Faculty of Economics and Business AdministrationWest University of Timisoara

International human resource management 2013

Talent Management

Students:Ghizdaveanu Flavia Dan Iulia

Contents

Introduction...3

1. A new way to think about talent management...41.1 Drivers for TM............................61.2 Identification of Talent...82. Employee Engagement and its Relationship to TM........92.1 Finding the Right people.92.2 Challenges of Global Talent Management......................................103. Strategic Talent Management......113.1 The necessity of strategic TM.....123.2 Strategic TM best practice...133.3 How do you develop and implement a TM strategy?......................................133.4 The model of assessment-based strategic TM..154. Defining the TM Process..164.1 Problems identifying talent...175. Illustrative cases....206. Conclusion.....22

Bibliography......23

Talent Management-HR

Introduction

"Talent Management" has become one of the most important buzzwords in Corporate HR and Training today. In this paragraph we will explain the history, principles, and processes of talent management and help readers understand our research agenda in this important area.

It is nearly unanimous that HR can and should add more value to corporations. The best way to do this is by being a business partnerby directly improving the performance of the business. This can be accomplished by effective talent management, helping with change management, influencing strategy and a host of other value-added activities that impact effectiveness.In a competitive marketplace, talent management is a primary driver for organizational success. Broadly defined, talent management is the implementation of integrated strategies or systems designed to increase workplace productivity by developing improved processes for attracting, developing, retaining and utilizing people with the required skills and aptitude to meet current and future business needs.A recent study shows that 85% of HR executives state that the single greatest challenge in workforce management is creating or maintaining their companies ability to compete for talent.Without question, effective talent management provides one of the most critical points of strategic leverage today.

Offering enormous business value, talent management is complex and continually evolving. Influenced by external factors such as the economy, global expansion and mergers and acquisitions, critical success factors for effective talent management include alignment with strategic goals, active CEO participation and HR management.

Research shows that organizations increasingly focus on talent management. Moving from reactive to proactive, companies are working hard to harness talent.

Yet different companies may not define talent the same way. The belief in talent and its impact on the bottom line are at the heart of talent management. To be effective, the talent mindset must be embedded throughout the organization, starting with the CEO. Going beyond succession planning for top leadership positions, companies that value talent have a deep appreciation for the contribution of individuals at all levels, now and for the future.

Common Principles of the Talent Management AgendaExpectation regarding the differentiation of talent.The role of line leaders in the development of people.Philosophy regarding the movement of people across businesses and functions.The role of diversity in staffing strategy.Beliefs about hiring for potential versus hiring for position.

1. A New Way to Think About Talent Management

Unlike talent development,models of supply chain management have improved radically since the 1950s.No longer do companies own huge warehouses where they stockpile the components needed to assemble years worth of products they can sell with confidence because competition is muted and demand eminently predictable.Since the 1980s,companies have instituted,and continually refined,just-in-time manufacturing processes and other supply chain innovations that allow them to anticipate shifts in demand and adapt products ever more accurately and quicky.Today,a deep bench of talent has become expensie inventory.Whats more,its inventory that can walk out the door.Ambitious executiveis dont want to,and dont have to,sit on the bench.Worse,studies by the consulting firm Watson Wyatt show that people who have recently received training are the most likely to make better use of those new skills.It still makes sense to develop talent internally where we can because it is cheaper and less disruptive.But outside hiring can be faster and more responsive.So an optimal approach would be use a combination of the two.The challenge is to figure out how much of each to use.

The absence of a talent programme in an organisation does not necessarily mean that high-potential employees are not being noticed and managed, but there can be little doubt that the design of distinctive approaches to managing talent has attracted much more interest in recent years. Examples of organisational approaches to talent

management are given in this example.The main differences between talent management and general HRM are summarised in Table1.

Table1.Differences between elitist approaches to talent management and human resource management (HRM)

Dimension

Talent management

HRM

Coverage and focusFocus on high-potential employees: their attributes and traits relative to others.All employees: focus on the differences between grades and roles.

RemitsPrimarily on the selection, development and deployment of high potentials.Covers all HR functions including development of policies and procedures and ensuring legal compliance.

