A full-cycle summary of the talent development

This article aims to summarise the fundamental process of talent development that is collected from my humble years working and studying talent development for my master's degree. Before jumping into the main points, the definition and purpose of talent development will be introduced first to set the context.

According to CIPD (2022), talent development is considered to be one of the key priorities in the people profession since it aims to identify, develop, engage and retain individuals that are valuable in organizations.

The definition and purpose of Talent Development are approached differently by various academic authors (Abdullah, 2009). In general, there are 2 main perspectives that can be recognized among them: performance and humanism. While the performance approach aims at the business results to design learning strategies and practices (see, for example, Swanson, 1995; The Manpower Services Commission, 1982; Nadler and Nadler, 1989), the humanistic perspective focuses on the individual development within or even beyond the organizations (see, for example, McLagan, 1989; Chalofsky, 1992; Stewart & McGoldrick, 1996; Wilson, 1999). However, it is argued that these two elements are inseparable since organizations also benefit from the enhanced skills and knowledge of their employees through their practical applications at work (Swanson and Holton, 2001, p. 4).

In terms of the Talent Development Process, although there are also many different approaches that were introduced by many authors, Mankin's (2009) tends to reflect the most practical aspect for the development of talents and his model is found to possess similarities in those that were adopted by many organizations.

The below model is an adaptation from Mankin's 6 stages model of the Talent Development process (2009, p. 205), the adjustment was made based on the progression of my personal research and working experience.

Compared to the original model of Mankin (2019), it is recognized that this one has the 0 stage which is the learning need analysis, meanwhile, Mankin combined this activity as part of the setting aims and objectives stage. In reality, conducting learning need analysis consumes much more effort and time and the theoretical estimation, and it is also the most critical phase which set the foundation for the whole journey, therefore, this step deserves its own place in the process. Moreover, it is critical for talent development professionals to keep in mind both the vertical (business) and horizontal (employees) alignment while analyzing organizational learning needs.

The original fifth stage of Mankin’s process is ‘choose the venue’ which is criticized by other authors that are fragmented and outdated since E-learning has become more common in learning process design, especially during and after the event of COVID-19 (Forbes, 2020). Instead, I suggested this stage should be 'choose the delivery method', good content is useless without an appropriate distribution method. Mankin was limited in learning delivery method by only mentioning the 'venue'; online, offline, gamification or game-based learning, and so many different methods and tactics should be contemplated to ensure the seamless process of learning for employees.

Below is more elaboration of each stage in the process:

0. Analyze organizations' learning needs both horizontally (employees needs) and vertically (business needs) in order to foster the suitable approach for a greater impact.

1. Agree aims and objectives, this should be done based on the learning needs analysis

2. Learning strategies and theories should be decided accordingly with the attempt to achieve the set aims and objectives

3. Agree on evaluation methods to measure the learning effectiveness (e.g., transfer of learning, ROI, Kirkpatrick’s model 1959)

4. Decide content, structure and material, this should be conducted with consultation with business stakeholders such as line managers, team leaders, business leaders and external experts.

5. Choose the appropriate delivery method in terms of how the learning will be rolled out to the employees effectively with the consideration of their learning experience.

6. Continuously reflect, review and adjust the process

Theoretically, this model might sound very simple with only 6+1 steps, but it is definitely harder to execute in real business cases. Nevertheless, I hope that this helps to have an overview of how talent development processes as a cycle.

Further questions/arguments relating to this topic are all welcome to send over to my email [email protected].

Thank you for your reading!

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