An Empirical Study of HR Factors as Determinants of Talent Management

An organization's ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate connpetitive business advantage. One key corporate responsibility is to enable people to use and develop their individual talents. Organizations must ensure that people can fulfill their needs and find their potential in their work experience. Jobs should be designed to match people's talents. Contributions to the quality of the w^orkplace are highly valued. Organizations should provide a complete range of HR services including HR consulting, HR technology and HR outsourcing. Some organizations, like Infosys', are already using Human Capital Management (HCM) practice to help clients differentiate and achieve operational excellence. The present work represents how the organizations can bring right kind of talent at the work place and how that talent can be retained. Through literature survey eleven factors contributing to talent management have been identified which are: creativity & resourcefulness, problem solving & decision making, communication, team building, entrepreneurship, leadership, general managerial skills, learning ability, performance measurement, career development, inspirational capabilities. Various statistical tests like inter item analysis, correlation analysis, multiple regression are performed to examine the relationship between different factors and talent management on a sample of 100 trainees of ACC who were attending their training program at Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. The results reveal that among all other factors inspirational capability is the prime factor contributing to talent management. On the other hand organization should put in more effort to creativity and innovativeness as these are the essential ingredients in the current global competitive environment for any organization to survive. Based on this study a model for talent management is suggested.

Talent is defined in the same manner across the organization, allowing you to apply consistent, enterprise wide policies for attracting, recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining talent (Sadler, 1993). Instead, individuals need flexibility to try on new roles and organizations need flexibility to shift to marketplace demands. Attraction and retention are important metrics, or outcomes (Deloitte research, 2004). Primarily objective of this study is to identify different factors affecting talent management and to find out the level of significance of these factors on talent management human resource creation. Based on this study a model for effective talent management in an organization is suggested. The important aspect considered in this study is to identify the area of training for improving performance of employees.

Some of the important studies examining the relationship between Talent management & different traced out HR factors are discussed as follows:
Hooghiemstra (1990) revealed that in order to retain the best talent, a coherent Human Resources Management is required, which can take optimal decisions in the fields of selection and Development. Lunn (1995) observed that training should not be a response to every problem the organization encounters; people cannot be trained to be what they are not. Training refines and develops talent; it does not create it. He also found out that highly talented group generates more average sales and hence leads organization to earn more profit. Hiltrop (1999) observed that the ability to attract and retain talent is rapidly becoming one of the key issues for human resource managers and their organizations across the globe. The results suggested that high performance organizations are consistently outperforming their competitors on a number of human resource factors like HR Planning, openness, recognition, equality, team work. autonomy, specialization, career development, internal promotion, training, job security. Although this paper did not report any empirical evidence in the above said argument. Bergeron (2004) observed that successful organizations make talent strategies part of their strategic planning process. The study also indicates that organizations that choose to improve their entire human capital system perform better in terms of productivity, revenue, profits, market shares, and share holder value. Glen (2006) in his paper examines effectual, practical and holistic people strategies that address key skills retention, employee engagement, employee motivation and attendance gaps, with a view to positively impacting on organization costs, productivity and business performance. The paper also seeks to examine the value of assessment and feedback in talent engagement and retention, and to look at developing employees via experience based development initiatives. He observed that important predictors in the above said context are: organizational process; role challenge; values; work-life balance; information; stake/leverage/reward/recognition; work environment; and product/service. Cunningham (2007) identified important determinants of talent management as: selection, recruitment, placement and promotion. Learning and development, succession planning, career guidance, organization design, rewards, working environment, working methods. Srlvastava and Bhatnagar(2007) observed that by reflecting recruitment and culture need fit, an innovative and supportive environment is created at the work place where employees feel more passionate about their work and exhibit the behaviors that enable organizations in achieving better results. Results also reveal that employee branding (Berthon, 2005), and employee engagement (Joo and Mclean, 2006) are important inputs in building up employee satisfaction, employee commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and employee involvement.
Hughes and Rog (2008) found that talent management is an enacted commitment to implement an integrated, strategic and technology enabled approach to HRM. This study also focuses on how effective implementation of the talent management strategy leads to improved employee recruitment and retention rates, and enhanced employee engagement finally leading to the improved operational and financial performance. Although this paper did not report any empirical evidence in the above said context. Deery(2008), reviewed the literature related to retention of good talent and found out that in addition to the traditional causes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment various components of stress such as emotional exhaustion, lack of role clarity, job burnout has been identified as the significant cause of employee turnover. The study found that improved organizations strategies such as appropriate education and job fit, quality of training, v^^ork balance policies plays a crucial role in an employee's retention, increased job satisfaction.
Based on the review of literature the following eleven following factors are identified which contribute to talent management in an organization: Creativity and Resourcefulness, Problem Solving and Decision Making, Communication, Team Building, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, General Managerial Skills, Learning Ability, Performance Measurement, Career Development and Inspirational Capabilities. These factors are discussed below:

Creativity & Resourcefulness
Creativity is the new idea applied to initiating or improving a product, process or service. All innovations involve change, but not all changes necessarily involve new ideas or lead to significant improvements (Robbins, 1998). According to Andriopoulos (2001) major organizational factors which enhance creativity in a work environment: Organizational climate, leadership styles. Organization culture, Resources and skills. Structure and system of organization.