PurposeDevelop leadership capability and maximise the contribution of high potentials in key roles and assist succession into key roles.Manage the whole employment relationship across the life cycle of employment with the organisation. Sustain the commitment and engagement of all employees.

ExperienceDifferentiated HR practices may be experienced by participants.Consistency of experience, equality of opportunity.

InfluencersA sense of competition for mobile high potentials is a strong external driver. Talent programmes are often designed by HR professionals in conjunction with top managementOver and above the influence of the HR division, an employee's experience of being managed is heavily influenced by line managers. Stronger internal and divisional focus.

1.1 Drivers for Talent Management

To gain competitive advantage,the demand for human capital drives talent management.Talent management strategies focus on five primary areas:

Attracting Selecting Engaging Developing Retaining employees

Workforce trends drive talent management strategies. Factors such as an increasingly global and virtual workforce, different generations working together, longer life expectancies and an empowered and autonomous workforce have forever changed the workplace. Due to demographic changes, the workforce is also increasingly diverse-from age, gender and ethnicity to lifestyles, migration patterns and cultural norms. Organizations are already taking advantage of these workplace trends.

Further,it is important that HR educate top management on the link between the talent management cycle and the cost of turnover.For example,an employees decision to stay or to leave is related to career possibilities in the company as well as how he or she can become better prepared to move to other opportunities.To keep a valued employee,the easy answer is not merely compensation.Employee loyalty tends to be more directed to his or her professional skills rather than to the organization.Thus,to best attract,engage,develop and retain talent,those who have responsibility for talent management must understand what is important to employees.

In essence, talent is the vehicle to move the organization where it wants to be.

1.2 The Role of HR

As a primary owner of talent management, HR has many rolesone of the most important is that of facilitator of the talent mindset.

HR leads the way for the organization to own, as an entity, the role of talent management for organizational success. In the role of business partner, HR works closely with the board, the CEO and senior management to ensure that they are committed to talent management work.

As talent management facilitator, HR also pays close attention to how the organizations culture supports talent. Broadly speaking, HRs role encompasses communicating the talent management philosophy companywide and knowing the industry competition. In addition, HR needs to develop an integrated and proactive strategic approach to talent managementthe big pictureas well as managing critical information, such as tracking turnover and knowing what factors contribute to retention.To integrate talent management into all areas of the company, HR also plays a role of change management agent. To drive this change, HR addresses four diverse talent management activities: recruitment, performance management, leadership development and organizational strategy. In this role, HR manages four major risks to the business:

1. vacancy risk (to safeguard key business capabilities, focus on scarce skills and fit to position);

2. readiness risk (to accelerate leadership development, provide full business exposure to rising stars);

3. transition risk (to avoid loss of key talent, select successors with leadership ability and hire for organization capability);

4. portfolio risk (to maximize strategic talent leverage, focus on senior managements commitment to development and performance standards).

1.3 Identification of Talent Organizations need to actively identify high-potential individuals.We do not subscribe to the bubble-up theory,which maintains that the best leaders inevitably move upward and gain the skills and experiences needed to meet the increasingly complex challenges of todays organizations. Organizations should cast a wide net in choosing people to be developed.Companies cant afford to miss good people ,wherever they are.Although relatively young individuals will be the primary source for Acceleration Pools,leaders in later stages of their careers should also be eligible.Accurately selecting the talent to bring into the organization is critical.Everything depends on the developability of the organizations talent.

Every organization has unique succession management needs based on its size,growth rate,number of expected openings,organizational structure,management commitment,and most of all,strategic direction.

2.Employee Engagement and Its Relationship to Talent Management

Effective talent management policies and practices that demonstrate commitment to human capital result in more engaged employees and lower turnover. Consequently,employee engagement has a substantial impact on employee productivity and talent retention. Employee engagement, in fact, can make or break the bottom line. Employees who are most committed perform 20% better and are 87% less likely to resign. In addition, the foundation for an engaged workforce is established by the quality, depth and authenticity of communication by HR and senior management to employees, as well as the quality of supervision. The role of the manager as the most important enabler of employee commitment to the job, organization and teams cannot be overemphasized. Furthermore, when done well, practices that support talent management also support employee engagement (e.g., work-life balance programsflex time, telecommuting, compressed workweeks, reward programs, performance management systems).

