a paper on talent management
TRANSCRIPT
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A paper on Talent Management to be presented in National Seminar
On Competency Building in Business Education
23rd and 24th of September 2011
Organized by
Department of Commerce KLE Society’s
S NIJALINGAPPA COLLEGE Rajajinagar, Bangalore-10
Karnataka
TALENT ACQUISITION AND RETENTION IN THE
TURBULENT TIMES
Mr. Sitaram Sujir BHM, MBA, PGDHRM, M.Sc-TQM, PGDIPR, (Ph.D) Counselor and Trainer (Bangalore Center)
Directorate of Quality Management Maidan Garhi Road, South of Saket,
New Delhi -110068. India. 9900571372
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Contents:
1. Introduction to Talent Management……………………………………… 3
2. Six Dimensions of Talent Management………………………………… 5
3. Talent Management in Shared Service Center.............................................. 10
4. Recent trends in talent management …………………………..………… 15
5. Summary…………………………………………………………………. 17
6. References………………………………………………………………... 18
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1. Introduction to Talent Management Modern organizations are operating in an unprecedented, highly competitive and turbulent
business environment which is characterized by the globalization of business. Further, today's
global workforce is more mobile than ever before. With a dynamically changing and volatile
demand-supply equation, especially against erratic attrition trend and cutthroat competition
no longer restricted to local or regional boundaries, a need for strategizing & putting in place
a robust mechanism for attracting and retaining top talent becomes vital for the company's
very survival and growth.
The new age economy, with its attendant paradigm shifts in relation to the human capital, in
terms of its acquisition, utilization, development and retention, has placed a heavy demand on
today's HR profession. Today HR is expected to comprehend, conceptualize, innovate,
implement and sustain relevant strategies and contribute effectively towards giving the
company its winning edge. These efforts on the part of the company have resulted in
recognizing talent as priority of the company to maintain competitive edge and talent
becoming a strategic priority.
What is Talent Management?
Mckinsey and company consultants Michaels, Handfield Jones and Axelrod define "talent" as
the "the sum of a person's abilities- his or her intrinsic gifts, skills, knowledge, experience,
intelligence judgement, attitude, character and drive. It also includes his or her ability to learn
and grow.
"Talent Management implies recognizing person's inherent skills, traits, personality and
offering him a matching job."
While there are no magic formulae to manage talent, the trick is to locate it and encourage all
Talent management is beneficial to both the organization and the employees.
Essentials of Talent Management:
• Talent management is the activity of identifying, realizing, and guiding untapped
potential in people.
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• It means nurturing and developing those people identified of having ability and
potential and it should form part of any organizations recruitment and retention
strategy.
• It involves individual and organization development in response to a changing and
complex operating environment. Includes the creation and maintenance of supportive
people oriented organizational culture.
• Talent management is a deliberate approach undertaken to attract, develop and retain
people with the aptitude and abilities to meet current and future organizational needs.
Talent management brings together a number of important human resources and management
initiatives. Organizations that, formally decide to manage their talent undertake a strategic
analysis of their current HR process. Talent management approach is adopted and focused on
coordinating and integrating the following:
• Recruitment: ensuring right people are attracted to the organization.
• Retention: developing and implementing practices that reward and support
employees.
• Employee development: ensuring continuous formal and informal learning and
development.
Methodology
This review focuses on literature that takes a more holistic approach to examining talent
management, considering each aspect of talent management in relation to the others (as
opposed to considering only one particular practice, such as compensation or professional
development). The review includes both academic and professional literature.
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2. Six Dimensions of Talent Management
In a report on integrated talent management across various sectors, Ringo et al. (2008)
identified the following broad dimensions of talent management based on surveys of more
than 1000 private and public sector organizations:
1. Develop Strategy: Implement the best long term approach for recruiting and retaining
workers
2. Attract and Retain: Recruit and retain those that possess the particular skills and
knowledge needed by the organization
3. Motivate and Develop: Develop workers skill and knowledge to meet the company’s
needs and provide the motivational factors to ensure job satisfaction.
4. Deploy and Manage: Create scheduling and resource deployment practices that align
well with the needs of the organization.
5. Connect and enable: Encourage collaboration and the sharing of expertise as well as
the information technology capabilities to help individuals across the organization
identify and connect with others who can share their relevant talents.
