Evolution of Talent Management

The definitions of talent and talent management have evolved over years of transitions from focusing only on upper-level leadership and executives to address the development needs of all employees in order to support the strategies and needs of the organization. In this Discussion, you will examine current and past perspectives on the topics of talent and talent management, and then discuss your perspective on the implications of how organizations view Talent and talent management. Be sure to support your posts with appropriate references.

You will post a cohesive and response based on your assigned academic readings and research this week that addresses the following:

• How have the definitions of talent and talent management evolved to current-day thinking? Compose what you believe are the best definitions for each.
• Discuss whether you think it makes a difference how organizations define talent and talent management, or whether it is just semantics.

Stakeholder Buy-In

For a talent management initiative to be successful, it must have support from its stakeholders. Talent management initiatives can be costly for the organization. The upfront costs of consulting, implementation, or investments in software/hardware might seem expensive. If stakeholders are not convinced that these initiatives will add value to the organization, they probably will not support it. Gaining stakeholder buy-in will increase the chances that they will remain involved and support the initiative throughout its duration.

For this Discussion, suppose you work for an organization in which the stakeholders are not convinced that talent management initiatives are important to the success of the organization.

You will post a cohesive and scholarly response based on your readings and research this week that addresses the following:

• What might you tell stakeholders regarding the relationship between organizational strategy and talent management initiatives?

Respond to four or more of your colleagues’ postings in one or more of the following ways:

• Ask a probing question.
• Share an insight from having read your colleagues’ postings.
• Offer and support an opinion.
• Validate an idea with your own experience.
• Make a suggestion.
• Expand on your colleagues’ postings.

Classmate Responses:

Classmate 1: (BreAnna)(Talent Management) (80words)

“When people think of talent, they think of athletes or actors. When in reality talent can be anybody putting forth the effort to make something better. Perfect example, employees make companies operate efficiently. The employees are considered the talent of the organization. Talent and Talent management can be strategic to an organization. The pressure to attract and retain key talent has led organizations to expend increased energy and resource on talent-related initiatives over the past half-decade (Freiberg & Kao, 2008). Talent cannot be subordinated; It is constant and enduring. Talent Management is not about developing employees or creating succession plans, nor is it about achieving specific turnover rates or any other outcome. The primary purpose is to support the organization’s overall objectives.

The term talent dates back to ancient Greeks and biblical times, starting as a measure of weight, then becoming a unit of money, and later meaning a person’s value or innate abilities. Talent can now be referred to as an individual’s skills and abilities and what the person is capable of doing or contributing to the organization (Dowell & Silzer, 2010, p.13). The best definition I would use for Talent is the measurement at which you get better with effort.

Talent management does not have a clear definition. Talent management often focuses on what processes or components are included and what types of talent are managed. Most people refer talent management to human resource management. Recruiting, selection and development (Dowell & Silzer, 2010, p.14) Talent management is best understood as a shift in thinking and retention of great employees. The best definition I would use for Talent Management is a strategic plan to improve value within the business and to make it possible for companies and organizations to reach their goals.

Talent management plays an essential role in the business strategy since it manages one of the critical assets of the company, the people, which is the same thing as human resource management.” There are suggestions that some organizations are considering renaming the human resources department as the talent management department”(Dowell & Silzer, 2010, p.14). I believe that talent management is semantics. Talent can be defined as a group or individual depending on the organization and their views on the phrase talent.”

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Classmate 2: (Kemila)(Talent Management) (80words)

“Talent management is simply a matter of anticipating the need for human capital and then setting out a plan to meet it. Current responses to this challenge largely fall into two distinct and equally ineffective camps. The first, and by far the most common, is to do nothing: anticipate no needs at all; make no plans for addressing them rendering the term “talent management” meaningless. Silzer, R., & Dowell, B. E. (2010). This reactive approach relies overwhelmingly on outside hiring and has faltered now that the surplus of management talent has eroded. The second, common only among large, older companies, relies on complex and bureaucratic models from the 1950s for forecasting and succession planning gacy systems that grew up in an era when business was highly predictable and that fail now because they are inaccurate and costly in a more volatile environment. It’s time for a fundamentally new approach to talent management that takes into account the great uncertainty businesses face today.

Fortunately, companies already have such a model, one that has been well honed over decades to anticipate and meet demand in uncertain environments supply chain management. By borrowing lessons from operations and supply chain research, firms can forge a new model of talent management better suited to today’s realities. Before getting into the details, let’s look at the context in which talent management has evolved over the past few decades and its current state. Other than the semantics of HR and talent management, the biggest difference between the two is in the type of software you should look for. If you determine you want an HR focus, you should look for software that takes a more administrative direction. Johnson, M. (2010).. You want features that roll benefits tracking, leave tracking or scheduling depending on if you’re a full time or shift-based business, and payroll into your employee life cycle management. If you determine you want a talent management focus, look for software that has performance tracking features, or an employee self-serve portal, to help the department feel less closed off and more integrated with your employees’ lives.”

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Classmate 3: (Clarke)(Stakeholder Buy-In)  (80words)

“Business is about how customers, suppliers, employees, financiers (stockholders, bondholders, banks, and so on), communities, and managers interact and create value. To understand a business is to know how these relationships work (Freeman, 2007). By gaining a key stakeholder, this will help to develop the overall organization and is the key to any business strategy that strives to deliver results. In order to find and maintain stakeholders you must be clear about the objectives and goals that are required to ultimately achieve the success of the organization; this is the organizational strategy. The talent management initiative is the art of balancing how value is shared among different stakeholders so that overall value creation is maximized.

The organizational strategy and talent management initiative are collectively a way to provide opportunities for stakeholders to genuinely influence decisions around the company. This is a productive way of convincing stakeholders to partner with an organization because being able to explain what you are asking from them and what will happen with the feedback they give you will provide them with a sense of value knowing the input they give, can become a successful output.”

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Classmate 4: (Machele)(Stakeholder Buy-In) (80 words)

“Introduction

In the business world today, there is an important role played by talent management in organizational success. It is through talent management that an organization can effectively hire, manage, develop as well as retain employees who are best talented and excellent in the industry. It ensures that the human resource department performance is in line with business strategies (Johnson, 2010, p. 22). Through talent management, a company becomes aware of the importance of having the right employees with the necessary skills and capabilities as it ensures there is retention of these employees thus saving on the unnecessary cost involved in hiring and retaining employees.

Importance of Stakeholder Support on Talent Management

Due to the importance of talent management to an organization that has an overall objective of becoming a leader in the market, it is essential to communicate the importance of talent management to the various stakeholders. Through such communication, stakeholders will be in a position to support actions related to talent management hence resulting in its success as well as the overall organizational performance. When an organization has a well developed and implemented talent management, it creates preparedness for the emerging competition in both the local and the global market through the identification and utilization of new opportunities. Stakeholders need to support organizational efforts to have talent management as it does not only adapt to new market trends but also helps an organization to anticipate and utilize new opportunities available in the market before its competitors (Silzer & Dowell, 2010, p. 73). Having an effective talent management strategy also saves on unnecessary training costs as it identifies the essential skills among employees thus creating a training and development strategy in line with those skills.

Conclusion

Talent management is an essential input for any organization that has a long term objective of being a leader in both products and service delivery. When stakeholders support talent management initiatives, it creates a smooth running of organization processes as there is no friction between employee and organization performance. This ensures that resources are channeled towards the right talent management processes as there is the exchange of ideas relating to talent management among the various stakeholders.”