2.1 Finding the Right People

In the war for talent,organizational success depends on effective recruitment and retention.To accomplish this goal, HR can provide value by focusing on five key areas: ensuring organizational stability,emphasizing employer brand and reputation, developing integrated talent strategies, supporting multilevel accountability, getting involved in talent management initiatives and offering opportunities for career and personal development.

According to SHRMs 2006 Talent Management Survey Report, -the top areas in need of improvement regarding talent management practices and strategies are:

1) building a deeper reservoir of successors at every level;2) creating a culture that makes employees want to stay with the organization; 3) identifying gaps in current employee and candidate competency levels; 4) creating policies that encourage career growth and development opportunities.

To attract and retain talent, hiring for compatibilitythe fit between employer and employeeis critical. In addition, companies with excellent reputations and strong brands are well positioned to attract top talent.

2.2 Challenges of Global Talent Management

In todays rapidly moving, extremely uncertain, and highly competitive global environment,firms worldwide are encountering numerous global talent challenges.Global talent challenges arise as firms compete on a worldwide stage under dynamic conditions to ensure that they have the necessary amount of talent, at the appropriate places, at the right prices and times. Firms that successfully address these challenges are able to secure and/or create a workforce that meets the talent needs of the firm in the short term while positioning the firm to also meet their longer term talent needs.

To successfully address global talent challenges, firms of all sizes can and must take advantage of a wide variety of human resource management (HR) actions, which include the development of human resource policies and the design and implementation of specific HR practices. Conceptualized broadly, global talent management refers to the use of HR actions to ensure access to needed talent by multinational enterprises competing in a global environment; it includes HR policies and practices related to planning and forecasting, obtaining, selecting, motivating, developing, evaluating, retaining, and removing employees consistent with a firms strategic directions while taking into account the evolving concerns of the workforce and regulatory requirements.Global talent management is carried out in the context of a dynamic environment. Among the many factors that shape the specific challenges and responses of particular firms are several major drivers, which include:

(a) globalization,

(b) changing demographics,

(c) demand for workers with needed competencies and motivation,

(d) the supply of those needed competencies and motivation.

3.Strategic Talent Management:

Only 17% of all jobs in 1900 required knowledge workers. In todays business world that figure is well over 60% (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001).

In this knowledge economy, the bottom line isnt what it used to be. The bottom line has shifted from being influenced by financial indicators such as earnings per share and net profit margin to include intangibles, such as corporate culture, leadership, and an organizations talent pool, drive corporate performance. The percent of market value related to tangible assets in 1982 was 62 percent, with 38 percent for intangible assets. In 2000, the growing importance of intangibles is demonstrated in the fact that only 15 percent of market value is related to tangibles, while a whopping 85 percent is related to intangibles (Ulrich & Smallwood, 2003).

The argument now is that these intangibles need to be measured and monitored, and subsequently tied to the bottom line. The bottom line must be redefined to include intangibles such as leadership practices, organizational capabilities, and the ability to attract talented people. And as organizations continue to automate business processes using technology, in order to remain competitive against others that are doing the same, they must now focus on their talent.

Additionally, though talent can be cultivated and developed, it can also leave the organization, become sick, demotivated, and perhaps influence others to behave in ways unfavorable for the organization. Worst of all, talent can deliver the double-whammy by moving to a direct competitor. Because of this, attracting, assessing, developing, and retaining talented people is even more important in todays volatile knowledge economy.

3.1 The necessity of strategic talent management

The strategic management of talent as such a critical driver of corporate performance has become more and more important in the last few decades. Several key events have influenced this new reality. It began with the onset of the Information Age in the 1980s (Michaels, et al., 2001). Consequently, the importance of intangibles such as intellectual capital, brands, and talent, progressed beyond the importance of tangibles such as capital, factories, and machines. As we move toward a more knowledge-based economy, the value of highly talented people continues to multiply. With it, the demand for high-caliber managerial talent also grows.

Organizations need managers who can meet todays challenges, especially those who value and develop talent. The prevalence of corporate downsizing in the 1980s, followed by a swell in job opportunities in the 1990s,resulted in employee job-hopping being more common than staying loyal to one, and only one, organization. It is the case now that having only one company on ones resume is often viewed as unfavorable and instead, multiple companies on a resume has become more and more acceptable, and oftentimes a sign of upward mobility. More often, managers are passively seeking jobs, not by searching the Internet or want ads, but by keeping their eyes and ears open for the next opportunity.

