Strategic Approach to Talent Management. In the era, where global business is talk of town, every employer has to be ready for meeting the future business demands, which can be efficiently handled through talent management. Talent management is gaining popularity as a significant predictor of employee and business performance. It refers to integration of new workers, developing and retaining existing workers as well as attracting experienced and qualified persons to work for organisation.
Strategic Approach to Talent Management
Talent management is a process that emerged in the 1990s and continues to be adopted, as more companies come to realize that their employees’ talents and skills drive their business success. These companies develop plans and processes to track and manage their employee talent, including, attracting and recruiting qualified candidates with competitive backgrounds, managing and defining competitive salaries, training and development opportunities, performance management processes, retention programs, promotion and transitioning. Talent strategy is, in fact, as important as any other part of an organization’s overall strategy, regardless of the business conditions.
Objectives
- To understand the importance of Talent Management
- To elaborate on the role of HR as a strategic enabler of Talent Management Practices in organisations.
Research Methodology
This article is a conceptual study. The article explicates the review of related literature on the subject. The secondary data is collected using online databases such as Proquest, Sage Publications, Emerald and Ebsco. The author has made an attempt to understand, role of HR as a strategic enabler of Talent Management Practices in organisations.
Talent Management
Talent management can be defined as the strategic management of the flow of talent through an organisation (Duttagupta, 2005). It comprises the processes from recruiting the best to retaining the best. Talent management is a thorough and holistic approach to management in an organisation, which ultimately develops into organizational culture and create competitive advantage (Lockwood, 2005). Cohn et al. (2005) stated that those who are not giving sufficient attention to human resource management and development will lose in the long run. Identifying talents in the organisation is a responsibility that lies not only with organizations’ HR executives, but also with its line managers (Cohen et al., 2005).The different aspects of the engagement and development of talent within an organisation may consist of highly valued project assignments, cross-functional training, mentoring, externships, continuous feedback and international exposure (Branham, 2005).
Together with the possibility of executive education these aspects make up a talent programme. It is important however to acknowledge that the term talent management is used loosely and often interchangeably across a wide array of terms (Rothwell, 2005). It could refer to recognizing and developing the top percentile of performers in an organization or refer to specific programs initiated for fast-tracking High potentials or it could be strategic processes and people development (Duttagupta, 2005; Rothwell, 2005). With a shift from replacement planning to succession planning, talent management has become a strategic planning tool (Bunning, 2002). According to Rothwell (2005) succession planning assist in detecting training and development needs in identifying and utilising talents and intellectual capital by providing opportunities for individuals to grow and develop in the organisation and help in optimum utilization of the capital spend on human resource management.
Employee Effectiveness
The success of any industry is depending on employee’s contribution and commitment (Baum and Kokkranikal, 2005). The growth and success of a company cannot be measured alone on the profits which it earns. In today’s highly competitive and complex business environment, the talent which an organisation possess in the form of its employees effectiveness i.e. their skills and competencies decide its success (Lockwood, 2006). From HR perspective, the effective employees’ reflect behaviour in an organisation like-
- Belief in the organisation and its objectives;
- Desire to work to make things better;
- Proper understanding of the business context;
- Being respectful and helpful o colleagues;
- A willingness to go the extra mile and
- Keeping updated with recent developments.
Talent Drives Performance
Analyst research has proven that organizations using talent management strategies and solutions exhibit higher performance than their direct competitors and the market in general. From Fortune 100 global enterprise recruiting and performance management to small and medium business eRecruiting, leading companies invest in talent management to select the best person for each job because they know success is powered by the total talent quality of their workforce.
The Talent Age
In 1997, a McKinsey study coined the term: war for talent. Now in the new millennium, we find ourselves in the talent age. During the agricultural age, the economy was based on land, a truly physical and very tangible asset. The industrial age followed with a manufacturing-driven economy. Higher business performance was derived through the most effective use of factories and distribution networks.
The knowledge age moved the basis of economic value to information assets through integrated communications and computer technology. Now the competitive battlefront is for the best people because they are the true creators of value.
Challenges Facing HR and Talent Management Processes
Many challenging workforce issues confront HR, including:
- Heightened competition for skilled workers
- Impending retirement of the baby boomers
- Low levels of employee engagement
- Acknowledgement of the high cost of turnover
- Arduous demands of managing global workforces
- Importance of succession planning
- Offshoring and outsourcing trends
This requires new thinking and a new mission to achieve business success. These factors—coupled with the need to align people directly with corporate goals—are forcing HR to evolve from policy creation, cost reduction, process efficiency, and risk management to driving a new talent mindset in the organization.
One important distinction is the evolution of the difference between tactical HR and strategic talent management. Transactional HR activities are administrative overhead. Talent management is a continuous process that delivers the optimal workforce for your business.
Taleo’s graphical representation emphasizes the mandate of talent management to respond to business goals and consequently be the driver of business performance. Talent management is depicted as a circular—not a linear—set of activities.
Conclusion
Workforce cost is the largest category of spend for most organizations. Automation and analysis of your recruiting and hiring processes provides the immediate workforce visibility and insights you need to significantly improve your bottom line. Performance management provides the ongoing processes and practices to maintain a stellar workforce. Today, many organizations are struggling with silos of HR processes and technologies. The future of talent management is embodied in solutions designed from the ground up to provide business-centric functionality on a unified talent management platform.
Though it may seem intuitive, it is worthwhile to articulate the fundamental significance of successful talent management practices:
- The key enabler of any organization is talent.
- The quality of your people is your last true competitive differentiator.
- Talent drives performance.
Talent management requires strong executive support, along with systems and processes all directed towards having the right talent doing the right work at the right time. That’s when talent truly drives higher business performance.
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