Tag: organizational culture

Human resources plays many roles in a company. The department manages employee relations, talent acquisition, payroll, onboarding, and much more. One more duty of HR is talent management.

Sourcing the best people from the industry has become the top most priority of the organizations today. In such a competitive scenario, talent management has become the key strategy to identify and filling the skill gap in a company by recruiting the high-worth individuals from the industry. It is a never-ending process that starts from targeting people. The process regulates the entry and exit of talented people in an organization.

To sustain and stay ahead in business, talent management cannot be ignored. In order to understand the concept better, The stages included in talent management process:

• Understanding the Requirement: It is the preparatory stage and plays a crucial role in success of the whole process. The main objective is to determine the requirement of talent. The main activities of this stage are developing job description and job specifications.
• Sourcing the Talent: This is the second stage of talent management process that involves targeting the best talent of the industry. Searching for people according to the requirement is the main activity.
• Attracting the Talent: it is important to attract the talented people to work with you as the whole process revolves around this only. After all the main aim of talent management process is to hire the best people from the industry.
• Recruiting the Talent: The actual process of hiring starts from here. This is the stage when people are invited to join the organization.
• Selecting the Talent: This involves meeting with different people having same or different qualifications and skill sets as mentioned in job description. Candidates who qualify this round are invited to join the organization.
• Training and Development: After recruiting the best people, they are trained and developed to get the desired output.
• Retention: Certainly, it is the sole purpose of talent management process. Hiring them does not serve the purpose completely. Retention depends on various factors such as pay package, job specification, challenges involved in a job, designation, personal development of an employee, recognition, culture and the fit between job and talent.
• Promotion: No one can work in an organization at the same designation with same job responsibilities. Job enrichment plays an important role.
• Competency Mapping: Assessing employees’ skills, development, ability and competency is the next step. If required, also focus on behaviour, attitude, knowledge and future possibilities of improvement. It gives you a brief idea if the person is fir for promoting further.
• Performance Appraisal: Measuring the actual performance of an employee is necessary to identify his or her true potential. It is to check whether the person can be loaded with extra responsibilities or not.
• Career Planning: If the individual can handle the work pressure and extra responsibilities well, the management needs to plan his or her career so that he or she feels rewarded. It is good to recognize their efforts to retain them for a longer period of time.
• Succession Planning: Succession planning is all about who will replace whom in near future. The employee who has given his best to the organization and has been serving it for a very long time definitely deserves to hold the top position. Management needs to plan about when and how succession will take place.
• Exit: The process ends when an individual gets retired or is no more a part of the organization.

The best way to approach talent management

1. Support when an employee is effective in the right role

You need to support employees that are performing effectively in their current roles. The idea is to retain talent by helping them grow and making sure they are happy with their job role and responsibilities.

2. Invest in employees underperforming in the right roles

While it is easier to write off employees that are underperforming in the right role, it is important for organizations to consider all factors like poor training, lack of resources, poor role definition, and poor supervision before blaming it all on the employee.

Otherwise, you might end up hiring the replacement with the exact same issue.

That is why you need to do what it takes to give your employees the right training programs and define their role more accurately.

3. Promote employees performing outstandingly in the wrong role

There will always be a time when employees will outgrow their job roles. Organizations need to get the timing right and promote the employees before they get hired by a competitor. Employees often think they are ready for a promotion before you think they are ready. In cases like these, it is always better to move them before you are comfortable in order to retain talent.

4. Move out employees underperforming in the wrong role

When you see an employee underperforming, you need to analyse whether they are in the wrong role or the right role. If they are in the right role, then you need to invest in the employees. But if they are in the wrong roles, then you need to move them into a role that is more suited to them.

Talent management is the full scope of HR processes to attract, onboard, develop, engage, and retain high-performing employees. This means that talent management is aimed at improving business performance.

Talent Management Strategy

A talent management strategy (TMS) is the magic ingredient behind managing an organisation’s talent both current and potential. Talent management is an important business goal for any organisation and talent management strategy can give the competitive edge to any organisation.

Talent management strategy can move an organisation’s talent management beyond essential talent management activities like talent acquisition and performance management, to levels of critical talent growth, managed talent relationships and an inclusive talent system.

