Talent Management: The Virgin Group - Essay Example

Table of Contents 0 Introduction to the Company - Virgin Blue 2.0 Introduction to Talent Management 3.0 Virgin Blue Talent Management Case Study - 3.1 Problems faced by the Human Resource team at Virgin Blue Airlines – 3.2 Solution - The Virgin Blue Management Approach for effective Talent management - 4.0 Virgin Blue Airlines – a Soft HRM approach to Talent Management 5.0 Talent Management through Work Force Development at Virgin Blue Airlines 5.1 Recruitment process 5.2 Employee Leadership and responsibility 5.3 Performance Based Management 6.0 Results of the implementation of the Talent management plan on Virgin Blue   7.0 Conclusion 8. References 1.0 Introduction to the Company - Virgin Blue The Virgin Group is one of the largest conglomerate groups, with portfolios in various sectors and industries. Th groups deals mainly in travel, media, telecommunications, lifestyle and entertainment. The Virgin Group is divided into separate entities with a total of 200 companies on board and more than 40,000 employees worldwide. The revenue for the entire group stands at more than $12 billion in the past financial year 2008-2009. A subsidiary of the Virgin group – Virgin Blue Airlines was set up on August 3, 2000, by Sir Richard Branson and is based in is Bowen Hills, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. the company started its business with just 2 aircrafts offering services to its clients between Brisbane and Sydney. However, now the company is the second largest airlines in Australia is a well known name for efficient and cheap flyer across the country.  Recently, the company management has made a deal to work together with the Regional Express (Rex) to cater a larger section of clients. Other business partners of Virgin Blue are Virgin Atlantic, United Airlines, Malaysian Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. The airline company provides air flight services in 28 cities in Australia, with Brisbane Airport as its hub, with the help of a fleet of 75 narrow-body Boeings and Embraers.  Originally contributing seven return flights every 24 hrs, between Brisbane and Sydney, the company now covers almost every major city and holiday destinations in Australia. Virgin Blue Airlines has attracted a huge pool of talent to its organization and the management is consistent in its efforts to introduce trademark management style, skills and experience in its employees. The Virgin Blue Airlines management has been enough skillful in retaining large pool of talent in its organization by productively shaping out large partnerships with people to coalesce the knowledge, skill and tap the market presence globally. The objective of the essay is to offer attentiveness on a variety of issues that can be faced by the Virgin Blue Airlines HR team while going for a global recruiting plan. 2.0 Introduction to Talent Management Talent management is one of the main drives of effective and strategic HRM development in a company. Talent management related to the process of developing and incorporating new employees, preserving the existing work force, and attracting expertise from the market towards the organization. Talent management integrates the process of selecting, attracting, training and promoting bright employees to achieve higher performance for the company. The concept of Talent management was initiated in the late 1990’s and has been largely admired and adopted by HR departments across the globe. Talent management has assisted the companies to understand that the employee talent, motivation, expertise and retention is the main driver of the business growth prospects and profits. Among many other issues, the major one holding the concern is that of the company management inability to retain the expertise they have acquired in the form of employees and later develop and enhance their skills. Mostly incompetent talent management strategies and standards fail the Human Resource Department and result in poor recruitment and retaining of talent. Moreover, the demographic shifts in the workforce around the world, increase in virtual workplace offers, and rising workforce diversity are some of the other issues that largely influence the talent management of organizations. It is important that the Talent management must be integrated with the company strategy and business implementation approach. Practising Talent management at every level of the company rather than leaving it to the Human Resource department is also significant. It is the responsibility of the company management to develop such business strategies that promote taking responsibilities by the managers to develop the expertise and other work related skills of their immediate subordinates.interdepartmental sharing of knowledge and other business information so as to promote learning skills should be envisaged in the company process to promote retention of skill and expertise.  Organizations that focus on increasing their talent and subsequently retain it, lay utmost importance on integration of management and recruitment policies with business processes to track and manage their employee talent. Talent management strategy can be divided into two main components. 1.      Employee Development strategy – which maintains a continuous strategy to develop and enhance the expertise of the company employees and is often supported by an individual development plan. and a succession management strategy. 2.      Succession Management Strategy – which is concerned with the development of leadership qualities in a company employees to help  the employees take up senior roles in future for the company. The employees who are identified by the management to portray higher responsibilities join the talent pool of the company and are supported with refined knowledge management plan for their individual growth and leadership development in order to quickly realize their potential for the benefit of the Virgin Blue Airlines business and growth. 3.0 Virgin Blue Talent Management Case Study – This section studies the various problems faced by the Virgin Blue Airlines Human Resource and Development Department in recruiting and retaining the talent at Virgin Blue Airlines and the recommendations put forward to resolve those problems.   