6. Transform and Sustain: Maintain continuity of procedures while achieving clear
measurable change in advance in the talent in the organization.
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IBM and the Human Capital Institute surveyed 1,900 individuals from more than 1,000
public and private sector organizations on Web-based survey conducted between February
and April 2008 around the world about their organization’s talent management capabilities.
The respondents varied by position, and included people involved with HR and non-HR
functions. The surveyed companies represent a variety of industries, geographies and sizes.
Although the sample included respondents from 56 different countries, 93 percent were from
the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, India and Canada. From the initial analysis,
two important themes arise:
• Overall, knowledge-intensive industries (Electronics/Technology, Professional
Services and Telecommunications, for example) as well as service-intensive industries
such as Financial Services and Retail are more likely to apply talent management
practices across the board.
The study suggests that knowledge-intensive firms tend to focus on development and
collaboration, while financial services companies concentrate primarily on employee
attraction/ retention.
• Non-profit organizations (government agencies, educational and health care
institutions, for example) appear to be significantly deficient in their use of talent
management practices.
The survey findings suggest that limited budgets, regulations and inertia are hampering this
group’s efforts to build a high-performance workforce. IBM believes that this situation could
result in public-sector agencies having difficulty in both fulfilling their existing missions and
providing for the educational, medical and social needs of the future private-sector
workforce. Both of these issues threaten the prosperity of those nations that fail to overcome
them.
Turning talent management into a competitive advantage
As world-class companies develop within emerging economies and begin to compete with
more familiar global corporations, the competition for top talent intensifies. Yet, as it is seen
through the survey, different industries are responding to the need to more effectively manage
talent with varying degrees of intensity. To understand where the differences in talent
management approaches lie, IBM designed a survey instrument to capture valuable
information about how organizations around the world are addressing their talent
management challenges.
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Knowledge-intensive industries tend to focus on developing and connecting their
employees
IBM describes the group of industries shown to the far right of Figure 2 – Telecom,
Electronics/ Technology and Professional Services – as being “knowledge-intensive
industries.” Given the need to rapidly apply new insights to new markets, and the continuing
reduction in the lifespan of both high-tech products and ideas, each of these industries is
heavily reliant on the “edge” they can get from their people – the capital that walks in and out
of the building each day. As one professional services interviewee states, “We are in a perfect
storm for employee turnover. All of our competitors are looking for the same people we’re
looking for… [but there is a] very limited pool of qualified candidates.”
Of course, once an organization has those desirable candidates, it wants to get the most out of
them, and use their talents and skills to carve an edge in the ever-changing global economy.
Consider the Electronics/Technology industry. Over 64 percent of our study’s Electronics/
Technology respondents believe that employees have career options and pathways that
encourage the development of relevant skills. This is 10 percentage points more than the
overall sample. Google, for instance, provides an interesting example of how a company can
create career opportunities by paving non-traditional advancement paths. Another goal for
many organizations is to make the sum of all talent greater than the individual parts. For
Electronics/Technology firms, collaboration among geographically distributed groups
appears to be an area of specific attention. For example, these companies are more likely to
state that employees collaborate and share knowledge in a way that contributes to
organizational success (68 percent vs. 58 percent of the total sample) and are much more apt
to provide tools, resources and metrics to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing (62
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percent vs. 49 percent). As a case in point, Nokia is one technology firm that has focused its
time and resources on supporting collaboration within its global teams.
The focused application of talent management practices might best be captured in the attitude
of a professional services executive, who stated that “We constantly look at better ways to
engage and utilize our internal talent… we utilize an internal Leadership Council to engage
our high performers, give them projects to work on, and use them as sounding boards across
the corporation.” Or consider the words of a recruitment director of a large technology
company who told IBM, “For a large corporation that is as diverse as we are, we are fairly
effective [at connecting individuals and collaborating across the organization]; however, we
have initiatives underway to make it even better.”
Example of Google and Nokia on Talent Management:
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3 Talent Management in Shared Services
Talent management, the management of individuals and workforces toward achieving
improved performance, is among the most critical components to the Masters’ success. In
fact, the research respondents ranked attracting and retaining the best employees as the top
factors in contributing to their shared services organizations (SSO’s) success. Talent
management, then, is not “nice to have,” but one of the vital components to help achieve
higher levels of performance.