A well-designed TMS within an organisation facilitates the HR function and management to plan toward recruiting and retaining top performers, employing them against specific business goals at a better rate than their competition.

Talent management strategy is majorly concerned with the following areas:

Talent attraction and recruitment:

Organisations often undermine the cost of recruiting the wrong talent. Failing to recruit the right person at the right time can result in significant cost to an organisation. Recruitment processes can be gruelling and niche profiles may be difficult to find. Hence the recruitment function within an organisation’s HR department needs to focus on its attraction recruitment strategy while seeking specific profiles with specific skill sets.

Employing innovative recruiting strategies can help organisations to get job openings seen by candidates who are looking for a new role. Innovative recruitment strategies also make it faster to hire great candidates, more consistently, and with significantly less effort.

Building and employing talent:

Building and employing talent refers to addressing the specific needs and aspirations of talent and balancing them with the short-term and long-term goals of the organisation.

As a talent management strategy, deploying talent is getting the talent placed in the right roles at the right time to fill critical competency gaps and support the individual career growth of the each employee.

Talent management strategies like hire vs build help organisations in more than one way. Such a strategy doesn’t just save the hiring cost for acquiring a talent in the organisation, but also ignites faith within the existing talent. Further to this, developing plans that factor in the personal aspirations of the existing talent increases the satisfaction levels as a by-product of the talent getting motivated.

Talent Retention

A study by Employee Benefits News highlights that the average cost of losing talent for the organisation is a surprising 33% of their annual revenue.

Talent is every organisation’s supreme revenue generator in terms of innovation, sales and customer relations. The cost of attrition is directly related to the organisation’s disability to consider the welfare and personal goals of the talent.

For succeeding in talent retention efforts requires organisations to think about things from the talent’s perspective. Every employee is different, and same goes for the personal goals and objectives for the talent.

An effective talent retention strategy, as part of the overall talent management strategy, attends to this concern.

Talent Management Strategy Talent management is not a mere checklist of requirements that need to be sufficed it is a strategy that needs careful implementation, regular checks, and continual improvement. The following are the six primary talent management strategies that serve as the pillars of people functions.

1. Detailed job descriptions:

A well-informed, detailed job description helps the sourcer, the sourcing software, and the candidate understand the job-role better. Generic job descriptions only serve to confuse all parties involved in the talent acquisition process and lead to a wave of irrelevant applications. Information that must be a part of the job description includes the following:

• Job title and location
• Skills required
• Overall duties
• Reporting lines
• Tools and equipment used
• Salary and benefits

With these, candidates can make an informed decision on whether to apply or not and sourcers get CVs that fit the bill better.

2. Person-organization fit

An employee that does not fit into the organizational culture can neither be the happiest employee nor the most sustainably productive one. While the culture can be difficult to define in words, it is prevalent in actions and quite easy to understand whether a candidate would be a good fit or not. Personal and organizational values need to have a certain degree of overlap for any employee to feel at home within the organization. Without a comfortable person-organization fit, the most amount of time, effort and energy would go into attempts at adjustment. Hiring candidate with the right P-O fit (or PE fit) thus greatly improves the chances of better employee engagement, higher employee satisfaction, and usually better performance.

3. Collaborate-coach-evolve

An important strategy to make talent management more effective involves creating a culture of coaching, mentoring (even reverse mentoring) and collaboration. Constructive feedback goes a long way when it comes to helping employees evolve and develop their skills and expertise. Managing talent is thus also about preparing them for the future of the organization to be ready for changes down the path and to be able to rely on each other.

4. Reward and recognize right

The process of rewards and recognition forms an important part of the strategy to motivate, engage and manage employees better. This goes beyond financial rewards and bonus packages. Studies point towards the fact that employees often want R&R schemes that motivate them with “prizes” that are most relevant to them as individuals. This is a great opportunity for organizations to show their employees how much they care for them as persons and as integral aspects of the organizational machinery.

5. Opportunities for continuous improvement

Managing talent needs to be put in the context of the future that the organization has envisioned for itself. Thus, employees need to be equipped with the right tools to be able to maximize their own potential. For the continuous improvement of the organization, there needs to be the scope and opportunities for the continuous development of its employees. Moreover, this ensures that the cumulative skills within the organization is updated, upgraded and upscaled. Talent management involves strategically planning career paths that make sense for every employee. We all tend to work better we know where we are headed and what the next stop is for our careers. This does not entail making empty promises of promotions but rather creating a career map in discussion with the employee, making sure that they relate to it and feel that it is realistic while also providing them with all the necessary tools to make the map a reality. Having a map to follow also improves retention scores since employees then know what they have to look forward to and work towards and can then collaborate effectively to achieve it.