Because talented individuals are able to essentially write their own employment contract, decline unattractive employment offers, or leave organizations because of lack of developmental opportunities or work challenges, organizations must do whatever it takes to attract and retain top talent.

The Importance of Strategic Talent ManagementThe ongoing war for talentNegotiating power has shifted from the organization to the employeeThe fluctuation U.S. unemployment rateOrganizations are outsourcing the work leftover from downsized jobs.

3.2 Strategic talent management best practices

Strategic talent management is far more than the standard HR role and function of filling positions and managing paper processes. Strategic talent management can be defined as ensuring that a sufficient supply of talent is available across the organization to achieve competitive advantage, enhanced corporate performance, and maximizing the productivity of an organizations talent pool. It involves process consulting which includes forecasting openings and needed resources, using assessments for selection and development, placing employees onto appropriate projects, planning for and measuring the return on investment of personnel programs, utilizing technology advancements, and more. Strategic talent management spans the entire talent life cycle from entry to exit, from placement to promotion. Best practices in strategic talent management identified based on several contemporary experts in the field are described below:

McKinsey & Companys The War for Talent

Tulgans Winning the Talent Wars

Berger and Bergers Talent Management Handbook

3.3 How do you Develop and Implement a Talent Management Strategy?

Talent Management is a "forward-looking" function. Not only should talent management improve your organization's flexibility and performance, it should give you the information and tools to plan for growth,change,acquisitions, and critical new product and service initiatives.

A few critical issues we have identified in our research:

1) Talent Management requires integration and communication between existing HR-L&D functions.

2) Competency management, a mis-understood and difficult part of training and HR, has become critical.

3) Software solutions are maturing.

3.4 The Model of Assessment-Based Strategic Talent Management

A model of assessment-based strategic talent management is presented here. The IPAT Model of Assessment-Based Strategic Talent Management is comprised of three dimensions: Discover, Inspire, and Transform. At a bare minimum, the Discover dimension means to uncover information, whether it is about an individual, group/team, or organization. The Inspire dimension encompasses providing the motivation to elicit change. The Transform dimension means producing, then tracking the changes that occurred.

The IPAT Strategic Talent Management Model Dimension Description

Discover Identify your talent needs. Find the right people at the right time for the right opportunity. Help talent determine where they fit in (in the organization and for which position). Individualized information exchange to orient new talent and allow for rapid productivity.

Inspire Coach, mentor, and give performance feedback to high potential talent. Develop and cultivate leadership capabilities. Identify high potential leaders and place them on a future track to lead the organization. Evaluate talent performance. Transform Provide high potential talent challenging training and development opportunities. Cultivate a culture of feedback and continuous improvement. Assess organization direction, culture, climate, and values. Build and develop teams and teamwork. Drive performance improvement in individuals, teams, and organizations. Document return-on-investment.

Discover At its core, Discover refers to finding the right talent at the right time for the right opportunity. In order to source the right person for the job, the first thing that needs to happen is a strategic talent needs analysis. Find out what projects are coming down the pipeline, if the right talent is available internally, and what are the talent needs currently and for the future. Next, a job analysis is essential to begin to staff the work. A job analysis provides the basis for allassessment interventions.

Inspire

Next, Inspire means developing and cultivating high potential leaders and employees. It also means providing the opportunities to develop and the incentives for employees to succeed. By assessing leadership capabilities, individuals can identify areas for improvement and enlist coaching and mentoring assistance to create and implement action plans.

Transform

Finally, Transform refers to driving performance improvement in individuals, teams, and organizations. Transform addresses issues surrounding organizational development, organization culture, climate, values, and direction. It also involves impressing a culture of feedback and continuous improvement onto the organization, as well as team building and person-organization.Conclusion about this model:

Strategic talent management has already become the competitive advantage organizations need to succeed in the new talent economy. Reasons such as the war for talent and the shifting of negotiating power from the organization to the employee, emphasize the need for organizations to strategically manage their talent assets. Assessment-based STM has been a neglected focus of organizations and human resources professionals, but has the potential to turn strategy and theorizing into action at the individual level. Assessment of individual and group ability, personality, and skills will allow organizations to make more informed decisions that will, in turn, impact the bottom line. Assessment-based STM provides a method of discovering, inspiring, and transforming intangibles (e.g., organizational talent) into tangible results.