The significance of talent management was not lost on any of the research participants. The
Masters, however, are more adept at converting thoughts into action. They are more than 50
percent more likely than other respondents to plan initiatives that help improve employee
engagement, and nearly twice as likely to have plans to introduce more formalized training
for their shared services employees.
Shared services Masters have begun to make a concerted move toward developing the
talent management mindset. Key elements include:
• Focusing on talent management from the start of the implementation of shared
services, and implementing specific talent management practices alongside other
components of the solution (systems, processes, etc.).
• Continuously challenging leaders to engage and motivate all levels of the workforce
and to help ensure their behaviour aligns with the desired organizational culture and
values.
• Measuring culture regularly to make sure it positively engages employees and
supports the overall strategy.
• Investing in developing managers’ people management skills, given their role in
implementing talent management programs on a day-to-day basis.
• Targeting recruitment processes to help rapidly identify, attract and deploy people
with the right balance of technical, functional and behavioural skills.
• Tapping into the size and scope of the shared services organization to offer
meaningful and differentiated career paths.
• Targeting training and development toward skills that are necessary to progress the
shared services strategy and using delivery channels that help balance end user access
and cost.
• Leveraging a market-competitive reward system, including monetary and non-
monetary elements, that recognizes individual and team performance.
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• Implementing performance management at all levels and tying the process to tangible
outputs in terms of rewards, development opportunities and career progression.
• Using advances in technology to offer user-friendly tools to enable talent management
processes.
More than just a set of related activities, talent management is a mindset that allows an
organization to make sound decisions about the talent it has available. The Masters
understand this point, and realize that shared services’ longevity requires addressing talent
management from the outset and sustaining and improving on it throughout operations.
Leading practices in shared services Talent management
The Accenture Shared Services Talent Management Model addresses the key elements
needed to build an effective talent management culture within an SSO. Healthy and vibrant
shared services organizations focus on leadership, management and service, enabled by a
cohesive approach to career path and succession planning, rewards and recognition, and
training.
The Accenture Shared Services Talent Management Model
Shared services culture
The culture of a shared services organization acts as the “glue” that ties talent management
processes together and provides the foundation for long-term success. Within a high-
performance SSO, continuous improvement, process excellence and customer service
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initiatives not only improve results, but also engage employees, encourage them to take an
interest in the business and improve their work experience. This process builds a feeling of
ownership and creates a virtuous cycle of self-improvement that over time becomes
embedded in the SSO culture.
Transition
The point of transition, when new staff arrives during start up or expansion, is a time of
anxiety for all involved, but also an opportunity to build a talent management mindset from
the outset. To achieve this, the SSO leadership team must already be in place to establish and
demonstrate the desired practices and behaviours. It is an increasingly common practice to
seed the leadership team in the early days with high performers from the existing
organization.
Leadership capability
The shared services leadership team must embody strategy, vision and confidence in order to
create and maintain an autonomous shared services organization within a wider corporate
structure. Internally, they must set and communicate a clear, long-term vision so all
employees can understand their role in contributing to the organization’s performance. When
communicating to customers and stakeholders, the leadership team must possess the
confidence and capability to represent the SSO at the most senior levels of the wider
organization.
Experience can and should be supplemented by Leadership Development Programs.
Leadership does not come naturally to all and many benefit from coaching and a focus on
how to learn, live and teach the correct behaviours.
Management capability
Talent management initiatives and processes are only as effective as the people who
implement them on a day-to-day basis. Therefore line managers must possess, or develop, the
people management capabilities (coaching, listening, challenging, etc.) that help drive
performance across an SSO.
Service capability
Service capability reflects the minimum skills the SSO needs to meet its obligations to its
customers. While Service Level Agreements (SLAs) capture these obligations in aggregate,
SLAs do not immediately translate the required skills to individual employees. Competency
mapping identifies the supply of skills and resources, and highlights any gaps or surpluses
that need to be addressed. This competency mapping must then inform job specifications, and
training and recruitment plans.