3.1 Problems faced by the Human Resource team at Virgin Blue Airlines – Virgin Blue Airlines has recently initiated 12 flights for some new destinations in Southern Australia and the leadership at the company soon realized that the existing market conditions in the prospect locations may approach a strategic inflection point. They sought the company to be best positioned in the country’s airlines industry so that advantages can be reaped in faster. In order to take this challenge, the company realized that it is required to address three major concerns that face the HR department of Virgin Blue. They are as follows: 1. Enhance the Retension rate of the company – It was found that in the recent past, some employees at the senior and middle level of the company have left and the positions were still vacant. Moreover, the retention rate at this level was also low as compared to other levels in the company. 2. Building leadership – The Virgin Blue Ailrlines Company requires high talented performers that are ready to take on leadership and other high profile roles in the company to steer the workforce and the management to growth and success. 3. Diversity – With a high number of offices scattered in the country, the company has to deal with a high number of diverse candidates. It is difficult for the HR management to decide which candidate may suit best to which regional office of the Virgin Blue airlines company.   With these concerns related to talent management and retention of talent at Virgin Blue Airlines, the management has taken some initiatives for a holistic approach of talent management. The management has developed a seven step plan for exhaustive talent management to fulfill the urgent and future needs of the company business. 3.2 Solution - The Virgin Blue Management Approach for effective Talent management - Step 1 – Identification of requirements   The company management approach towards talent management is that of elemental diagnostic one. The approach looks at all the aspects of the company requirements. The team conducted discussions with every department and strive to understand their business and necessities keeping in mind the end customer requirements. In this step, the requirements of the various departments, job profile of vacant positions, scope of performance management system in the company is studied Step 2 – Reduction in work levels There existed a number of work levels with a lot of complexities in the job roles at Virgin Blue. The plan suggests that the roles should be easier for the employees to understand and the complexity should be decreased so that employees can maintain an easier approach towards their work. This was done with the help of a leadership workshop which was organized to help the HR department to slice the competencies and work levels. Step 3 – Employee career management In the above step, the finalized competencies are them confirmed through applying them in practical situations. This step is based upon a co-creation model which promotes employees to work more efficiently. Moreover, this phase of the plan lays importance upon the career management of Virgin Blue employees. It makes sure that all the employees undertake the responsibility of their career and defined roles in the company. Step 4 – Senior Level Counselling   This Step consisted of training the senior level management with talent management and these senior executives were required to pass on the knowledge to their subordinates which distributed the essence of talent management in the company. The seniors acting as counsellors were trained through workshops who later counselled their juniors to implement for their competency development.  Step 5 – Implementation of a self development plan In this step, each employee (senior, middle and Junior level) are required to undertake a personal developmental plan which also has a business impact. This implementation assisted the company employees to move forward towards a premeditated talent management plan.  Step 6 – Ongoing Assessment This step consisted of keeping a track and a regular check on the personal developmental plan and review of the progress of the project along with personal development of employee by their leaders or seniors. Step 7 - Ongoing Till the sixth step, regular evaluation of personal projects and development was concerned, in the last step, it is linked to the talent management strategy of the Virgin Blue company management and the retention and employee development program. Training & Development is also connected to Individual Development projects on Talent Management and Career Development practice. Immersing this into the company structure would result in the overall development of the work force and therefor increase the retention rate for the company as well. 4.0 Virgin Blue Airlines – a Soft HRM approach to Talent Management Human resource management - Harvard Model During the last decade, company policy makers have usually integrated the business agendas near to overreaching aims of that were described as natural resource development, industrial development, or development of robust financial markets. …economic policy agendas of the twenty-first century must as an alternative aim at a more aggressive on talent development structure. Definitely, the development of other resources and markets will hold its significance, but the indeed the value of these resources and markets will progressively be more be shaped by the comparative achievement in structuring relative benefits in talent markets. Virgin Blue has applied a soft HRM based model for the purpose of Talent management. Harvard talent and human resource development is a softer approach and one of the most influential talent management models in the industry. Developed by the experts at Harvard School of Business, this model regards the employees of an organization as Human resources other than business generation units or headcounts as in a hard HRM model. This model successfully integrates the business objectives with HR standards and considers employees as the most valuable asset to an organization. The four basic pillars of the soft HRM model implemented by Virgin Blue are as follows: 1.      