LIST OF APPENDICES
3.4 Talent management strategies
This sub-section will attempt to provide evidence emanating from available literature as to how to handle talent management in organisations. The challenge for South African companies, as well as the public sector, it can be mentioned, is to develop and implement talent management strategies to ensure that talent is optimised in organisations. Ulrich, (2003) has suggested the following five ways to ensure that competencies are results driven. These are:
• Focus on the future.
Ulrich (2003) argues here that direction is strongest and most clear when competencies explain not only what or how we are to do something, but why.
Competencies should focus on the future and what needs to be done not on the past and what has been done. Processes like succession planning and management, acceleration pools and career pathing come to the fore here and shall be discussed at length later in chapter.
• Define measurable behaviours and results.
When put into behavioural terms, competencies with a results focus, competencies can be tracked and measured. Put simply, when employees understand what they need to do and receive consistent, measurable feedback on their behaviours, they are able to change and align behaviours with the goals of the organisation.
• Specify behaviours that can be learned.
Leaders who define and then invest in desired behaviours rather than general personality traits increase the probability of successful growth. The researcher argues here that organisations, private or public, have individuals that are unique in their behaviours and in most cases these behaviours are suitable for the vision, mission and overall goals of organisations. It is imperative, according to this commentator that these behaviours are singled out as important to be passed on to other individuals in organisations.
• Tailor competency models to organisation goals.
Competencies should be focused on individual behaviours required to help a specific organisation reach its business goals. These behaviours make organisations different and unique from others. It is important, according to Ulrich, to constantly revise your recruitment and selection techniques so that the competencies specified in the job advertisements can reflect the matching of organisational goals.
• Integrate competency development as a leadership responsibility for all managers.
For competencies to have impact, the leaders of the organisation must emotionally and intellectually own them. If leadership does not care, nobody cares. When competencies are appropriately defined with the active participation of the leadership, it is relatively straightforward to align recruiting, performance management, training and development, and reward practices to build and reinforce key-valued behaviours.
Meyer & Botha, (2004:426) believe that Ulrich’s five main ways of ensuring that competencies are results-driven can further be solidified by adding the following:
• Identification of high potential individuals.
They believe that they ‘bubble up’ theory where it is maintained that the best leaders inevitably move upward presumably through promotion and gain the skills and experience needed to meet the increasingly complex challenges of contemporary organisations is not the way to go. So they suggest that “A” players should be identified early and development done on them for the long term benefit of their organisations. It can also be argued strongly here that the ‘bubble up’ theory is prevalent with the public service around the world. People are promoted due the length of time they have stayed within the public service and it is often assumed that they will gain skills and knowledge much needed in the organisation.
• Cast a wide net in choosing people to be developed.
The scholars argue here that organisations cannot afford to miss good people, wherever they are and that is across departments and divisions in organisations.
Although relatively young individuals will be the primary source for acceleration pools, leaders in their twilight of their careers should also be taken into consideration.
Acceleration pools shall be discussed briefly later in this chapter, as they are an emerging strategy for talent retention.
• Accurately select the talent to bring into the organisation.
This should be done only once key competencies have been identified to be missing in the organisation are needed in the immediate future as everything hinges on the developed ability of the organisation’s talent. Ulrich (2003) warns that identification of talent within and outside the organisation is of paramount importance here. The importance of recruitment and selection has never been more needed than in the sphere of talent management
• Maximise talent value to the business through performance management.
Meyer & Botha (2004) posit here that organisation’s performance management system should highlight the application of talent management in the workplace. They
also maintain that star performers should be rewarded accordingly. This is where the process of pay satisfaction fits in and this shall be handled in detail in the later section.
• Integrate talent management with all HR processes.
Under here they cite processes such as succession planning and career management; recruitment and selection; training and development. Succession planning and management (SP&M), coaching and mentoring and acceleration pools shall be discussed separately in some detail later in this chapter.
A conclusion can be drawn here that talent management enables organisations to rapidly align, develop, motivate, and maintain a high-performance labour force.
Organisations can establish and communicate critical corporate goals, measure performance improvement, and ensure that all levels of the organisation are aligned to attain critical business or organisational objectives. It can therefore be concluded that there are six dimensions of talent management as shown in Table 3.1 below (talent management dimensions and their descriptors).
Table 3.1: Talent Management Dimensions and their Descriptors. Source: IBM Institute for Business Value/ Human Capital Institute
Talent Management Dimensions Descriptors
Develop strategy
Establishing the optimum long-term strategy for attracting, developing, connecting and deploying the labour force.
Attract and retain
Sourcing, recruiting and holding onto the appropriate skills and capitalise, according to business/organisational needs.
Motivate and develop
Verifying capabilities are understood and developed to match business requirements, while also meeting people's needs for
motivation, development and job satisfaction.
Deploy and manage
scheduling and work management that match skills and experience with organisational needs.
Connect and enable
Identifying individuals with relevant skills, collaborating and sharing knowledge and working effectively in virtual settings.
Transform and sustain
Achieving clear measurable and sustainable change within the organisation, while
maintaining day to day continuity of operations
In closing, talent management seems to be the new phrase designed to re-package standard solutions to HR challenges (select, staff, and develop “talent” well) or to stress the need to respond to demographic changes (Lewis & Heckman, 2006).