In today’s global market place, many companies face high turnover of employees and difficulty finding the right employees who can fit into their unique organization. Over the last 15 years, there has been a great focus on Talent Management within many organization’s overall business and HR strategy. Talent Management is defined as “the use of an integrated set of activities to ensure that the organization attracts, retains, motivates and develops the talented people it needs now and in the future”. Tapomey Deb writing in “A Conceptual Approach to Strategic Talent Management” maintains that in the new global economy and with the challenges that company’s faces in ensuring the successful operation of their businesses, people talent has emerged as one of the most critical success factors that contributes to how an organization meets its financial management, strategic plan execution and research goals (2005:17).
The design and implementation of a Talent Management system is of critical importance, because having the right individuals in the right roles in a company directly affects an organization’s growth. As accurate as this assertion may be, research conducted of companies in both the private and public sector, has concluded that there is a dearth of organizations that are seriously focused on developing and implementing adequate Talent Management systems to meet the evolving challenges associated with talent acquisition, deployment and development (2005:17).
This is exemplified in a 2007 research study conducted by Bersin Associates, an industry research and advisory services company in the United States of America. The study consisted of interviews with 750 companies and vendors, 55 senior HR executives and over 1 million pieces of data found that only “4% of respondents believed that they have world-class processes for talent acquisition, management, development… in place” ( http://industry.tekrati.com/research/8772/). Another key aspect of the research findings that
“Leadership development and succession planning are the top areas of focus…When asked what area is most in need of overhaul or revamping, 36% of respondents cited leadership development and 30% cited succession planning…Learning and development investments are in need of realignment. Only 34% of surveyed organizations currently have learning and development programs that are fully aligned with the organization’s talent management needs.” (, http://industry.tekrati.com/research/8772/, 2008).
Talent management falls within the human resources function in an organization, as its primary purpose is to find and link varying human resources strategies, policies and practices in a cohesive manner. This would enable an organization to be successful in “the war for talent by ensuring that the organization attracts, retains, motivates and develops the talented people it needs… using a number of interdependent policies and practices” (2007:46).
The CIPD maintains that to be successful Talent Management strategies must have the support from the top most members of the organization, support for “must flow from those at the very top of an organisation and cascade throughout” (http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/recruitmen/general/talent-management.htm). Further analysis of the Bersin Associates case study and research report of corporate talent management confirmed the CIPD findings. The report concluded that organizations with Talent Management programs with business executive support are “more than 35% more effective than those with programs owned by HR executives” (http://industry.tekrati.com/research/8772/m). Though the research for Bersin is conclusive, it is imperative to find real life positive outcome of such an approach.
A review of a case study conducted of Siemens; the multibillion dollar, multinational electronics and electrical engineering company,; efforts to develop a high performance culture as part of its Talent Management strategy, concluded that because the effort was shared top down – from the CEO to the lowest clerk – the organization attained extraordinary levels of performance from its staff and buy from all levels (, http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/downloads/siemens/siemens_12_full.pdf). This concurs with the CIPD assertion that “people excellence involves developing everybody that works for your organization – not just the high-fliers” as part of a Talent Management strategy (2008).
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