Human resource inflow in a Soft HRM and Talent management system - recruitment, selection, appointment, promotion, evaluation and appraisal, and termination, etc. 2.      Reward methods in a soft approach - pay systems (performance management systems), employee motivation, etc. 3.      Employee influence - delegated levels of authority, accountability, power 4.       Work systems - definition/design of work and placement of people. With the help of the above stated soft model approach, Virgin blue management is able to accomplish its commitments, increase cost effectiveness and resemblance in between actions and goals as employees are now more focused and dedicated towards work. 5.0 Talent Management through Work Force Development at Virgin Blue Airlines Discussed here in this section are the various methods implemented by the Virgin Blue management to develop and retain their work force. The various methods are instigating Leadership qualities, and team work, and Performance management systems.   5.1 Recruitment process – The management is very organized and careful in maintaining a consistent strategy towards recruitment of new personals and executives in the company. The previous performance record of the candidate is studied carefully with the help of his previous job profiles and performance track records. Further the qualifications of the candidate prove to be beneficial while recruiting him into the company. Also emotional intelligence tests, geographic suitability and psychometric tests are performed with the candidate to check the suitability of the candidate for Virgin Blue job. With this recruitment process, the company is able to deploy a new and more efficient work force with a higher possibility of long term retention. 5.2 Employee Leadership and responsibility – This is an imperative and a decisive factor for the accomplishment of business objectives laid down by the Virgin blue management. The HR management has implemented various styles of leadership approaches for the workforce to adopt. The managers, cabin crew, staff and other junior level employees are required to take part in special leadership workshops which deliver knowledge and usefulness of leadership qualities. They are taught how to use their leadership skills in critical situations and daily work routines.  Autocratic style, Participative style, and Free-reign style are the various types of leadership styles that are encouraged at Virgin Blue. 5.3 Performance Based Management Performance based management is also implemented at Virgin Blue Company in the form of a  methodical approach to help the management to improve the performance by the establishment of targets of the Virgin blue Employees, measuring their performances, evaluating of this data to drive performance improvement within the organization.  Performance management helps to quantify the input made by every employee and helps the manager to assess the capabilities and easily take decisions regarding promotions and employee benefits as per contribution of work given by am employee. It also identifies a Virgin Blue employee’s weak points and strengths. 6.0 Results of the implementation of the Talent management plan on Virgin Blue   The results of the implementation of the talent management plan and approach showed up in a small time. 1.      The company management was able to develop a detailed competency structure as per needs 2.      A talent management evaluation and development procedure that is used by every employee of Virgin Blue to keep a track of his development while being engaged in the company business. 3.      All the employees at Virgin Blue are trained and aware of the talent management process 4.      All the employees possess knowledge based critical experience through personal development projects which are regularly evaluated for business impact also. 5.      Employees are now able to easily understand and grasp the company business framework at each level after the level complexity and number of levels have been reduced. 6.      Employees now have a vision with respect to their future career growth in the company and what is required in order to achieve the desired growth rate of personal career development in the company. 7.      All the employees which also include the HR department executives are now aware of the talent management process and now they are able to better streamline and improve the company recruiting process and the process of recruitment can be faster and efficient. 8.      Enhanced visibility and precision to executives with a single platform for candidate data. Faster recruitment and longer retension meets the growth needs and scalability of the organization. 7.0 Conclusion The paper sheds light upon the subject of talent management in Virgin Blue. Implementation of talent management systems may be done with the best intentions both for the company and the employees, the real time accomplishment of the business objectives might prove to be more difficult to achieve. The organization culture, its history, and the sensitive work environments need to be carefully controlled in order to render bets possible results in favor of the employees and the company. Including all the employees within the scope of talent management will improve the talent of the organizational assets and improve performances in the long term. 8. References •Bannister, L. 2005. Tips on Talent Management. Campaign: 32-33 •Lewis P. (2003). Cultural Barriers to the Development of Performance Management in China •Berger, L. A. 2004c. Four steps to creating a talent management system. In D. R. Berger & L.Berger (Eds.), The Talent Management Handbook: Ch.2. New York: McGraw-Hill •Farley, C. 2005. HRs role in talent management and driving business results. EmploymentRelations Today, 32(1): 55-6 •Mucha, R. T. 2004. The Art and Science of Talent Management. Organization Development Journal, 22(4): 96-100 •Krewson, H. 2004. Integrating Coaching, Training and Development with Talent Management. In D. R. Berger & L. A. Berger (Eds.), The Talent Management Handbook.: Ch.27. New York: McGraw-Hill Read More