Talent Management - O2 company

by theduke_jason (student)

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Essay 2 Talent Management

Introduction

Talent management is a process that emerged in the 1990s and continues to be adopted, as more companies come to realize that their employees’ talents and skills drive their business success (Hengst, 2007). Armstrong, 2006 also define talent management as an integration of activities that helps an organization to attract retain motivate the talent people it need now and future (Beardwell & Claydon, 2010,p.162) .By referring to the book, journal, webpage and some of the lecture notes, I will discuss about the topic such as talent management, the purpose of talent management and the advantages and disadvantages of talent management.

Body

The major elements (resources) that form an organization are man, money, market, material, machinery, and method. Man which also means talent is the most important element in an organization as all resources which available are useless and handicapped if without talent to manage it. Talent refers to the everyone in an organization which posses individual skills, abilities and can demonstrate high performance or potential. (Beardwell & Claydon, 2010, p.162).

Talent management concept cover the whole employee life cycle from recruiting, selecting, training, promoting and hence retiring. It is essential for a company to hire the right person to in a right job position and hence provide the appropriate training and development to the employee from time to time to enhance the ability as well as maintain the competitive advantages in the highly competitively business environment today.

The function of talent management is as shown as below:

Attracting & Selecting talent – selecting talent is one of the most important functions of talent management as this will assist the company to recruit and select the suitable employee for the suitable position.
Retaining talent – retaining talent also mean to reduce the turnover rate. Talent is the most valuable asset in an organization and high turnover rate will cause the stakeholder lose confident to the company. Therefore talent management is important to maintain the talent and prevent it outflow.
Engaging talent – Engaging talent is highly related to job satisfaction as well as enhancing employee organizational commitment. This is very important as it determine what the employee can contribute to the company.
Developing talent – Learning and performance improvement is a integral part of talent management. A series of development activities and planning is important to motivate and retain the workforce to ensure organization has talent pipeline to met future requirement. (Beardwell & Claydon, 2010,p.162-191)

Undeniable, talent management play important role in an organization and the organization which emphasize on talent management will able to enjoy the benefit as listed below.

Right people in the right job.

Talent management will helps organization to allocate the right people in the right job. It simply means by justify and determine the ability, strength, and profession of the employee and hence allocated him/her to the position which suite for him/her to perform. This will ensure job satisfaction.

Retaining the top talent.

An appropriate talent management will helps the organization to retain the top talent. It ...

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Undeniable, talent management play important role in an organization and the organization which emphasize on talent management will able to enjoy the benefit as listed below.

Right people in the right job.

Retaining the top talent.

An appropriate talent management will helps the organization to retain the top talent. It simple means to restrict the talent outflow from the company. At the competitive business world today, top talent had become a demand in the market. Every company is looking for top talent to boost up the performance of their company. Hence is important to prevent the talent outflow and become a threat to the company.

Better Hiring.

Hiring is the very initial step of talent management. Hiring suitable employee is the very first step of talent management. The quality of an organization determined by the quality of the employee. The best way to have talent at top management start with have talent at bottom as the lower staff today might become the top level management in the future.

Understanding employee better

Talent management helps the company to understand the employee better. Employee assessment provide the information such as abilities, strengths and weaknesses, development needs, career aspirations, likes and dislikes of the employee to the management. Hence, management will use the information obtained to determine the motivation factor of the employee and contribute to job enrichment process.

There are no researches or studies shows that there are any negativities of talent management but there are challenges, dilemma and problem which companies need to consider in the talent management issue.

Developing robust leadership pipeline.

Leadership is a biggest potential threat in talent management. It is difficult to appointed or elected to be the future leader from the talent pools. Sometimes, in an organization critically lack of individual who ready to move forward as a leader.

Transferring of knowledge and relationship.

Retirement of key personnel is always an issue in all organization. The key personnel equipped with valuable knowledge and experiences which benefits to organization in neither daily operation nor the critical issue management. However, it is hard for the employee to pass the entire knowledge and experience to his successors.

Human problem

Form the research of McKinsey in year 2006. He found out the biggest obstacle of talent management is due to the human. The employee in the organization will blame their superior for not understanding, the superior will blame the employee for poor performance and not committed sufficiently. This cause by the management do not take the talent management issue seriously as they believe it do not contribute to business performance. (Erikson, 2008)

By applying the issue of talent management in O2, United Kingdom, (refer to appendix 1 for the company profile) initially the turnover rate is high and the performance of worker is not at satisfying level. The roles of talent management take place to improve the situation and to solve the problem. Manager who equipped with talent management skill will be able to recruit the suitable employee for the position as well as retain the talent to keep serving for the company. By understanding the need and requirement of the employee, manager will able to motivate the employee to perform better and moving forward on the right track to archive the organization goals and objectives.

Conclusion

Human resources is the most important and valuable asset of an organization. The attraction, development and retention of talent are key success factor of an organization in the competitive world today. Talent management includes the process or attracts, select, retain, engage and develop the talent within the organization. Talent management help the organization to allocated appropriate people into suitable position, retaining the top talent, developing the talent as well as understand the employee better to boost up the company performance. However there are challenges which face by company and have to contend with regarding to the talent management issue – human.

Reference:

Bersin, J., 2006. Talent management. What is it? Why now?[PDF], available at [Accessed 25th April 2011]

Bersin, J., 2007. Changes Ahead for the Multi-Generational Workforce [online]. Available at [Accessed 25th April 2011]

Bhatnagar, J., 2007. Talent management strategy of employee engagement in Indian ITES employees: key to retention. Employee Relations. 29, (6), 640-663.

Black, K., 2011. What Is Talent Management? , [online]. Available at [Accessed 25th April 2011]
Beechler, S. and Woodward, I.C., 2009. The global “war for talent”. Journal of International Management. 15.

Cannon, J.A. & McGree, R. ,2007. Talent management and succession planning. CIPD toolkit. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Cheese, P., Thomas, R.J. and Craig, E. ,2008. The talent powered organization: strategies for globalization, talent management and high performance. London: Kogan Page.

Claydon, T. & Beardwell, J., 2010. Human Resources Management : A Contemporary Approach. 6th ed. Pearson.
Erikson, T., 2008. Today's Top 10 Talent-Management Challenges, Available at [Accessed 25th April 2011]

Hengst, A., 2007. Talent Management FAQ, Available at [Accessed 25th April 2011]

INCOMES DATA SERVICES. ,2010. Talent management. HR studies, No 918. London: IDS.

Ivancevich, J.M., 2010, Human Resources Management. 11th ed. McGrawHill.

MacMillan, D., 2008. Talent Management: How to Invest in Your Workforce [online]. Available at [Accessed 25th April 2011]

McCartney, C. and Garrow, V. (2006) The talent management journey. Research reports. Horsham: Roffey Park Institute.

Parry, E. and Urwin, P. ,2009. Tapping into talent: the age factor and generation issues. Research into practice. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.