What is Talent Management?

According to Hartley, Talent Management (TM) is a term that extends over a wide set of activities, such as succession planning, HR planning, employee performance management etc. [28] Creelman brings the discussion further by referring to the term as a perspective, or a mindset, where all corporate issues are seen from the perspective of how will this affect our critical talent? and what role does talent play in this issue? Creelman defines TM as: The process of attracting, recruiting and retaining talented employees [29]. Knez et al have a similar view of the concept when arguing that it refers to a continuous process of external recruitment and selection and internal development and retention. As a concept, talent management came to the fore when the phrase the war for talent emerged in the 1990s. This need for talent and, therefore, its expert management is also driven by macro trends including: New cycles of business growth, often requiring different kinds of talent. Changing workforce demographics with reducing labor pools and, therefore, a talent squeeze. More complex economic conditions which require segregated talent and TM. The emergence of new enterprises which suck talent from larger organizations. A global focus on leadership, which is now permeating many levels of organizations. There is nothing new about the various processes that add up to talent management. What is different is the development of a more coherent view as to how these processes should mesh together with an overall objective-to acquire and nurture talent, wherever it is and wherever it is needed, by using a number of interdependent policies and practices. Talent management is the notion of bundling in action. So talent management is the integration of different initiatives, or constructs, into a coherent framework of activity. One way of achieving such system integration and alignment is the Talent Management System. This systemic view of talent has five elements. 1. Need the business need derived from the business model and competitive issues. 2. Data collection the fundamental data and intelligence critical for good talent decisions. 3. Planning people/talent planning guided by data analysis. 4. Activities the conversion of plans into integrated sets of activities. 5. Results costs, measures and effectiveness criteria to judge the value and impacts of TM.