LITERATURE REVIEW: CONCEPTS
2.10 Talent Management: Strategies and Practices
As the concept of TM continues to gain currency and popularity in this competitive business environment, several strategies and practices of TM have been suggested by a number of researchers and authors. Ulrich (2003) argued that the starting point is to focus on the future and the emphasis should be on recruiting and
developing employees to be useful for the organisation, not only for now but the future as well. The second is measurable behaviours and results with a continuous tracking and measurement of competencies. This will make employees understand what they have to do and obtain regular measureable feedback on their behaviours.
Third, the behaviours that can be learned should be specified, which is basically about the teaching of successful skills and behaviours that can yield good results. The fourth is to tailor competencies to the organisational goals. The last is the integration of competency development for all so that each person will be aligned to recruitment, performance management, training and development, and reward practices.
Meyer and Botha (2004) listed five main strategies of TM. The first was the identification of high-potential talents. That is, ―A players‖ need to be identified early so that they can be developed for the long-term benefit of the organisation. The second is to spread a wide net in choosing employees to be developed. Everybody within the organisation must be taken into consideration, especially leaders in the twilight of their careers. The third is the selection of talent to be brought into the organisation and this should be done only when key competencies have been identified to be missing in the organisation. The fourth is to maximise talent value for the business through performance management, which should emphasize the application of TM in the workplace. The last is the integration of TM with all HR processes.
Fitz-enz (2005) maintained that TM includes six human resources services:
leadership development, staffing, performance management, succession planning, training and education, and retention. Deloitte (2005) put TM in what is called a traditional approach because it is a linear activity that begins with acquiring talent and ends with retaining talent, as two areas of focus. Between this two critical areas are deployment and development but the main interest of their approach is recruitment and retention activities. Morton (2006) outlined eight kinds of activities of TM as recruitment, leadership development, professional development, retention, performance management, workforce planning, feedback/measurement, and culture.
The CIPD (2006) has put together a number of HR practices to make up a TM strategy. This strategy is broad and consists of recruiting talented people, organising groups of talent (banks and pools), rewarding talented employees, appraising talents
(and performance management), ensuring a diversity of talents, deploying talent, tracking talent, and retaining talent. Focusing and basing TM on hierarchy and a strategic perspective, Lewis and Heckman (2006) divided TM activities into the following; strategy to provide a sustainable competitive advantage (what market opportunities exist and which organisational resources yield advantage?), strategy implications for talent, talent pool strategy, talent systems, and talent practices.
Uren (2007) described TM strategy as having five elements. These are attraction, identification, development, deployment, and engagement. Attraction is about having the right employment proposition and brand to attract talent from the outside marketplace, while identification is about being clear concerning the kind of employees and capability that will create value or deliver a competitive advantage for the organisation. Again, development is about building the capabilities and skills of employees in order to meet present and future demands, while deployment concerns the placement of the right employee in the right jobs at the right time. Finally, engagement is mainly about ensuring the right environment for employees to deliver their best and stay committed to the organisation.
Bersin and Associates (2007) provided a comprehensive framework of TM and argued that the TM process is a continuous cycle. The framework emphasizes crucial skills gap analysis, recruitment, training and development, and compensation and benefits to talented employees. At the hub of that framework are job roles, job descriptions, and competency models as being essential to the process. SHL (2007;
2008) claimed that TM strategy is an interconnected process but that the TM component is made up of recruitment, selection, performance, development, succession and competency management of talented employees in core and pivotal positions. Ringo et al. (2008) on their part came out with six facets of TM: develop a strategy, attract and retain, motivate and develop, deploy and manage, connect and enable, transform and sustain.
Similarly, Barron (2008) developed a TM framework which is made up of five key elements, namely: attraction, selection, engaging, developing and retaining of employees. The focus of this strategy is on core areas of management in the organisation. The Human Capital Institute (2008) examined related current TM systems in five precise areas: talent strategy, workforce planning and talent
acquisition, capability development and performance, leadership and high potential development, and talent analytics. Smith and Campbell (2008) posited that organisational systems and processes that are vital to TM include: executive commitment and engagement, critical talent identification, development and succession, learning and development, competency model development and deployment, sourcing and recruiting, rewards and recognition, performance management, and knowledge management and the measurement of the helpfulness of the systems and processes used for the purpose of talent sustainability.
Kirkland (2009) appears to have the same idea of TM strategy as he stated that TM is a strategic and deliberate in how it source‘s, attract‘s, select‘s, train‘s, develop‘s, promote‘s and move employees throughout the organisation. Deborah and Kathy (2009) conceptualised TM strategy in terms of attracting, selecting, engaging, developing and retaining talented employees. They indicated that an organisation has to recruit top-tier and bright talent. This means that the organisation has to be creative in developing a recruitment strategy. They stressed the importance of tailored training and development strategies as well as retaining talented employees in strategic and pivotal positions to ensure organisational performance. At the heart of their framework are the organisation‘s core values and competencies which are linked through a continual process of strategy, execution and evaluation.
DiRomualdo (2009) suggested four steps that companies can adopt to access their TM process as well as improve it. The first is the identification of key roles that are critical for the survival and growth of the organisation. This helps the organisation ensure that it has the right people at the right job and with proper matching of roles.
The second is to take an inventory of the skills to determine their availability and to identify the possible solutions in case they are unavailable. The third is the measurement and evaluation of TM processes and efforts. That is, every aspect of TM must be measured in terms of efficiency, impact, and effectiveness. The final is a feedback loop which helps to make adjustment if needed.
According to Tarique and Schuler (2010) TM strategies or activities are comparable to SHRM and therefore the main strategies/activities are attracting, developing, and retaining. Attraction has to do with developing organisational reputation or attractiveness to appeal to talents; developing is about the forecast of
talent requirements, and deciding whether to hire people from the outside or promoting from within the organisation. Development focuses on paying attention to top performers to fill key roles that contribute to the sustainable competitive advantage of the organisation. Retention requires organisations to use different practices to get talented people involved, and to promote organisational commitment and retention of key talents. Hartmanna et al. (2010) maintained that TM is a broad range of strategic HRM activities which include the identification and development and retention of talented employees that can affect organisational performance.
In the view of Dessler (2011), TM strategy requires coordinating several HR activities, in particular workforce acquisition, assessment, development, and retention.
Hajimirarab, Nobar and Ghalambor (2011) are of the view that TM has three principal components: talent identification, talent development, and talent motivation and retention. Poorhosseinzadeh and Subramaniam (2012) maintained that TM strategies consist of attraction, deployment, development and retention of talents as well as succession planning. They view that management should not jump to the issue of TM because it is fashionable and gives them more integrity; rather, management should state what issue/problem TM is intended to tackle. In other words, organisations must identify their mission first and decide the strategy for attraction, deployment, development and retention of talents or how they can use succession planning in their organisation.
A critical look at the various strategies and practices of TM presented in the extant literature shows how important TM is gaining momentum and how various researchers and organisations are putting in place strategies to implement TM. Also, in spite of the differences in the various TM strategies presented above there are a number of similarities among them. It can therefore been seen that TM enables organisations to rapidly form a strategy, identify, attract and recruit, develop, manage the career and reward talented and performing employees. The major lesson from these strategies and practices is that TM is ―slippery‖ and must be handled with caution. The context must therefore decide in designing TM practices and strategies.
This is what McDonnell (2011) called the business case for TM. Closely related to these strategies and practices are the components of TM.