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Recruitment
Recruitment into a shared services environment presents the unique challenge of balancing
the demands of filling largely administrative and volume-based transactional roles with
candidates who possess scarce multilingual and customer service skills. Added to this
challenge is the continuing trend of clustering SSOs in locations like Eastern Europe, India
and, more recently, China, the Philippines, Brazil and Argentina, where attracting talent is
becoming more and more competitive.
Career path and succession planning
Career development opportunities are a major attraction and retention tool for any
organization. However, many employees still perceive a move to an SSO as a step out of an
organization’s career path, where opportunities for upward mobility are limited because of
typically flatter organization structures.
Communicating these potential career paths using real role-model examples is an essential
part of any SSO’s attraction and retention strategy. However, communication is the easy part;
getting the right people onto the right paths is the main challenge. This task should be based
on the performance management process and, for more critical roles, succession planning.
Training and development
A targeted training and development plan will reflect the organization’s strategy, vision and
values and be differentiated by function and level of employee. If the vision is to provide
exceptional customer service, then the training and development plan must focus on ensuring
all employees understand what exceptional customer service is, and then train them to have
the skills and tools to deliver it within their given role.
Shared services implement a variety of innovative training and development practices:
• Providing training across a broad spectrum of skills, including industry skills,
leadership skills, customer service skills, people skills, etc.
• Blending training across different channels, including instructor-led, computer-based
and activity- and simulation-based vehicles.
• Establishing individual training budgets and targets that are tracked as part of the
performance management process.
• Combining on- and off-the-job training with work shadowing, super-user networks
and work buddies to generate an environment of continuous learning.
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• Using collaboration tools, such as online blogs and podcasts, for multi-location
organizations to share leading practices, ask questions and celebrate experiences and
achievements.
• Allowing employees to drive training needs through skills surveys, performance
management and employee engagement surveys.
Rewards, incentives and recognition
High-performance SSOs are attuned to the market and reflect this in the total rewards they
offer to current and potential staff. They also have flexibility to allow remuneration to reflect
an individual’s performance against set objectives and to reward the SSO’s highest
performers in line with their top-performing industry peers.
Beyond remuneration, SSO provide real-time recognition to employees who set high
standards at work and demonstrate desired behaviours. Typically informal, such recognition
programs may include weekly and monthly employee awards, team awards and ad hoc award
schemes. It is important to note that these awards are often non-monetary in nature, yet
generally have as much or more impact on employee engagement.
Performance management
Successful performance management is as dependent upon the rigor with which the process is
applied as it is on the design of the process itself. Typical procedures involve an annual cycle
of objective setting and regular reviews (formal and informal) with direct supervisors.
Objective setting should include identifying appropriate training, and performance reviews
should feed the rewards and recognition process.
Employees identified as possessing high potential typically receive additional development
opportunities, with the objective of fast-tracking their career progression and prolonging their
retention within the business.
Talent management technology
Technology has advanced exponentially over the last five years and this trend has certainly
been seen within the ranks of talent management technology providers. Convergence has
been the key word as the major vendors of ERPs and other best-of breed applications have
come together to improve the look, feel and ease of use of their products for the end users.
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4 Recent Trends in Talent Management with respect to attracting talent
Attracting qualified talent is the critical first step in the talent management cycle. Jobs are
plenty, finding the right candidate is the challenge. The need is to "sell a job". Having sold
the job well, retaining good employees is the next challenge that arises. And the company's
brand image makes these tasks easier. Hence the marriage of compulsion arises between HR
and marketing principles-employer branding.
As we know that we get good customers with a good brand. In the same way companies must
develop their image in the society by implementing the best practices in each and every
aspect. Employer branding therefore helps a company attract, recruit, and retain employees
that if wants and is becoming increasingly important in attracting and retaining star
performers in a talent-tight market.
Selecting Talent
An effective retention strategy begins at the earlier stages of the recruitment & selection
process. This is true because most of the employee turnover happens due to poor chemistry or
bed fit. The research indicates that most of the people leave organizations due to the mistakes
made during the hiring phase. For this reason some smart companies are adopting the strategy
of “hire for attitude & train for skill." They have realized that it is easier to develop the skills
& capabilities that an employee needs than to attempt to change the employee's personality or
mindset. For instance, although Infosys receives about twice the number of application as its
competitors it is very selective in recruiting employees.
