A Study of Talent Management as a Strategic Tool for the Organization

Over the past decade there has been a glut of management literature around the topic of talent management. The challenge of effective talent management to support business growth has been consistently identified as a top priority among global CEOs. While the phrase "Talent Management " is relatively new as a concept, however as a management focus it has always been at the core of strategic HRM. Strategic HRM performs an enabling and investment management role for organizations. The HR leader as champion for organizational hurl\an resource management excellence is tasked with the primary responsibility of leading and strategizing comprehensive efforts to attract, develop, engage and retain a workforce that is competent to support strategy and strategic management efforts. Talent management systems and processes need to be integrated into the total HRM system of the organization. Traditional roles of HRM such as recruitment, training, performance management and compensation need to be aligned to support the achievement of talent management goals such as talent turnover, employee engagement, succession pipeline ratios, etc. This article addresses how recruitment and selection, a traditional function of HRM needs to be managed in an organizational context that has a focus on talent management. Expressed from a strategic business perspective, "Talent management may be defined as a core sub-system of an organization's strategic management system, to develop a human resource asset base that is capable to support current and future organizational growth directions and objectives". Talent management may be described as comprising three key components:-• Talent Identification • Talent Development-Internal and external talent development • Talent Engagement, motivation and retentio