A talent management system (TMS) is an integrated software suite that addresses the “four pillars” of talent management: recruitment; performance management; learning and development; and compensation management.

A talent management system, or TMS, is an integrated software platform that supports core talent management processes, including recruitment, employee onboarding, performance management, learning and professional development, compensation management, and succession planning. These processes, and the technical capabilities that support them, are typically delivered via software modules. So, businesses can start with what they need and add additional functionality as they grow.

Most importantly, with a TMS, an organization can link human resource planning to its business strategy. This ensures proactive measures are in place to provide the necessary talent that will support the current and future goals of the business.

Purpose

Whereas traditional HRMS and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems focus primarily on transaction processing and the administration of basic human resources processes such as personnel administration, payroll, time management, etc., talent management systems focus on providing strategic assistance to organizations in the accomplishment of long-term enterprise goals with respect to talent, or human capital. Talent management systems may also be referred to as or paired with an applicant tracking system (ATS) in either standalone application or as a suite of products. According to Bersin, talent management may be defined as the implementation of integrated strategies or systems designed to improve processes for recruiting, developing, and retaining people with the required skills and aptitude to meet current and future organizational needs.

The key elements of a talent management system.

• Ensure talent strategies align with the needs of the business. Work with leadership teams to understand business objectives, then ensure the talent strategy supports these outcomes.
• Recruit candidates. Source talent globally, nurture candidates throughout the recruitment process, and leverage the efficiencies of a comprehensive applicant management and tracking system.
• Onboard employees. Optimize new hire engagement with a dedicated onboarding portal. Ramp employees quickly with paperless new hire processes. Automate workflows for on-, off-, and cross-boarding.
• Manage employee performance. Help employees manage their goals. Use guided action planning for continuous performance management.
• Plan and design compensation models. Reward and recognize strong performers.
• Develop and retain employees. Provide modern and engaging learner experiences. Schedule and carry out compliance training. Develop proactive succession plans and actively develop leaders.

Functional modules and their market worth

TMS solutions typically offer one or many disparate or integrated modules which provide business functionality in areas of human capital management / human resources typically referred to as “strategic”.

• Performance management
• Goal management
• Compensation management
• Talent acquisition / recruiting
• Learning management systems
• Career development
• Succession planning

The role of talent acquisition and performance management has increased many folds compared to learning management systems in the talent management market. Many companies which were earlier working on only one of these domains have moved to developing integrated talent management systems.

Delivery methods

Many organizations struggle with HR data silos, disconnected technologies, and manual processes, the future of talent management is embodied in solutions designed from the ground up to provide business-centric functionality on a unified talent management platform. Talent management system recently have been at the forefront of growth in the software as a service (SaaS) delivery market following earlier iterations in the standard HR systems space via application service provider (ASP) delivery models. Traditional delivery via on-premises license sales still exist, but are much less prevalent in the competitive space.

Enterprise systems integration

Vendors of TMS software typically claim varying degrees of integration with other enterprise software vendors, and in particular with leading vendors of HRMS systems. The accuracy of these claims is often a question of interpretation, as the degree to which each vendor integrates with 3rd party systems varies considerably depending on circumstances and both the vendor and the third-party solution. In some cases, third party vendors offer certification for such scenarios, in order to offer some basis of comparison.

Competitive market

The so-called war for talent has driven a marked increase of attention and investment in the talent management space as new vendors continue to enter to support an ever-growing demand for strategic human resources applications. Many of these competitors have entered via the software as a service (SaaS) delivery model, affording small and medium businesses (SMB) new less-costly options. The Gartner Magic Quadrants for Talent Management Suites compares the major players of this market each year; in 2018 ranking products included Cornerstone OnDemand, SAP’s SuccessFactors, and Skillsoft’s SumTotal systems.

Benefits of Talent Management Solutions:

• Recruitment strategies that align with the objectives of the business.
• An integrated and centralized data model for all talent management activities.
• Improved employee onboarding, retention, and development.
• Better engagement between managers and employees, including processes for compensation, reviews, and rewards.