Some companies go to even extraordinary lengths before hiring somebody. According to a
study, Hewitt, a leading Indian company, was selecting a senior marketing manager after the
candidate had gone through several rounds of interviews. The company had identified the
person they thought was the right one for the job and was on the verge of making an offer.
The HR head took him out for dinner and, during the meal, the Prospective marketing
manager was particularly rude to a waiter in front of his potential employer and peer. The
company reversed its decision to recruit him. If he could be rude to the waiter in such a
setting, how would his behaviour reflect the company image and culture if he were in-charge
of marketing?
Retaining Talent
The time is tough. There is no denial to the fact that in today's fast pace and knowledge
boom, one of the most important factors for today's organization is talent. It’s viewed that the
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availability of suitable and competent talent inside any organization determines the
excellence of the same. Most companies today would acknowledge that their human
resources are most important asset. But since companies can't own employees the way they
own factories or product your success or failure hinges on the quality and duration of the
relationship you form with your people. In present scenario people choose companies which
have congenial atmosphere and prefer change if they don't get desirable, as it may hinder the
growth and success of the company. Hence retention is vital than recruitment.
The attrition rate of employees in organization is alarming. Take any industry, any sector, any
organization and you can find more than enough examples of employees joining and leaving
their workplace. All this adds to the worry of HR managers who are only left with the option
of scratching their heads and singing no mercy's all-time hit-"where do you go?"
Two major trends point to the growing importance of employee retention as an important HR
issue. One is the constant rise in turnover in virtually every economic sector and left
Unaddressed it can have an adverse impact on organizational effectiveness. The other is the
ever raising cost of turnover, especially when it involves high performers.
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5 Summary
As organizations continue to pursue high performance and improved results through TM
practices, they are taking a holistic approach to talent management—from attracting and
selecting wisely, to retaining and developing leaders, to placing employees in positions of
greatest impact. The environment is very volatile and attrition is increasing day-by-day. It
poses a challenge before HR managers; they need to be very innovative so that new retention
tools could be adopted. Today when companies recruit people they often focus attracting
precisely those people who will be the most difficult to retain.
The mandate is clear: for organizations to succeed in today’s rapidly changing and
increasingly competitive marketplace, intense focus must be applied to aligning human
capital with corporate strategy and objectives. It starts with recruiting and retaining talented
people and continues by sustaining the knowledge and competencies across the entire
workforce. Though attrition cannot be completely eradicated but it can be reduced to drastic
level by being innovative. Companies the" days are emphasizing not only on physical
emotional benefits also.
Shared services organizations have developed considerably from the cost minimizing,
centralization of back office functions that emerged during the 1990s. Getting talent
management right provides a competitive advantage for shared services operations and
supports an improved experience for employees, while contributing to their enterprises’
overall strategic objectives. Getting it right enables organizations to help navigate unstable
financial environments and be better positioned for future success.
With rapidly changing skill sets and job requirements, this becomes an increasingly difficult
challenge for organizations. By implementing an effective talent management strategy,
including integrated data, processes, and analytics, organizations can help ensure that the
right people are in the right place at the right time, as well as organizational readiness for the
future. Corporate have to develop new ideas to touch the emotions of their employees make
them loyal towards their organizations. Companies involved in designing strategies such as
internal job posting (IJP), flexi-time are being more successful.
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6 References
• Berger, Dorothy R .2004. Talent Management Handbook, Tata McGrow-Hill
Publication, New Delhi.
• GuruSwamy K., Ramani VV, "Talent Management-Concepts & Cases", Vol I, ICFAI
University Press.
• Mathews B, Sarita B, "Talent Management - Change New face of HR", HRD
Newsletter, Jan 2007, Issue 10, Vol: 22.
• Ringo, Tim, Allan Schweyer, Michael DeMarco, Ross Jones and Eric Lesser.
“Integrated talent management: Part 1 – Understanding the opportunities for success.”
IBM Institute for Business Value in partnership with the Human Capital Institute.
• Hamel, Gary, with Bill Breen. “The Future of Management.” Harvard Business
School Press. Boston. Pp. 112-116, 137
• Durgin, Tom V., “The Role of Strategic HR in Financial Services.” The Human
Capital Institute. June 6, 2006
• http://www.935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/gbs/a1029981?cntxt=a10052
63.
• www.accenture.com
• www.egyankosh.ac.in