Problem Solving and Decision Making
While the effective decision itself is based on the highest level of conceptual understanding, the action commitment should be as close as possible to the capacities of the people who have to carry it out (Harvard business review on decision making, 2001).
Individual, group and organizational characteristics together with the problem attributes are the principal inputs of the problem solving process. (Loughlin and Mcfadzean, 1999).

Communication
According to Hirst & Clutterbuck(2002), to be truly effective, both leaders and managers must develop their self-awareness, become role models for communication in the organization, and learn to encourage and manage constructive dissent.

Team Building
Team-building utilizes high interaction group activities to increase trust and openness among team members (Robbins, 1998). Luthans (1973), identified five key areas that team should closely monitor and periodically measure: team mission; goal achievement; empowerment; open & honest communication, and positive roles and norms.

Leadership
Blake and Mouton (1985) describes leadership as the process of achieving results with and through others. No leader or manager can achieve the goals of the organization by their own efforts alone (Andersen, 2006). Newstrom And Davis( 1997), have identified different attributes for a successful leader: General intelligence, Technical or professional knowledge and competence in their particular fields, personality: leaders should be energetic and committed, maintain contact with their people, and understand their strengths and weaknesses, the ability to inspire. Listening, sharing and delegating skills. Self-knowledge, to understand their own strengths and weaknesses.Leaders achieve employee results when human capital increases over time and consistently meets the needs of the organizations (Ulrich, 1999).

General Managerial Skills
Khanwalla(1995) indicates top ten roles played by top executives are namely: three interpersonal roles of figurehead or symbolic head of the organization, the leader, and the liaison role; three information processing roles of monitor, disseminator of information, and spokesman; and four decision making roles of an entrepreneur or change agent, disturbance or crisis handler, resource allocator, and negotiator People with different styles and personalities may apply skills differently, but there are a core set of observable attributes in effective skill performance that are common despite individual differences in people (McKenna, 2004).

Learning Ability
In words of Robbins (1998), learning is defined as, any relative permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience.
Effective learning needs to achieve transference of knowledge from the artificiality of a training course, to practical application where the trainee adapts acquired knowledge to the perceived needs (Robothan, 2004).   Figure 3, it becomes clear that the factor which has maximum contribution on talent management is inspirational capabilities (9.58%), as compared to entrepreneurship (8.64%)
These values show that a person should take small risks, and take decisions to solve problems and conflicts freely and independently. He should coordinate all the activities effectively.

inspirational Capabilities
From Table 4(k), it has been observed that the item lead others by example has shown the highest value (.706**), and the lowest value (.548*"*) is shown related to the item performance. While other items, inspire others (.621**), act as a mentor (.608**), high self esteem (.596**), have shown their significance relatively. These values signify that a person should be able to inspire others, lead others by example and should be ready to act as a mentor when there guidance is needed. Based on the results and analyses it can be concluded that leadership is to be taken care of as a prime factor in talent management. However the other factors: career development, learning ability, inspirational capability, managerial skills, creativity, performance management, communication and team building also play a significant role in talent management. However entrepreneurship and decision making skills have shown less significance.
Organization should put in more effort to creativity and innovativeness because in the current global competitive environment an organization can survive only if it continues with the new products and services in the market.
In the changing business scenario the challenges are becoming a part of the work life and impact of these new challenges are forcing employees to take decision and solve problems on their own. Thus organizations should support online HR concept like DELL, where the employees easily have access to the HR department to solve their problems.
Many organizations have already created knowledge portals and knowledge sharing platforms so employees can avoid the inconvenience and can try to find online solutions to the problem to create the appropriate culture to help the subordinates and ensure maximum contribution from employees.
The managerial skills have been differentiated from the leadership aspects of talent management. As far as the statistical results are concerned coordination of the employees along with other colleagues has been found more significant. As a result, it is suggested that for managerial effectiveness employees are required to coordinate activities effectively.
Learning ability and talent management are significantly related thus organization should encourage time management effectively by the employees, so that it will encourage effective participation of the employees and will also force to have strong attention towards new practices.
Performance measurement has become different from performance appraisal. In case of perfarroance measurement an approach of performance appraisal and regular monitoring has been emphasized which is giving the sufficient opportunities to develop HR's for matching the job profile. Self satisfaction for performance appraisal is also to be considered while deciding objectives for the subordinates.
For talent management it is important that supervisor becomes a great source of inspiration. He should not only help and support others but should also be capable to inspire others by putting himself as a role model.
In any organization the system and process are so set that practically employees are using set facilities of communication but the importance is of the interpersonal communication and water cooler talks. Value for communication has come low in this case, because I feel that employees hesitate to communicate with top management and with their colleagues.