Talent_Management

Abstract Business strategy remains important in ensuring that a business performs well. It is important that human resources management is carried out in a proper manner the human resource has a function of delivering strategy insights in the organization so as to enable the organization to be more effective in sourcing, evaluating and motivating employees in this increasingly unstable business environment. In addition the human resource has to continue providing administrative services which are dependable, responsive and cost effective to the needs of the organization. It is clear that, for any company to be able to achieve, its market goals, it has to have correct human resources management. However, aligning the human resources does not guarantee 100% success towards achieving the market objective of a company. The Drotter results based approach is tailored to a professional services firm structure and applied in the development of a performance management system aligned with the business’s strategy. Drotter leadership pipeline approach is implemented with full performance definitions for each leadership level in the tailored pipeline becoming the basis for a new organization wide performance management application. Discuss the importance of aligning human resource processes with business strategy. It is a simple question, but the Human resource (HR) strategy is usually not aligned with the business strategy or any other strategies in the organization. The HR declares, the HR Strategy supports the business, but there is no other alignment with the business strategy. It is a program of the employee care, but it is not the HR Strategy. The HR Strategy aligned with the business strategy is about the growth of the business, increasing the performance of the employees and keeping the costs under a control. The HR Strategy aligned with the business strategy is not much about the employee satisfaction and benefits provided to the population as they are not the strategic goals, but they are tools to reach the goals important for the whole organization. The process of the alignment of the HR Strategy with the business strategy is about going deeper and finding the real root components of the successful human capital management in the organization. The HR Managers have to identify the real goals of the business, the business way how to reach the goals and the real needs of the business from Human Resources. The HR tends to take care of employees, but it is not what the business asks for usually. The HR Strategy alignment with the business strategy needs many discussions inside Human Resources about the real goals of the organization and how the organization will utilize its human capital to reach the goals. It is not about the employee satisfaction, it is a side effect. The HR Management has to understand, how the business wants to reach the goals and then the HR Strategy can be developed and fully aligned with the business strategy. The aligned HR Strategy misses the nice words about the retention, the employee satisfaction and other nice HR initiatives. These are the tools the real business goals are different. The HR Strategy has to respect it. Attracting and retaining the best and brightest employees is a challenge for any organization. Grappling with tight budgets, slow growth, and layoffs, today's organizations have awakened to a new reality. The workforce is emerging as the most significant component of corporate competitiveness and financial performance. With this evolution, comes a new human performance challenge for business. Downsizing, mass retirements and ineffective retention programs represent a financial and knowledge drain for business. For every employee lost, businesses lose years of collective experience. The workforce has evolved into arguably the biggest competitive differentiator for organizations in all industries. Companies must take critical steps to build and maintain a successful HR strategy that addresses these business challenges. In recent years, a growing body of research indicates that spending in human performance areas--training, knowledge management, performance management and advanced human resources practices--translates into bottom line growth. More than one half (52 percent) of the executives surveyed in Accenture's recent study, "The High-Performance Workforce" study reported that the HR function is 'very critical' in executing the company's overall business strategy. Many of the world's leading businesses have found success in aligning human resources with business goals, therefore sustaining a high-performance workforce. Business leaders have become true believers in the value of workforce performance and its impact on bottom-line results. It was a top issue during the "boom" years, when attracting and retaining talent was the major concern, but it is no less important to them now. In fact, four of the top five issues in Accenture's "Executive Issues 2003" survey are workforce related with the report offering insights into what sets human performance leaders apart. Organizations are increasingly focused on creating a supportive HR capability. HR is becoming more supportive of the business strategy by focusing more on improving human and organizational performance and reducing administrative and transactional efforts through automation or outsourcing. Over 40 percent of participants in the "High-Performance Workforce" study reported increased HR spending in 2002, and an equal percentage said they boosted their training budget in the same period. Getting corporate buy-in is not as hard as it used to be for HR. In the "High-Performance Workforce" study, CEOs rated recruiting and retention programs as among the most important initiatives, with 91 percent believing these initiatives are somewhat or very important to achieving their company's top strategic priorities. Human Resources professionals need to continue to educate senior executives through strategic training programs, on the value their workforce can bring by aligning HR processes to corporate business objectives. In today's labor market, corporations need to meet a new set of employee expectations. Money is no longer the sole motivator for choosing an employer. According to Accenture research, a stimulating, and rewarding, work environment and flexible scheduling are also key factors in the equation. Research also demonstrates that the opportunity for continuous learning is important to recruits. A survey of graduating students and alumni conducted by the American National Association of Colleges and Employers showed that training opportunities were among the top three factors considered when deciding where to work (the other two are the opportunity for advancement and a good benefits package). In most companies, executives believe there is a lack of critical workforce skills, workforce understanding of business or organizational strategy, and employee understanding of the connection between their jobs and overall corporate strategic priorities. One recurring theme in the Accenture research was the need for employees to understand and feel part of an organization, and to know how their individual roles contribute to the organization as a whole. Retention strategies should focus on demonstrating to each individual employee how their role fits into the success of the firm. Recognition is a key determinant in employee satisfaction and success. Whether it be positive feedback, formal recognition programs, time-off, changing job titles, or special assignments, recognition should be implemented as a complement to competitive salaries. Finally, all HR departments should consistently measure employee progress through feedback from employees in order to promote continuous process improvement and effectiveness throughout the course of the employee life-cycle. Discuss how the firm used benchmarking to determine the performance standards for leadership, client-facing and