Talent Management and Organization Performance

 

Talent Management and Organization Performance

 

Talent-management practices can create the most permanent competitive advantages, new technologies and innovations can be easily be replicated by competitors and generate only temporary competitive advantages (Heimen et al, 2004). Sustained competitive   advantage comes from talent management practices in other words, how the organization attracts, develops, retains, motivates, manages, and rewards its talent. (Heimen et al, 2004) Like a machine, a business will fail to operate successfully if key elements such as processes, systems, and structure are misaligned or hindered by friction between those elements and like a machine, a business must be designed, operated, and maintained. These functions are performed by the talent the human capital employed by the enterprise. Indeed, talent (an organization’s employees), typically is the single biggest lever for driving improvements in business performance. The collective skills of the talent employed in an organization largely comprise the organization’s core capabilities. An organization’s talent injects capabilities that are very difficult for competitors to benchmark and replicate.  More than any other asset, talent provides the potential for long-term competitive advantage (Lawler, 2008). 

 

Critical factors of Talent Management

Coleman (2008) suggested certain elements which can help the successful implementation of talent management strategy. The talent management strategy should be integrated and aligned with organizational strategy and it is also of vital importance to articulate the talent management strategy. Talent management is linked to culture and people of the company. People and culture are the heart of the organization for creating the successful talent management strategy (Cole-Gomulka, 2007). The biggest challenges for the managers to manage talent is not the technical one, it’s the cultural one. Overcoming the cultural hurdles is a very difficult task especially when holding knowledge is considered more important than sharing it with others (Cole-Gomulka, 2007). The reason of the sentiment is that the nature of the employees is competitive and  more tending towards holding the knowledge than comparing because sometimes employees don’t want others to have the same competencies which already  having (Cole-Gomulka, 2007).

 

Another important issue about the talent management is the compensation, if the right incentive is given to the people who share talent than the sharing of knowledge become effective (The Banker, 2004). The compensation and reward system must support the sharing of knowledge and talent. It is important to reward those employees who contribute more in knowledge sharing in the organizations and on the same time it should be made sure that employees understand the importance of talent management (Cole-Gomolski, 2006).

A difficulty with many compensation systems and incentives for distribution talent is that constructive talent comes from comparatively low down in the company, from people who are not on incentive systems and perhaps react much more willingly to the feeling that belong to highly motivated, leading edge, innovative groups of people. This perhaps means in the end that the essential role is played by culture; by an unquestioned, even comatose, code that persuade talent sharing and co-operative behavior (The Banker, 2004).

 

Components of talent management (Armstrong (2006).

There are three main component of talent management

1.Talent attraction and selection

2.Talent Retention 

3.Talent development  

Talent attraction and selection

According to Armstrong (2006) organization should use various techniques and methods for recruiting and selecting the right talent. The recruitment of talent pool is the first and important task of the talent management process the talent pool is a group of candidates that are the potentials executive of the organization who will steer the organization towards the competitive performance. So to gain and maintain the performance of  organization the recruitment and selection the talented individuals is very crucial. The creation of talent pool can be done in two forms, one is internal and second one is external. The internal recruitment of talent pool will be from the already exiting employees of the organization. The internal recruitment may can give advantage as the employees already know the culture and way of doing work in the organization and it also might uplift the morale of the employees if their position is uplifted (Davis et al., 2007). However, the external sources will be the best way of gathering a talent when organization wants to bring the cultural change and wants innovation (Ballesteros & Inmaculada, 2010). Employer branding includes development of an organization’s image, good enough to attract employees. Without the good brand image, it is difficult to attract the right talents (Ana, 2009).

 

Talent Retention

Talent retention is a process of retaining the talented employees with the organization for a longer time period of time. The turn of talent from any organizations very harmful as is cause a reduction in the productivity of the organization as well as more cost to attract the new pool of talent (Echols, 2007).

 There two classification of retention the talented employees with organization. Intrinsic and extrinsic (Vaiman & Vance, 2008). Intrinsic incentive includes some non-monetary rewards that can satisfy employee’s psychological needs (Vaiman & Vance, 2008). while the extrinsic rewards are the monetary rewards which may help to fulfill employee’s physiological needs. The monetary reward is admitted as an essential tool to retaining talent (Vaiman & Vance, 2008). Furthermore, organization needs to invest more for the purpose of retaining the employees with organization, a good rewards system important to attract, and retain the talent with organization. This can motivate the employees, resulting in high performance of the organization (Mendez & Stander, 2011).

 

Talent development

In this competitive and dynamic business era, learning and development has become a backbone of success, without continuous learning, gaining and maintain performance may become impossible. Strategy makers and HR practitioners are moving their focus towards learning and development of the talented employees to enhance organizational performance. Talent development is process of upgrading the skills and attitude of the employees. As the business continuously keep on changing the technologies business models and new strategies to cope up with these changes’ organization needs to enhance and upgrade the knowledge of the employees. While making strategies for development practitioners must keep in mind the integration and strategic fit between the current talent and the skills of the employees.

 

List of References

Ana, H. (2009). War of talent, faculty of social sciences and behavioral sciences. Tilburg University. Armstrong, M. (2006). A handbook of human resource management practices. 10th edition. London: Kogan.

Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1), 109-114.

Coleman, D. (2008). Learning to manage knowledge. Computer Reseller News, 775, 103-04. Davis, T., Maggie, C., & Neil, F. (2007). Talent assessment, a new strategy for talent management. Gower, United States.

Lewis, R. E., & Heckman, R. J. (2006). Talent management: A critical review. Human Resource Management Review, 16(2), 139-154.

 Spencer, D.G. (1986). Employee voice and employee retention. Academy of Management Journal, 29,488-502.

Lawler, E. E. (2008). Talent: Making people your competitive advantage. San Francisco: JosseyBass.