Evolution of talent management systems

In the 1980s and early 1990s, talent management focused predominantly on developing internal talent, leading to an excess of middle-management roles. Through the economic downturn, businesses restructured, and more emphasis was placed on attracting external talent. However, by the late 1990s, organizations found they were hiring and losing experienced people at about the same rate. This led to a new focus on retaining and nurturing existing personnel.

HR processes were incorporated, but without a centralized model, each track was siloed and information was often out-of-date. HR and recruiters had to deal with paper-based and time-consuming workflows with little time to focus on strategic initiatives.

Comprehensive talent management systems were created to integrate all HR talent modules within a single platform. Workflows became automated and digital, creating efficiencies across the organization.

Today, talent management systems are used by companies around the world and across all industries. Here are some examples:

A global construction company, Mota-Engil, implemented a TMS to transform its HR practices and prepare its workforce for a future of growth and innovation.

Terex, a leading manufacturer, uses a TMS to support workforce diversification while simplifying and streamlining HR-related activities for increased engagement.

A TMS also helps organizations with unique and modern challenges relative to talent management in the 21st century. For example:

• Diversity and inclusion: Implement diversity sourcing and candidate development plans. Provide proactive and continued development to regain and grow a diverse workforce.
• Skilling, upskilling, and reskilling: Identify skills gaps. Establish training and reskilling pathways to transition people to new or evolved roles.
• Remote workforces: Shift employee support mechanisms to accommodate remote workers. Provide new interaction models to ensure manager and employee engagement is optimized.

Talent management can be a discipline as big as the HR function itself or a small bunch of initiatives aimed at people and organization development. Different organizations utilize talent management for their benefits. This is as per the size of the organization and their belief in the practice.

It could just include a simple interview of all employees conducted yearly, discussing their strengths and developmental needs. This could be utilized for mapping people against the future initiatives of the company and for succession planning. There are more benefits that are wide ranged than the ones discussed above.

Benefits:

Retaining the top talent: Despite changes in the global economy, attrition remains a major concern of organizations. Retaining top talent is important to leadership and growth in the marketplace. Organisations that fail to retain their top talent are at the risk of losing out to competitors. The focus is now on charting employee retention programs and strategies to recruit, develop, retain and engage quality people. Employee growth in a career has to be taken care of, while succession planning is being performed those who are on the radar need to be kept in loop so that they know their performance is being rewarded.

Right Person in the right Job: Through a proper ascertainment of people skills and strengths, people decisions gain a strategic agenda. The skill or competency mapping allows you to take stock of skill inventories lying with the organization. This is especially important both from the perspective of the organization as well as the employee because the right person is deployed in the right position and employee productivity is increased. Also since there is a better alignment between an individual’s interests and his job profile the job satisfaction is increased.

Better Hiring: The quality of an organization is the quality of workforce it possesses. The best way to have talent at the top is have talent at the bottom. No wonder then talent management programs and trainings, hiring assessments have become an integral aspect of HR processes nowadays.

Better professional development decisions: When an organization gets to know who its high potential is, it becomes easier to invest in their professional development. Since development calls for investment decisions towards learning, training and development of the individual either for growth, succession planning, performance management etc, an organization remains bothered where to make this investment and talent management just make this easier for them.

Understanding Employees Better: Employee assessments give deep insights to the management about their employees. Their development needs, career aspirations, strengths and weaknesses, abilities, likes and dislikes. It is easier therefore to determine what motivates whom and this helps a lot Job enrichment process.

Limitations:

Costs

The time, resources and financial costs to operate a talent management program can be high. This is a burden for small business that don’t necessarily have the resources to implement such a system.

Many companies have one or more HR professionals spending much of their time to develop and implement talent management, but a business with few employees may find those labour hours best spent in other ways. Talent management programs also involve the use of software solutions to map out talent needs at all levels or departments, which can be expensive.

Worker Conflicts

Several workplace realities impede the impact of talent management. Many small businesses rely on part-time and temporary workers. Keeping them motivated while trying to focus on the long-term tenure of full-time, permanent employees is difficult. If your business relies on workers who you don’t need or expect to be around for long, it may not be worth the effort to install a formal talent management program.

