globe and this enables Taj group to create chefs with globally acclaim skills. Taj hotel operations management trainee program enables numerous of industry’s top employees to learn their skills and to work their way up via proven ability. Hotel operations management trainee is a one year program that has been designed to coach trainees to the levels of assistant managers of outlets or equivalents inn Taj’s numerous departments. This program is based upon the principle that learning comes through doing. Based upon this principle, the on the job training is built in as a very significant element of the overall programme. Recruitment for this program is offered in all major graduate colleges and hotel schools. The hotel management trainee programme follows a systematic procedure including theory classes, induction, appraisals, evaluation, assessments and on the job training (Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, 2011). Talent management at Taj Group Taj is a brand that merges a prosperous legacy of cautiously cultivated values stepped within a culture of excellence with opportunities for taking part in novel vistas of the organizational growth. The key success factor for the organization’s growth is Taj employees and the talent chosen for this exciting journey. Taj regards considers its staff amongst its most significant stakeholder in taking the company to novel pinnacle of guest delight and service standards. At Taj, each employee is seen as an ambassador of the spirit and culture. The Taj magic is about passion in what an individual is doing, feeling included, warmth, the pursuit of success and the greatest degrees of service standards with a untiring and unrelenting obsession about making the guest to have an excellent experience. This form of spirit that ring via the heart of each organizational staff makes a disparity amid a job in any hospitality organization and career with the organization ( The Indian Hotels Company Limited , 2011). A career within the hospitality industry provides an opportunity of sharpening the talent of an individual’s emotional quotient. The Indian Hotels Company Limited (2011 states that Taj is compounds this advantage because it has diverse properties, people and products. Taj nurtures a service mentality which requires n attitude of being agile and quick in terns attention to detail, response time operational excellence and postponing satisfaction to make sure that guests are always gratifies and developing individual’s social radar by networking skills. Taj offers its employees elbow room and space for discovering opportunities to come out as career leaders within a supportive environment via a greatly potential program in which each manager has a chance to take part. The secure Taj environment encourages its staff to be outspoken and frank, to grow in self-assurance and this self development scheme which accompanies careers in Taj leads to self fulfilling prophecy for excellence and success. The organization has an internal mobility process that permits workers to freely move between disciplines, functions and hotels, and develop their skills and rounded professionals within an employee self discovery atmosphere. Opportunities for career selections are numerous and there are probabilities of moving across to other Taj organizations for talented professionals. The growth plan of Taj, which has entailed expanding its business to the international arena and growing in domestic dominance has offered opportunities for a huge number of careers and role unfolding and this is probably the most attractive schemes who employees who are exploring a career with Taj( The Indian Hotels Company Limited, 2011). Talent management strategies to assist Taj Group in retaining and developing talent and future managers Taj Group uses the talent development pipeline architecture to assist it in retaining and developing talent and future managers. This requires the organization to only look at individuals, but to look at cadre of talent at diverse levels in the company. The company should be assured that it has several employees with great potential, others with both experience and potential who are building a performance record and others who are mature, seasoned, but are still aggressively driving forward. From this group, the organization will choose a few individuals to be organizational leaders or to be managers of specialist functions in the organization. The organization needs to define what form of talent it needs, both for the future and the present, then develop and maintain human resource schemes that will assist the organization to attract, select, develop, deploy, retain and reward this talent (Gandz, 2006). Gandz (2006) notes that the company will have to manage careers of the talented individuals to make sure that they develop the judgment and skills they require as they move into major leadership roles and design and deliver programs that will contribute to this objective. Talent development will have five dimensions. The first dimension is a clear, articulated picture of the Taj’s talent requirements over the next numerous years. This picture must be clear on competencies and other characteristics that that the company wants in its talent pool, so that employees are able to see what it takes to be successful in the company. The second dimension is the use of developmental pathways to attain raw potential nurtured into polished performers. Taj will need to define the challenges, experiences and exposures that employees will meet so as to emerge as high performers in future, either as, specialist leaders, organizational leaders or advanced specialist (Gandz, 2006). The third dimension is identification of key human resource processes and systems that will enable potential to be recognized as performance. This implies having integrated, sound, recruitment and selection, human resource planning, career management, performance management, compensation processes and succession planning to make sure that the talent pipeline is fully filled. This will permit employees to move via the pipeline and also make sure that the pipeline delivers talent when its needed and where it needs to be deployed Gandz, (2006) notes that the last dimension that Taj will be required to look at programs that will enable both talent development and talent managers to perform an excellent task of ensuring that Taj becomes a talent rich organization. Some of these programs might be in house while others might be externally obtained and will involve types of action learning or learning linked with deliver on the accountabilities. Some programs should be focused on values and strategy whereas others will seek at developing competencies. According to Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, (2001), Taj management is required to develop a workforce development plan based on needs and skills inventory to help in empowering its employees and to show then the way they can progress in their careers. Engaging managers should also engage employees in frequent career discussions and encourage them to play a dynamic role in charting the course for their careers. With support and guidance from the organization, employees will be able to explore their own aptitude and desires, the priorities and needs of the company and career options available to them. Employee engagement is a significant aspect of talent management and business performance issue. Workers can have all the talent and skills in the globe, but if their organization and job fail to engage then, they are not likely to put their talent and skills to the fullest and best use. Therefore, Taj should fully engage employees so as talent retention, productivity and ultimate organizational performance. This can be achieved by strengthening employee’s relationships with customers through consciously matching their unique talents to their distinctive needs. The organization should then regularly evaluate and refine its knowledge of targeted market segments and the difference the employees make for them (Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001). Conclusion Talent development is very useful in driving organizational success and generating a good market position. Career building and talent management enables an organization to redirect its HR efforts to generation of outstanding and fundamental capabilities ad to deploy them strategically. Talent development and management at Taj Group ensures that the organization has the right employees in the right jobs and through a suitable ascertainment of employees’ skills and strengths, ensures that employees are deployed in appropriate position which in turn leads to increased productivity. References Gandz, J., (2006). Talent development: The architecture of a talent pipeline that works. Ivey Business Journal, 70(5), 1-4. Barlow, L., (2006). Talent development: The new imperative? Development and Learning in Organizations, 20( 3), 6-9. CIPD. (2003). Managing employee careers: issues, trends and prospects. London: CIPD. Cohn, M., Khurana, R., & Reeves, L., (2005). Growing talent as if your business depended on it. Harvard Business Review, 83 (10), 62-70. Farley, C., (2005). HR’s role in talent management and driving business results. Employment Relations Today, 32(1), 55-61. Handfield-Jones, H., & Axelrod, B., (2001). Talent management: A critical part of ever leader’s job. Ivey Business Journal, 66(2), 53-59. Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces., (2011). Training opportunities. Retrieved on October 21, 2011 from< www.tajhotels.com/Taj//training-opportunities> The Indian Hotels Company Limited (2011). Careers At The Taj. Retrieved on October21, 2011 from Rothwell, W., Jackson, R., & Knight S., (2005).Career planning and succession management: Developing your organization’s talent for today and tomorrow. New York: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Dowell, J., & Silzer, R., (2005). Strategy driven talent management: A leadership imperative. New Jersey: Butterwort-Heinemann Read More