Talent Management

History Talent management is a term that emerged in the 1990s to incorporate developments in Human Resources Management which placed more of an emphasis on the management of human resources or talent. The term was coined by David Watkins of Softscape[2] published in an article in 1998;[3] however the connection between human resource development and organizational effectiveness has been established since the 1970s.[4] Talent management is part of the Evolution of Talent Measurement Technologies. The issue with many companies today is that their organizations put tremendous effort into attracting employees to their company, but spend little time into retaining and developing talent[Need quotation to verify]. A talent management system must be worked into the business strategy and implemented in daily processes throughout the company as a whole. It cannot be left solely to the human resources department to attract and retain employees, but rather must be practiced at all levels of the organization. The business strategy must include responsibilities for line managers to develop the skills of their immediate subordinates. Divisions within the company should be openly sharing information with other departments in order for employees to gain knowledge of the overall organizational objectives.[5] Companies that focus on developing their talent integrate plans and processes to track and manage their employee talent, including the following:

Sourcing, attracting, recruiting and onboarding qualified candidates with competitive backgrounds Managing and defining competitive salaries Training and development opportunities Performance management processes Retention programs Promotion and transitioning[

The talent management strategy may be supported by technology such as HRIS (HR Information Systems) or HRMS (HR Management Systems). Modern techniques also use Competency-based management methodologies to capture and utilize competencies appropriate to strategically drive an organization's long term plans. Talent management is a term that emerged in the 1990s to incorporate developments in Human Resources Management which placed more of an emphasis on the management of human resources or talent. The term was coined by David Watkins of Softscape[2] published in an article in 1998, and further defined in the book "Talent Management Systems" in 2004.

Current Scenario Talent management or human capital management is a very broad area ranging from sourcing, developing, retaining, promoting and moving people within the organization. Although sourcing (recruiting) is often seen as the most critical challenge in India, retaining good talent is a much bigger challenge for organizations. If an organization can retain more people, then the pressure on sourcing will also reduce considerably. The cost of hiring can be reduced by focusing on retention. More important than cost of hiring, is the cost of training a new individual and bringing him / her to the same level of contribution as the previous employee. Many Indian organizations do not have sophisticated knowledge management systems to store, codify, and reuse knowledge. In a lot of cases, the knowledge around processes, systems, technical aspects & client information leaves along with the employees. For several reasons such as above it's critical for organizations to focus on employee retention. Good people management, employee focused HR policies, employee training, providing growth opportunities, allowing lateral movement within the organization, good performance management system, leadership development, employee engagement by line managers are some of the things organizations can do to improve retention and curb attrition levels. INTRODUCTION This new age economy, with its attendant paradigm shifts in relation to the human capital, in terms of its acquisition, utilization, development and retention, has placed a heavy demand on todays HR professionals. Today HR is expected to identify potential talent and also comprehend, conceptualize and implement relevant strategies to contribute effectively to achieve organzational objectives. Hence a serious concern of every HR manager in order to survive this War for Talent, is to fight against a limited and diminishing pool of qualified available candidates to replace valuable employees when they leave, dramatically underscoring the difficulty to attract, motivate and retain the best employees in an organization. To analyse the reasons, we first need to understand what TALENT means. People have different views and definitions. According to Leigh Branham, vice president, consulting service at Right Management Consultants and author of the book, Keeping People Who Keep You in Business, a talent is not rare and precious. Everyone has talent too many to possibly name all. Talent is behavior; things we do more easily than the next person. We speak of natural born talent but those with a gift, knack, ability or flair for something can refine and develop that talent through experience. Talent, however, cannot be taught. As someone once said, you can teach a turkey to climb a tree, but it is easier to hire a squirrel. Vice President, HR of Seagram, Mr. Gopi Nambiar, says talent can be best described as a combination of abilities and attitudes. The real trick is to match the right motivated talents to the right role, individually and collectively, harnessing and harmonizing this crucial attribute to achieve the objectives of your company. Today, companies have become fiercely competitive when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. According to Branham, 75 per cent of the senior executives admit that employee retention is a major concern today, the obvious reason being the increasing rate of turnover. This dynamically changing and volatile demand-supply equation with such erratic attrition trends and cut throat competition has led organizations to focus on mechanisms pertaining to attracting and

retaining talent. It is an accepted truth that turnover will happen and companies need to device a strategy to curb unprecedented turnover from affecting organizational success. As the Director, HR (Asia) of Bausch & Lomb, Mr. P.G. George declares, achieving zero percent turnover is neither realistic nor desirable. People tend to seek change for a variety of reasonsmore money, better benefits, the appearance of a greener pasture- and this has been a practice from the very beginning. Then, what is it that has really changed? Despite intense competition being the key to market development and success, organizations have failed to identify some of the major reasons which highlight why good performers leave. In his study, Branham clearly states that one major reason why people leave their organization is because of the organizations failure to bring about a correlation between pay and Impact on shareholders

performance. Human Resource experts in the industry believe matching the right blend of talent with the right job profile can lead to superior performance. The present scenario with abundant opportunities has triggered a wave of employees, perpetually on the move, forever seeking better opportunities whenever, wherever and however they can. What is behind the restlessness of these hard to keep employees? By focusing on productivity, organizations are realizing that it is imperative to hire employees who can do the job and be successful at it. The organization no longer wants to just hire to hire, in fact they are striving to find the right people, bring them into the organization and retain their services. One of the critical functions of HR is a sound Human Resource Planning through which they are able to project the demand for human resource and thereafter formulate strategies for acquiring them. As the leading HR heads of the country point out, the solution is not just about finding the correct retention mechanisms , but it starts from the very beginning by devising ways to acquire the right people for the right jobs. Talent management is a set of competency-based human resource management practices aimed at getting the best out of its high-value people and ensuring that right people are in place to do a particular job. A recent research by Success Factors and human capital expert Dr. Jac Fitz-enz has shown that smarter talent management leads to better financial performance of the company1. This paper looks at the influence of several variables on Talent Management Strategy so as to fine tune it in accordance with the conditions that a firm is faced with. The macro-level variables considered are the environmental factors and the industry factors while the micro-level variables are the organizational factors. A Talent Management process model has been developed, which outlines the sequence of steps to be followed in effectively implementing the talent management strategy. In addition to these, ways of aligning the HR practices of the organization with the talent management initiatives have been looked at. Thus it is seen that an Integrated Talent Management approach by the organization, with the talent management strategies and processes perfectly aligned with the various HR processes and with the overall organizational strategy, would help in getting the best out of the talent and in achieving its objectives.