Talent Management
A talent in an organization refers to the traits inherent in current employees and their valuable knowledge, skills and competencies (Tacit Knowledge). Talent management is an ongoing process of analyzing, developing and effectively utilizing talent in an organization to the strategic business required needs of that environment.
War for talent refers to an increasingly competitive landscape for recruiting and retaining talented employees.
The HRM Approach to talent management helps to determine the impact of people on the business and their contribution to shareholder value. It demonstrates that HR practices produce value for money in terms of, for example, return on investment. It also provides guidance on future HR and business strategies and data that will inform strategies and practices designed to improve the effectiveness of people management in the Organization.
The HRM Approach focuses on people and their contribution to shareholder value without paying specific attention to people’s abilities while talent management approaches focuses on harvesting knowledge and peoples abilities. Talent management has now become a critical function of management, because it is now a way to improve greatly the effectiveness of organisations.
Talent management has nine sphere processes which makes it a complete cycle and all the phases are adhered to then the required value is created through business processes innovation, client services and so on. However the nine management cycles in talent management are as outlined below -:
- Succession planning, this entails planning to know who leaves when and goes in first and measures put in place so that there is no crisis.
- Compensation and benefits, plans to reward performers.
- Training and Development, these are programs meant to develop the talent.
- Performance management, this will entail establishing mechanism to measure performance by referring to the business plans.
- Recruitment - ensuring the right people are attracted to the organization, (Finding the needed skills on the market)
- Retention - developing and implementing practices that reward and support employees (Compensation Management).
- Employee development - ensuring continuous informal and formal learning and development (Allocating resources to T & D). Have T&D programs that are self-sustaining and motivate the employees.
- Culture - development of a positive, progressive and high performance "way of operating", Inculcating a culture of professionalism.
- Retain older employees on fixed term contracts.
Rewarding top performers and providing them with opportunities for growth and development. The current discussions about skill shortages and the ageing population are also helping organisations to focus on the talent management issues. It may not be possible to simply go out and recruit new people to meet operational needs. Many leading companies have decided to develop their own people, rather than trying to hire fully skilled workers.
In summary, every organization should be implementing talent management principles and approaches to retain the organizational competitive edge.