TALENT MANAGEMENT – SCOPE & PROCESS

BY

Dr. T.Thomas, Head (Academics) &

Prof. Jyothi Raghavan, Regional Director

Rai Business School

Balanagar, Hyderabad-500 037

Introduction:

Before going into the discussion on Talent Management, it would be apt to understand the word
“Talent”. Talent in general terms refers to the capabilities, skills or the art, a person possess in a
particular field. It also refers to those people who have high potential, scarce knowledge and skill or
who can successfully bring about transformation and change in the organization. Such individuals are
usually sought after in the market and their contributions to the business add direct value to its strategic
or competitive positioning.

Coming to the word Talent Management in an Organisation, it refers to those special steps an
organization adopts to recruit, develop and retain its pool of top talent. The steps adopted should
normally be creative and should not project bureaucracy. Talent Management also denotes a deliberate
approach taken up by an organization to attract, develop and retain people with the aptitude and
abilities to meet not only the current requirements but also future organizational needs.

In today’s talent-hungry market scenario, one of the greatest challenges that organizations are facing is
to successfully attract, assess, train and retain talented employees. Talent Management encompasses in
itself the entire process of Planning, Recruiting, Developing, Managing, and Compensating employees
throughout the organization. Organizations have realized the need for talent management and are now
focusing to develop and retain the existing talent in their organization rather than trying to acquire a
new talent because the cost of identifying, developing and retaining the talent internally is more cost
effective instead of replacing the talent which is lost from external market. Though it may appear
initially that in the process of retaining talent, we are spending more in terms of increased wages,
rewards and recognition, when we practically analyze, the cost of acquiring a new talent is higher.
Apart from higher cost of acquiring the new talent it has to additionally face the initial hiccups of this
new employee getting along with the organizational goals and strategies.

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Every business unit is making sure that they can respond and withstand the challenges of talent crisis by
developing an effective talent management strategy like identifying the key talented people in the
organization, cultivating and developing the skill of their present workforce and retaining highly
talented employees by protecting them from competitors.

Talent Management and Human Capital Management:

Many authors say that TM and HCM are the same. However, according to Donald H Taylor
(http://donaldhtaylor.wordpress.com/2007/03/26/talent-management-is-not-the-same-as-human-
capital-management/) they are not the same. He says, “Whereas Talent Management is focused on the
individual, human capital management, with its academic/accounting origins in aiming to understand
the value of people, includes the aggregate view. For this reason, HCM has to include an idea of the
overall value of the human asset in an organization. It also, from this data, includes analysis of the hot
spots and problems in the current development and deployment of employees.” However, for the
purpose of our discussion we shall take them to be synonymous. Some other closely related
terminologies are, HRIS (HR Information Systems) or HRMS (HR Management Systems), and HR
Modules. It is beyond the scope of this paper to bring forth the subtle differences.

A Brief History:

The origins of TM can be traced to the 1990s with the realization of the immense value of the Human
Asset for organizational success surpassing every other resource. Today it is a very widely used
terminology with Google returning about 26,300,000 results. Many companies commit the mistake of
putting a herculean effort in attracting the best employees but fritter away this valuable resource by not
making any effort to develop or retain them. Companies have initially thought of talent management as
a means to solve high employee turnover. In course of time it has become part and parcel of the
corporate strategy itself with a key responsibility placed on the line managers. One cannot wish away
the fact that these managers have to play a pivotal role in nurturing the talents and skills of those
reporting to them. In other words, it is a case of joint trusteeship between the line and staff functions.
However, in Indian Companies, talent management is of fairly recent origin.

Scope of Talent Management:

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In the recent days, the HR Department of any organisation is vested with the responsibility of managing
the Talent in addition to its conventional function of providing good human capital to an organization.
In order to perform this function, they use the following methods viz.,

1. Identifying the Talent which is required

2. Right Selection of the Talent

3. Implementing competitive compensation plans

4. Training and continual development of Competencies

5. Practicing state-of-the–art performance appraisal systems

6. Aligning the acquired Talent

7. Developing and nurturing the Talent, and

8. Retaining the Talent

The scope of Talent Management is quite wide and adopts an integrative approach to the functions
mentioned above. The purpose is to have a synergistic effect between the various activities so as to
ensure a maxi-maxi effect.

Process of Talent Management:

The HR managers today are required to identify the talent gap and forecast the shortfalls in advance
based on their experience and based on the changes taking place in the organization. They have to
focus their plans and initiatives to help improve the availability of needed talent and knowledge. Recent
surveys indicate that more than 62% HR managements are worried about the shortages of Talent
company -wide. HR Manager should keep in mind the following factors which are responsible for
employees to change jobs frequently.

1. Rapid changes in the world economy.

2. Strong and continuous economic growth

3. Globalization – making easy the business boundaries

4. Most competitive job market

5. New competency requirements

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6. Rise in the outsourcing and off shoring

7. Unexpected economic melt down and recession.

8. Cascading effect of the above factors on employment potential resulting in wage cuts, lay
offs, pink slips etc.

Consequences of failure in Managing Talent:

Organizations have to face the following problems, if they fail to manage talent.

a. Loss of key leaders – sometimes not finding even an approximate replacement

b. Repeated turnover of key persons from an organization will affect the very

Work culture within the organization.

c. Poor performance affecting targets and productivity.

d. Financial crisis

Tools for Managing Talent:

In this process, the HR Manager has to execute 2 types of functions

1. To find leaders who will take the organization from where it is today to the next step forward –
In other words, to commanding heights of excellence.

2. To put in place the existing staff in such activities which helps in retaining and developing them.

Keeping in view the budgetary constraints and the organization size where he had to manage, few of the
following tools can be used in retaining talent.

1. Timely performance appraisals with suitable rewards and recognitions.

2. Creating an environment for staff to pursue higher education.

3. Mentoring of staff in some special and important cases in terms of attitudes, outlook, mindset
etc.,

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4. Providing On –the- job training for certain categories of employees, organize development
programs for executives in-house or sponsor and encourage staff to attend workshops and seminars.

5. Implement job rotation and job enrichment wherever possible, so that staff can become experts
in multi tasking and assume higher responsibilities.

Finally to conclude the future of organizations depends on how the whole organization, and not just HR
anticipates and reacts to changes in this era of talent shortages. They have a long way to go to lead
organizations implement far reaching changes and bringing about transformation among the members
of the organization. Talent Management is a continuous process.

Contact:

The authors may be contacted at cm.jyothi@rediffmail.com and srprofessor1@yahoo.com respectively.

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