4.Defining the Talent Management Process

Organizations are made up of people: people creating value through proven business processes, innovation, customer service, sales, and many other important activities. As an organization strives to meet its business goals, it must make sure that it has a continuous and integrated process for recruiting, training, managing, supporting, and compensating these people. The following chart shows the complete process:

1. Workforce Planning: Integrated with the business plan, this process establishes workforce plans, hiring plans, compensation budgets, and hiring targets for the year.

2. Recruiting: Through an integrated process of recruiting, assessment, evaluation, and hiring the business brings people into the organization.

3. Onboarding: The organization must train and enable employees to become productive and integrated into the company more quickly.

4. Performance Management: by using the business plan, the organization establishes processes to measure and manage employees.

5. Training and Performance Support: of course this is a critically important function. Here we provide learning and development programs to all levels of the organization. As we describe in the Death of the Corporate University, this function itself is evolving into a continuous support function.

6. Succession Planning: as the organization evolves and changes, there is a continuous need to move people into new positions. Succession planning, a very important function, enables managers and individuals to identify the right candidates for a position. This function also must be aligned with the business plan to understand and meet requirements for key positions 3-5 years out. While this is often a process reserved for managers and executives, it is more commonly applied across the organization.

7. Compensation and Benefits: clearly this is an integral part of people management. Here organizations try to tie the compensation plan directly to performance management so that compensation, incentives, and benefits align with business goals and business execution. 8. Critical Skills Gap Analysis: this is a process we identify as an important, often overlooked function in many industries and organizations. While often done on a project basis, it can be "business-critical." For example, today industries like the Federal Government, Utilities, Telecommunications, and Energy are facing large populations which are retiring. How do you identify the roles, individuals, and competencies which are leaving? What should you do to fill these gaps? We call this "critical talent management" and many organizations are going through this now.

4.1 Problems identifying talent

Talent management is typically portrayed as a neutral and normative activity that is free of biases where those with the most promise will get the best chances to rise to the top. However, while there has been no specific study of fairness in relation to the operation of talent programmes, some of the general problems that can compromise HRM practices will inevitably apply. The primary practice underpinning talent identification is the assessment of performance typically through an appraisal scheme. Biasing effects in appraisal include whether or not the rater was involved in previous appointment decisions , impression management and interpersonal regard or liking . Appraisal is a highly political arena , and raters may inflate ratings in appraisals in the best interests of individual and unit performance to avoid conflict and confrontation. The particular ways used to appraise and assess people create a construction of the individual that has meaning for the organisation even though that meaning may involve the relegation of the individual's distinctive attitudes and behaviour and thus suppress the talents that they want to demonstrate. Unless individuality fits with some organisational ideal, then it is, in effect, lost or, at best, subsumed in the organisation. Only when individuality resonates strongly with the organisational ideal does it stand a chance of being recognised and praised as talent. Talent recognition is also likely to be compromised by social and geographic distance, which are particular threats in multinational organisations.Another threat to fair identification of talent is the masculine nature of leadership. The participation of women in corporate boards is about 12% in the United Kingdom, France and Germany, and although women take a higher share of top jobs in the public sector in the United Kingdom, it is still only around 25% on average (Equality and Human Rights Commission ). These raw figures indicate that barriers to the progress of women create a personal cost in terms of equality and equal opportunities and the suppression of women's talent at the top of organisations is probably costing organisations in terms of creativity and innovation. Deloitte and Touche recognised gender inequalities and found that the male-dominated culture was a substantial causal factor. Only by tackling this entrenched culture did the retention of women improve, although the difficulties of cultural change in this respect can not be overstated Leadership potential is a big part of talent search and development, and the popular picture of leadership itself might be a problem for the progress of women. Although leadership theory continues to evolve, it has traditionally been described in masculine terms , elevating the value of characteristics such as being tough, competitive, analytical, unemotional and task-oriented characteristics often thought more likely to be displayed by men. The way we talk has a bearing on this because microlinguistic practices influence our success by influencing how we are perceived, and the context of where we talk influences a person's perceived fit in that context and hence their perceived talent. Research shows that women use different speech practices to men, and in leadership situations, their speech is more likely to adjust to reflect and accommodate the concerns of others much more than men would do. As leadership is seen as a masculine construct, and since leadership potential is a constant ingredient of talent searches, then talent searches appear to have an in-built bias towards men. Organisations need to be careful that they are not seduced by heavily gendered views of leadership when they are looking for future talent.