Multi-generational workplaces also present challenges. Companies of all sizes struggle to come up with effective recruiting strategies that don’t discriminate by age, and offering rewards for workers at varying ages that may have different motivations can be difficult.

Leadership Limitations

A June 2008 “Bloomberg Businessweek” article pointed out that the leadership pipeline is often not full enough to carry out talent management. HR professionals often map out the leadership needs for the business and the skills required at each level. Small businesses may struggle to bring in and develop enough effective store managers or business unit leaders to complete with other small companies as well as larger competitors. To recruit more aggressively, including in other geographic areas, only adds to the costs of talent management.

HR and Management Conflicts

A core drawback of talent management for small companies is that the programs are often developed and coordinated by human resources professionals. Smaller companies may not have full HR staffs. Instead, managers often hire, train, motivate and fire their own workers while also performing critical business duties. This means managers don’t have the time in many cases to implement talent management. Even companies that do have HR professionals often get frustrated at the difficulty of getting managers to concentrate on talent management needs instead of focusing entirely on other business concerns.

Principle 1: Reduce the Risk of Being Wrong

In manpower anticipations for future an organization can ill afford to be wrong. It’s hard to forecast talent demands for future business needs because of the uncertainty involved. It is therefore very important to attune the career plans with the business plans. A 5 year career plan looks ridiculous along with a 2 year business plan.

Further, long term development and succession plans may end up as a futile exercise if the organization lacks a firm retention strategy.

Principle 2: Avoid Mismatch Costs

In planning for future manpower requirements, most of the HR professionals prepare a deep bench of candidates or manpower inventory. Many of the people who remain in this bracket start searching for other options and move when they are not raised to a certain position and profile. In such a scenario it is better to keep the bench strength low and hire from outside from time to time to fill gaps. This in no way means only to hire from outside, which leads to a skill deficit and affects the organizational culture.

Such decisions can be taken by thinking about the ‘Make or Buy’ decision. Perhaps questions like – How accurate is the demand forecast? How long is the talent required? Can we afford to develop? Answers to these questions can better help the talent management to decide on whether to develop or buy talent.

Principle 3: Recoup Talent Investments

Developing talent internally pays in the longer run. The best way to recover investments made in talent management is to reduce upfront costs by finding alternative and cheaper talent delivery options. Organizations also require a rethink on their talent retention strategy to improve employee retention.

Another way that has emerged of late in many organizations is sharing development costs with the employees. Many of TATA companies for example sponsor their employees’ children education. Similarly lots of organizations use ‘promote then develop’ programs for their employees where the cost of training and development is shared between the two. One important way to recoup talent investments is spotting the talent early, this reduces the risk. More importantly this identified lot of people needs to be given opportunities before they get it elsewhere.

Principle 4: Balancing Employee Interests

How much authority should the employees’ haves over their own development? There are different models that have been adopted by various corporations globally. There is ‘the chess master model’, but the flipside in this is that talented employees search for options. Organizations can also make use of the internal mobility programs which are a regular feature of almost all the top organizations.

Principle 5: Alignment with Strategy

Corporate strategy is the natural starting point for thinking about talent management. Given the company’s strategy, what kind of talent do we need?

Principle 6: Internal Consistency

There also needs to be internal consistency when it comes to talent management. The talent department cannot run on its own without taking into account the other areas of a company. For example, there has to be a basis for competitive and fair compensation in the company. The talent department cannot just hire people for the same position at all different rates of pay. It also has to focus on retaining employees. If there is no consistency, then it will be difficult to retain high-performing employees.

Principle 7: Integrating Culture

The third principle is to integrate the culture into the talent management process. It is important to keep the culture in mind when hiring and retaining employees. Every company has a culture that is embedded into its workforce. For example, Google has a unique company culture; it has been known to look for ‘Goodliness’ during the hiring process. This ensures that the new candidates will be a good fit into the company culture.

Talent acquisition and management has emerged as a key strategic process in an organization. Though there is a better availability of workforce in the market than ever before, yet the challenge to acquire the right talent still persists for any organization, worldwide. This is essential to achieve the strategic objectives and ensure long term success of an organization. Thus, enhanced corporate competitiveness and globalization has transformed the regular process of human resource recruitment into talent acquisition.

