Talent Management

Talent management is one of the major concerns of HR professionals. We come across many seminars, workshops and talks on this much debated topic. This unit is going to throw some light on the historic principles and procedures adopted by many organisation related to talent management. You will also understand the significance of talent management and how it has become easier to manage the organisational talent with the help of human resource information system.

Talent management is not another term for the HR professionals. Talent management brings new perspective that unifies various HR activities such as recruitment, hiring, training, promoting, retraining, career planning and succession planning. A decade back talent was primarily focusing on hiring qualified and experienced individuals with a hope that they would easily fit in the organisational frame.

Now the competition has posed new challenges. Matching individual skills to job requirement is insufficient. Talent management requires a concrete HR plan that is focused towards developing the employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities. The ultimate product of talent management programme nested with HRM functions is that individuals can become high performing employees who can contribute to growth, development and profitability of the organisation.

Concept and Significance of Talent Management

To understand why Talent Management has become so focused, we must first look at the evolution of Human Resources.

Stage 1: Personnel Department

In the early 1970s and late 1980s, the business function which was responsible for people was called the “Personnel Department”. The role of the personnel department was to recruit manpower, pay them as per the industry standards and make sure they had the required benefits. The systems which grew up to support this function were batch payroll systems.

Stage 2: Strategic HR

In the 1980s and 1990s organisations realised that the HR function was in fact more vital and the concept of “Strategic HR” emerged. During this period, organisations realised that the Head of HR had a much bigger role: recruiting the right people, training them, helping the company devise job roles and organisation structures (organisation design), develop “total compensation” packages which consist of benefits, stock options and bonuses and serve as a central point of communication for employee health and contentment.

Stage 3: Talent Management

We have now entered into a new era – the era of growth of “Talent Management”. While strategic HR continues to be a leading focus, HR and Learning & Development (L&D) organisations are now paying attention on a new set of strategic issues. The challenge was to answer how can the recruiting process be more efficient and effective? How can the organisations develop better managers and leaders? How to identify competency gaps?

Today’s modern organisations focus on critical areas of human resource management such as performance management system, competency management, career planning and succession planning. Management is always in the lookout for how to integrate HR with business objectives.

At the international level, there are top organisations which follow best talent management practices. Kimberly-Clark, Seagate, Capgemini, Steelcase are few of them. In India also there are organisations which are known for their best practices in talent management. As per the survey conducted by Hay Group in association with Fortune India, Tata Consultancy Services, Hindustan Unilever Limited and ITC are the organisations where talent management practices are considered to be the best.

“Talent Management is the systematic cycle of planning, execution and evaluation to manage the flow of talent into, through and out of the organisation to achieve goals and meet needs.”

Enhancing employee performance with dynamic goal alignment/management

It is found that every department wants to play a key role in the achievement of organisational objectives. Making good use of these departmental needs, HR tries to ensure that they provide employees with a feeling where they feel recognised. Employees automatically put in their best when they are made known of their performance and they are informed of what is expected from them. The moment they come to know what is anticipated of them, they try to relate themselves with organisational objectives and develop commitment to their jobs.

Talent Management Life Cycle

Organisations are made up of people: Every organisation strives to achieve success but it is necessary that the organisation do have all the material, financial and people resources to sustain and grow. Organisations need to have uninterrupted process for procuring, training, managing, maintaining and compensating human resources.

The following figure demonstrates the talent management life cycle.

Talent Management Life Cycle is a continuous process that deals with human beings in an all-inclusive, holistic way ensuring that both employee and employer reap the greatest benefit from their reciprocal association.

Talent Management and Corporate Strategy

Organisations which really wish to hire the best of employees across all levels do have integrated approach towards people and talent management. As per the survey conducted in human intensive organisations, it was reported that more than 85% of senior officials considers talent management as the major competitive and comparative advantage and a differentiating factor to attract and retain the best brains and highly successful leaders. Many organisations have accepted this fact and are paying more attention towards employee learning and development to ensure business profitability.

Talent management not only means identifying the potentialities of the employees but it also means that the organisation should realise how best they can utilise their employees’ energy, enthusiasm and knowledge to achieve overall organisational purpose. Managers need to understand how they can develop a pool of natural talents within the organisation and eliminate all the obstacles in achieving overall effective organisational performance.

HRIS talent management solutions tries to bring together the need of policy decision-makers, executives and employees and integrates the data across human resources process such as recruitment, selection, training and development, career development and succession planning.

Based on survey reports, it is found that those responsible and answerable for management spends most of their time in looking out for right talent, developing them as per organisational criteria, mentoring them and making them ready to take up higher responsibilities. The story does not end here, the retention of such bright employees is the biggest challenge.

Talent management takes a holistic view of each activity of an organisation and tries to foster an environment where there is clear communication of goals and performance expectations from every single individual across the levels.

Following are few of the talent management strategies adopted by today’s corporate:

• Increasing the size of existing pool of talent
• Providing employees with greater job satisfaction
• Ensuring talent visibility across the organisation
• Career and succession planning
• Taking appropriate action based on individual performance

Talent Management and Business Culture

It is globally accepted that organisational culture cannot be defined precisely as it actually defines individual organisation’s personality. Organisation’s personality depends on business culture. Business culture is a combination of creativity, values, traditions, thinking and behavioural norms adopted by employees and their formal and informal groups within the establishment.

Organisational and business culture is intangible. The question arises is why is it important? Business culture, associates’ response and more importantly employees’ morale directly contributes to business efficiency and effectiveness. It reduces wastage of resources and opens up new avenues for further development. Positive organisational and business culture enhances customer orientation approach, goodwill, share prices and brings in more business.

Human capital is the primary intangible source for culture creation and culture plays a major role in talent acquisition, talent development and talent management. Organisations prefer employees not only with right skill, knowledge and talent but they are keen on having ‘culturally fit’ employees.

Culturally fit employees are expected to be more efficient, motivated, gel well with all and derive happiness and job satisfaction from what they do and the way they perform. All this translates and transforms into high performers and such employees develop organisational commitment and are potential candidates for succession planning. Things may go wrong if the hiring decisions are taken without considering the element of culture fit.