Abstract

In this study, emerging trends in Talent Management practices in new economy organizations have been

studied. These trends are being shaped & influenced by rise of new age economy organizations & their

increasing clout in the employment market, changing work & life aspirations of the young population,

growing affluence in the society, expanding job opportunities, width of the career choices available to the

young professionals & a general shortage of employable talent pool. The growth & fortune of new

economy organizations specially in services sector is largely determined by the quality of talent an

organization is able to attract, retain & effectively deploy for results. Hence the war for talent has

intensified resulting into innovative practices to attract, engage & retain best & the brightest from

amongst the available pool. This study also tries to identify the broad contours of talent management

systems & practices likely to shape up in future in the context of new economy organizations and the

imperatives for the organizations. The time frame of individuals’ relationship with the organization is

shortening at accelerated pace from erstwhile lifetime employment to a short term assignment. This is

resulting into change in the dynamics of relationships between the individual & the organization as well

as between individual & individual within the organization. The old trust based relationship is giving way

to a transactional, object oriented & temporal two way relationship leading to a short term outlook in

people management practices. Understanding & developing relevant talent management practices which

are in sync with the values & beliefs of the new age professionals gains more significance in light of such

changes at the work places. Several dichotomies such as desirable co-existence of collaboration &

competitiveness as part of work culture is required to meet diverse needs of the organization & the

individual and modern age talent system is expected to deal with the issue. Increasing business

complexities are pressing the boundaries and there is a continuous need to invent & innovate relevant

solutions.

As the new age workforce takes hold, it is rendering traditional talent-management practices grossly

insufficient, and often detrimental to the bottom line. Past practices, designed for an abundant, isolated,

homogenous, and employer-dependent workforce, are no longer capable to sustain organizations. The

new workforce is smaller and less sufficiently skilled. It is increasingly global, highly virtual, and vastly

diverse.

The Talent Management practices such as talent attractions, meritocratic performance management,

learning and development, employee involvement, reward and recognition programs, employee

engagement initiatives, leadership development, differentiated compensation & benefits programs,

customized career management, potential development, capability building initiatives have immediate

consequence for the motivation, ownership, well-being and retention of talented employees. It is

established that the effective talent management practices can motivate, engage and develop employees

who will stay in and contribute to the organization. These effective TM practices may be variously termed

as 'best practices', high involvement practices, commitment HR system & high performance HR practices.

It is argued that the management through designing high performance human resource practices is

creating conditions for employees to become highly involved in an organization and identify with over-all

objectives such as increased productivity and financial performance etc. The present study also aims to

find out & establish the impact of high performance Talent Management practices on corporate

performance such as productivity and financial performance viz, return on capital employed.

The relevant data has been collected from the select corporates in India through structured questionnaire.

The statistical tools such as cluster analysis, factor analysis, multiple regression analysis etc. have been

used to analyze and interpret the data. The findings will be helpful to the academics, students &

practitioners of Talent Management in understanding some of the phenomena to further build & develop

the related systems.

Mumbai – December 2012

(Jayant Kumar)

Human Resources

XISS Ranchi