specialty/support functions. The principle behind Management by Objectives (MBO) is to make sure that everybody within the organization has a clear understanding of the aims, or objectives, of that organization, as well as awareness of their own roles and responsibilities in achieving those aims. The complete MBO system is to get managers and empowered employees acting to implement and achieve their plans, which automatically achieve those of the organization. The planning and control is effective if it has strategic character, is aimed at achievement of concrete results, and is duly, flexible, simple and economic. The contribution dimensions identified for the firm were based on a literal analysis of the work content interviews, but also vetted against and aligned with the new client-centric strategy. The contribution dimensions are of critical importance as they outline the source code to be used in developing performance appraisal, assessment, selection and career development applications. Close alignment with the business strategy facilitates full line of sight for every staff member and powerful process reinforcement of the key strategic and operating cultural elements. The contribution dimensions were: client results, leadership results, management results, relationship results, innovation/creativity results and business/financial results. The work interview data and strategy input were analyzed against a database of other companies’ standards to draft full performance definitions for each leadership level for both client-facing and specialty/support functions. As the firm had been struggling with the fundamentals of good performance management practice; again, a rather typical professional services situation. It was decided that the first iteration of the performance model would follow the work architecture’s simplicity. The concept orientation for management that was implemented was: • A new talent management focus which is the work organization design and people acquisition and development to build the core architecture for talent management. • Understanding performance as results achieved as opposed to activities or competencies alone, the key business requirements are job being necessary and adding appropriate value and every staff member being a full performer. • Understanding development and potential: potential is no longer defined as high, moderate or low, but rather is expressed as the assessed ability and readiness to do different work within the planning period. • Understanding the work of leaders is a simple definition of leadership and management and how they interact and together create full capability. • Understanding the pipeline model is that people have to know its origins and ita core definition as an application model based on differentiation of required output and how each business’s pipeline was unique. The firm’s tailored pipeline model was introduced along with the performance dimensions and coverage included the definition of each layer as well as the transition points and associated changes in required skills, time applications and work values. • The new definition of a job is the understanding of the new dynamic and interdependent definition of roles at the firm and their placement within the pipeline architecture. • Three key skill sets for leaders of other professionals: assessment for selection, performance planning and assessment for developmental appraisal; coaching for current improvement and future development. Identify and explain three objectives of the talent management system including one from each category of operations, customer and financial objectives. Organizations today need to have the right set of Human Resources (HR) tools in place, allowing employees to update their skills, access the HR information they need to do their job and answer personnel-related questions. These tools are bare minimum in today's HR world. Technology including employee and manager self-serve portals, information management, performance measurement and enterprise resource planning (ERP) are all useful IT tools that help align HR strategy with business goals. So where should companies begin in measuring the business impact of their human performance, recruitment and retention investments' At a minimum, they must implement metrics that help them identify how their initiatives affect the way individuals or groups perform. Such performance-improvement measures are critical to determining the return on investment for specific HR and training initiatives. Companies should continue using and refining them as part of their larger efforts to improve workforce performance. The biggest impact of human resources strategy on financial performance will not be direct and instantaneous. Improvements will more likely occur incrementally, indirectly and over time, realized through the investments' effects on intermediate outcomes like productivity, quality and customer satisfaction rather than through sudden increases in share price. Some companies are achieving success in this arena. These business leaders in human performance are aligning their workforces with customers; they see the HR function, as well as the HR and training activities, as valuable and strategically important; measure the impact of HR and training investments against key business results; and use technology to improve workforce performance. Organizations whose human resources and human capital development practices are both valued by employees and aligned with business strategy will achieve superior results in key business performance drivers such as productivity, innovation and customer satisfaction. Discus how the company would measure each objective. So where should companies begin in measuring the business impact of their human performance, recruitment and retention investments' At a minimum, they must implement metrics that help them identify how their initiatives affect the way individuals or groups perform. Such performance-improvement measures are critical to determining the return on investment for specific HR and training initiatives. Companies should continue using and refining them as part of their larger efforts to improve workforce performance. The biggest impact of human resources strategy on financial performance will not be direct and instantaneous. Improvements will more likely occur incrementally, indirectly and over time, realized through the investments' effects on intermediate outcomes like productivity, quality and customer satisfaction rather than through sudden increases in share price. Some companies are achieving success in this arena. These business leaders in human performance are aligning their workforces with customers; see the HR function, as well as the HR and training activities, as valuable and strategically important; measure the impact of HR and training investments against key business results; and use technology to improve workforce performance. Organizations whose human resources and human capital development practices are both valued by employees and aligned with business strategy will achieve superior results in key business performance drivers such as productivity, innovation and customer satisfaction. Discuss how the changes made to Porter Novelli’s talent management system impact organizational performance When an organization reaches a crossroad in talent management, a consistent and comprehensive approach can provide both a measurable benefit and assurance of long term growth. Intermediate measures such as unwanted turnover, survey trends and the like provide more credible evidence of efficacy. After instituting the leadership pipeline, Porter Novelli experienced a decline in turnover of 24% from 2005 to 2006 and in 2006 and 2007 reported zero turnovers of identified high potential managers. The focus on results as opposed to activity or effort and the strong emphasis on personal accountability can certainly be cited as contributing factors.