Human capital makes the spine of businesses. In order to search for appropriate practices for the effective recruitment, development, engagement as well as retention of the right people, a study was carried out by a few researchers from the best business schools. The study involved thirty-three headquarters of multinational companies in eleven countries.
In this article, we are going to discuss their insightful finding which indicates that it isn’t possible to achieve competitive advantage regarding talent management by just determining the basic activities, for example, recruiting or retaining.
The researchers were able to frame six critical principles that were subscribed by top performing firms. These principles are associated with their primary strategy as well as guiding culture. Let us have a look at the principles that can be incredibly helpful for organizations to improve their talent management.
- Alignment with Strategy
Talent management is majorly dependent on the corporate strategy. It’s the corporate strategy that decodes the kind of people that are required in the organization. During their study, the researchers approached GE for an interview and discovered that the growth strategy of that company was based on five strong pillars – technological leadership, enduring customer relations, resource allocation, services acceleration, and globalization.
And to accomplish this, it was realized by CEO Jeffrey Immelt that there was a need for right people to fill in the right positions. By using the annual organizational as well as individual review process, the engineering pipeline and the structure of the engineering functions of the business were properly reviewed together with the analysis of the engineering talent’s potential.
The conclusion was that the senior managers were underrepresented and subsequently more engineers were added to the senior executive band of GE.
- Internal Consistency
It is not possible for talent management practices to work in isolation. It is essential for all the practices to be aligned with one another. As per the study, if you are heavily focusing on high potential individuals, it is necessary for you to provide an equal amount of attention to employee retention, career management, and competitive compensation.
- Cultural Embeddedness
A company’s culture has to be balanced in order to achieve a supportable competitive edge. And for that, it is highly needed to integrate the key values as well as business principles into the processes of talent management. Cultural fit has become a chief selection criterion even for those companies who mainly targeted job-related knowledge and experience for hiring the right people.
An assessment is made of the personality as well as values of candidates in order to figure out whether they are compatible with the organization’s culture or not. This is how we can predict the performance along with retention of these candidates. It is believed that it is easier to upgrade the skills of a person but personality traits and values are difficult to develop.
- Management Involvement
It is not only the responsibility of the HR to handle talent management programs. A.G. Lafley, the former CEO of P&G claimed that he spent almost one-third or perhaps one-fourth of his time in developing talent.
Many organizations now believe that identifying the right people for essential leadership roles is not just the work of the HR. It is considered as a business imperative which should be handled by the leaders of individual businesses.
- A balance between global & local requirements
Organizations working in multiple countries have to take care of the local demands as well as effectively prepare for a global talent management strategy. So companies need to find stability in resolving issues at the local level along with meeting global standards.
- Creating an Employer Brand
Building an employer brand through differentiation is another thing that organizations are doing these days. By attaining a captivating value proposition, an organization is able to attract competent candidates.