Another problem affecting the recognition of women's talent is that talent is usually sought in a context of full-time, permanent jobs and long hours. Indeed, long hours can be a proxy measure for energy and drive which usually appear in organisational definitions of talent. Since a high proportion of part-time jobs are held by women, this seems another barrier to talent recognition that needs to be dismantled to accelerate movement towards greater numerical equality of women in positions of power and influence in the United Kingdom .Traditional thinking that sees talent only through a mindset of full-time jobs and long hours has to be reconsidered in organisational talent searches. Finally, a range of personal factors influences individual success over and above relative performance. Personal attractiveness influences success across a range of occupations. An attractive personality and high standards of personal grooming also make a difference. The implications for organisations in this respect are clear to recognise sources of bias and to put in place systems and procedures to counteract them as much as possible.

Real managers put people before numbers for the simple reason that it is talent that delivers numbers.Success comes from those who are able to extract meaning from events and the forces affecting a business,and are able to look at the world and assess the risks to take and the risks to avoid.

1. Illustrative cases

Talent management strategies also provide the context for diversity and inclusion. Proctor and Gamble, for example, feels that getting the right mix of people is a major part of talent management and hires many of its leaders as university recruits.

Talent management is also driven by the anticipated skills shortage in the coming years. While not all organizations, industries and professions will experience a lack of skills, organizations are already competing for talent.

Moving talent management initiatives forward, however, requires organizational buy-in. That is, all levels of management must be on board with the importance of talent management strategies. When the board is involved, the value of talent management is apparent and has high visibility. Yet to be successful, the value must be understood throughout the organization. In high-performing companies, for example, senior management also is responsible for thesuccess of talent management. At the same time, for talent management initiatives to be effective, organizations need formal processes, with many people involved and with strong links between leadership and talent to translate into specific organizational value-based behaviors.

We cannot afford to ignore talent management in our organization today,if we wish that you stay in business tomorrow. At The Sergay Group, we have helped many organizations to structureeffective, efficient and super-charged teams that deliver from top to bottom!

Thanks to its varied programs, Bosch offers exciting employment opportunities for skilled young people. For example, we have continually increased the number of internships, degree theses, and doctorate grants in the last few years. We intend to continue doing so in the future and to make contact with suitable candidates as early as possible. Last year, more than 4,800 students in Germany took up internships at Bosch to link academic theory with business practice. A successful internship is the best recommendation for going on to complete a final-year project or for starting a career at Bosch. That's why we stay in contact with promising interns during their subsequent studies via our students@bosch program. We use this program to provide support for students who have excelled during internships at Bosch.

6.Conclusion:

Companies that engage in talent management are strategic and deliberate in how they source, attract, select, train, develop, retain, promote, and move employees through the organization. Research done on the value of such systems implemented within companies consistently uncovers benefits in these critical economic areas: revenue, customer satisfaction, quality, productivity, cost, cycle time, and market capitalization. The mindset of this more personal human resources approach seeks not only to hire the most qualified and valuable employees but also to put a strong emphasis on retention.

Bibliography

1.Talent Management:Driver for Organizational Success,By Nancy R.Lookwood,SPHR,GPHR,M.A,Manager ,HR content Program,pages 2-4;

2.Strategic Talent Mangament:Assessment As a Foundation Next Generation Strategies In The Ongoing Talent War,by Noelle K.Newhouse,M.S.;Barbara O.Lewis,Ph.D,pages 1-3;

3.Talent Mangement:A critical review by Robert E.Lewis,Robert J.Heckman,Personnel Decisions International,USA,page 139.

http://www.forbes.com

http://www.mercer.com

http://the-tma.org/

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