Role of talent management in organisational sustainability

The other day while in an interview board I came across a gentleman. In his mid thirties, an astute gentleman, he completed his master’s in business from top rated university. He works in an MNC for last ten years. He got performance rating of ‘Excellent’ in 5 out of last 9 annual performance reviews. Suddenly during last 2 years the rating stood a performance rating of ‘Needs Improvement’. What really went wrong? He is in sales division and contributed to the bottom line of the company as mega star for the first eight years. He was remunerated with high level of bonus, pay rise, foreign trips. But he was not given adequate training or exposure in other areas of business.

His career as a result has run into a dead end. Now he wants to quit. His new work place will certainly be benefited by way of making forays into those coveted accounts which he manages. By way of not addressing the talent’s requirements to meet his career path, his present organisation may lose out this star performer. This is not an isolated case. While the country as a whole is enjoying a commendable growth but a dearth has been created in the form of shortage of supply in executives. Talent Management therefore has become of great importance. Talent management is the systematic process of identifying the vacant position, hiring the suitable person, developing the skills and expertise of the person to match the position and retaining him to achieve long-term business objectives.Talent management is an organisation’s ability to recruit, retain, and produce the most talented employees available in the job market. Talent consistently uncovers benefits in these critical economic areas: revenue, customer satisfaction, quality, productivity, cost, cycle time, and market capitalisation. Having good talent management is when one has good skills, knowledge, cognitive abilities, and the potential to do well. Talent management is also an important and necessary skill for people in the workforce to acquire.

The managers and the higher authorities need to take the initiative to pave the way for the personal development and long-term association with the organisation. Some of the ways in which a manager can motivate and retain employees are as follows:

1. Recognition: Recognising employees’ contribution and their work on individual grounds, boost up self-confidence in them

2. Remuneration and Reward: Increasing pay and remuneration of the employees as a reward for their better performance.

3. Providing Opportunities: Giving the charge of challenging projects to the employees along with the authority and responsibility of the same, makes them more confident.

4. Role Design: The role of employees in the organisation must be designed to keep them occupied and committed, it must be flexible enough to inculcate and adapt to the employee’s talent and knowledge.

5. Job Rotation: Employees lack enthusiasm if they perform the same kind of work daily. Thus, job rotation or temporary shifting of employees from one job to another within the organisation is essential to keep them engaged and motivated.

6. Training and Development: On the job training, e-learning programmes, work-related tutorials, educational courses, internship, etc. are essential to enhance the competencies, skills and knowledge of the employees.

7. Succession Planning: Internal promotions helps identify and develop an individual who can be the successor to senior positions in the organisation.

8. Flexibility: Providing a flexible work environment to the employees makes them more adaptable to the organisation and brings out their creativity.

9. Relationship Management: Maintaining a positive workplace where employees are free to express their ideas, take part in the decision-making process, encourage employees to achieve goals and are rewarded for better performance leads to employee retention.

10. Self-motivation: Nothing can be effective if the employee is not self-determined and motivated to work.

With the growing influence of millennials and the increasing transparency catalysed by the digitalisation age, employees are expecting a more engaging and enjoyable work experience. 2018 will finally be a year where leaders start to focus on developing the “Employee Experience”, an ecosystem that integrates three core dimensions: engagement, culture and performance management.

An important corollary to improving the employee experience through analysing employee data is the digitalisation of the workplace itself. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning tools like GetLinks or Arya have disrupted recruitment practices, effectively lowering costs and obtaining candidates with the better fit.

What was once a technical discipline owned by data specialists, people analytics is now a business, as well as a managerial discipline. This means that in 2018, more organizations would evolve a people analytics

function, with the attendant challenges of prioritising numerous data requests, merging multiple data sources with disparate organisational stakeholders, and the constant tension between centralising the analytics function in ‘Business Intelligence’ or specialising it within functional disciplines.

The BBC defines the ‘Gig Economy’ as “a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work, as opposed to permanent jobs”. On-demand hiring promises lower costs, but it also creates more competition for talent where traditional workers’ career paths are phased out and are now replaced with temporary jobs focused on skill. Talent sourcing practices need to build speed and agility in order to quickly identify work/projects in need of attention, source employees with the required skills, and staff project teams that can quickly perform the necessary task.

Several workplace realities impede the impact of talent management. Many small businesses rely on part-time and temporary workers. Keeping them motivated while trying to focus on the long-termtenure of full-time, permanent employees is difficult. If your business relies on workers who you don't need or expect to be around for long, it may not be worth the effort to install a formal talent management program.Multi-generational workplaces also present challenges. Companies of all sizes struggle to come up with effective recruiting strategies that don't discriminate by age, and offering rewards for workers at varying ages that may have different motivations can be difficult.

A June 2008 "Bloomberg Businessweek" article pointed out that the leadership pipeline is often not full enough to carry out talent management.

HR professionals often map out the leadership needs for the business and the skills required at each level. Small businesses may struggle to bring in and develop enough effective store managers or business unit leaders to complete with other small companies as well as larger competitors. To recruit more aggressively, including in other geographic areas, only adds to the costs of talent management.

A core drawback of talent management for small companies is that the programs are often developed and coordinated by human resources professionals. Smaller companies may not have full HR staffs. Instead, managers often hire, train, motivate and fire their own workers while also performing critical business duties. This means managers don't have the time in many cases to implement talent management. Even companies that do have HR professionals often get frustrated at the difficulty of getting managers to concentrate on talent management needs instead of focusing entirely on other business concerns.

The following points explain how talent management can be beneficial for organizations −Enhances individual and group productivity and capacity to compete effectively in a complex and dynamic environment to achieve sustainable growth.; Assists in hiring quality workforce; Establishes better match between jobs and skills; Helps retain top talent thereby reducing the cost of hiring new recruits.

Helps in understanding the employees better; Keeps employees engaged constructively; Effective use of available man-hours; Helps develop leaders for tomorrow within the organization; Helps in evaluating employee’s readiness to take up new roles.

The writer is MD and CEO of Community Bank. He can be contacted at [email protected]