TALENT MANAGEMENT

Talent Management

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Performance Management1

Discussion1

Evolutionary Talent Development2

Process of Environmental Scanning for Talent Development4

Strategic Talent Development5

Evolution of Strategic Talent Development5

Benefits of Strategic Talent Management6

War for Talent6

Shift in Negotiation Power7

Fluctuations in Unemployment Rates8

Outsourcing8

Interventions in Strategic Talent Management9

Conclusions10

Talent Management

Introduction

Performance Management

The most valuable assets of an organization are the people who invest their time, skill and energy into laying a strong foundation for the operational and economic progress of the company. These human resources need to be motivated and compensated for their valuable contribution in order to sustain growth of the company. Performance management enables the organization to create a healthy environment where people are able to execute their jobs with optimum quality (GAP 2005, p15-16).

Performance management is the most widely used tool by managers to communicate the expectations of the company from the employees. This streamlined process allows a feedback mechanism which enables employees to gauge their performance to the established benchmark (Mucha 2009, p51). The feedback allows the managers to devise programs that can be used to train and improve the skill and knowledge of the employees.

There are many methods that are available for management and experts that can help the organization to in attracting and creating an environment in the company that fosters career development. This paper attempts to discuss the two most widely recognized methods of talent development and their relevant applications and impacts.

Discussion

The technological advancement in the world has increased the reliance on skilled and knowledgeable employees in the workforce. According to a study, only 17% of all the jobs relied on knowledge workers who could perform the task at hand, in 1900. However, in the thriving and fast business environment, more than 60% of jobs now require knowledge workers (Michaels et.al. 2001). The resources required by organizations have had a shift from a reliance on financial and operational indicators to intangibles. These intangibles include the culture, talent pool and the quality of leaders present in the organization.

It is due to this change in business philosophy that organizations began focusing on investing in the intangible assets in order to remain attractive to the investors. It is due to this shift that a study in 2000 concluded that the value derived from intangibles was 85% and tangibles contributed 15% to the overall value of the company. However, this was figure was completely reversed some two decades ago. In 1982, the contribution of intangibles was 38%, while tangible assets consisted of 62% of the value proposition of the company (Ulrich 2003).

This shows that companies need to continuously identify and develop the intangible assets in order to derive value from them. Moreover, companies invested more than $51.5 billion in training and development programs in 2002. Over the five years till the study, companies invested nearly $54 billion on talent development and management (Newhouse 2004, p1).The most important of the intangible assets is the human resource of the organization.

There are two widely used approaches to the identification and development of the talent that exists in the ...