Moreover, the work of an organization these days does not end with hiring of the right talent into the organization. There is a wide spectrum of activities like career management, leadership development, talent planning, etc. which are constantly buzzing in the HR departments of organizations. Such activities fall into the realm of talent management.

Talent management is all the more essential to keep up with the future needs of the organization. Otherwise, if the organization does not focus on talent management within itself then it will have to resort to the process of recruitment every time the need for appropriate talent arises. Hence, we can say that talent management is all about nurturing and guiding the talent in your organization in alignment to the strategic and long run goals of the organization. It is the succeeding step to talent acquisition.

An organization generally avails the services of an HR Consulting Firm to provide with a cost-effective and quick, yet high quality, talent acquisition and management process. An HR Consulting Firm efficiently and effectively contributes towards recruiting the best and the most appropriate person for the organization with the allocation of minimal resources and within a short period of time. Also, HR Consulting Firm provides the right analysis, strategies, and plans for the management of talent in an organization.

As far as talent acquisition is concerned, an HR Consulting Firm maintains a highly effective research team which keeps a detailed track of the requirements of both the organization as well as the candidate. It may be possible that an HR firm may specialize in certain industries or sectors as far as acquisition of talent is involved. This helps the HR Firm in maintaining high standards of success in meeting the talent demands in particular industries by employing in depth knowledge and research in those industries.

The Firm conducts behavioral interviews with the prospective candidate to obtain a comprehensive analysis of the leadership, team-building, decision-making and problem solving skills of the candidate. Also, the candidate is thoroughly assessed for his attitude towards working in a team, response to change management and reaction towards the cultural climate of the prospective organization. Such analysis helps the organization in not only recruiting a candidate with right educational and professional experience, but also one with the required attitude and flexibility to be a part of the organization.

The HR Consulting Firm undertakes following steps for talent acquisition process in an organization:

• Comprehend the business strategy of the organization.
• Assess the talent availability within the organization.
• Discuss the talent requirements of the organization with the management.
• Analyze the gap areas between availability and requirement.
• Build strategies and plans to meet these gap areas.
• Measure the success of the implemented plans.

Talent management basically works in creating a pool of talent within the organization which helps in achieving the strategic objectives of the organization in the long run. This requires the HR Firm to work on the present set of employees of the organization and polish them so as to align their talent with the strategic objectives of the organization. Talent management process also requires an HR Firm to:

• Analyze the talent strategy and succession planning of organization.
• Develop a talent plan as required for strategic long run success of organization.
• Review talent in the organization.
• Plan various tools and techniques to develop talent within the organization.

Talent management process:

• Carry out performance management
• Develop career management plans
• Benchmarking talent activities
• Leadership development programs
• Team building exercises
• Action learning programs
• Interactive workshops
• Individual development guidance and coaching
• 360 degree feedback

Recruiting

The foundation of talent management is hiring the right people. The best recruiting processes support those efforts by carefully defining job descriptions, using an applicant tracking system to help manage the workflow of the interview process, and carefully interviewing applicants to select the strongest candidates.

Career Management

Managing your employees’ career paths can help increase satisfaction while reducing costly turnover. Building on the information collected during annual reviews, companies can learn more about employees’ Strengths and interests. With that in mind, it’s possible to work with employees on long-term career development plans. Whether you’re dealing with someone on the management track or someone interested in being a highly skilled individual contributor, career management is a critical component of talent management and employee satisfaction.

Performance Management

Once employees have been hired, it’s essential to have the right processes in place to successfully manage them. HR technology and service solutions in areas such as time and attendance can help track productivity and performance. Regular review processes help keep lines of communications open between management and staff, allowing workers to get feedback on what’s going well and where they need to improve their performance.

Organizational Strategy

Talent management activities rarely happen in isolation. Instead, strategic recruiting and support of workforce development begins with a company-level commitment. Your HR team may play a leading role in making this happen, from identifying talent management as a strategic priority to determining how and where that focus will be applied.

Focusing on talent management is a critical component of your broader workforce management strategy, because recruiting, training, retaining, and promoting the right people are essential steps in reaching your staffing goals. While human capital management initiatives encompass talent management and much more, understanding and executing the day-to-day activities of recruiting, leadership development, strategy creation, and career management are essential for successful HCM.

Leadership Development

Have you identified the next generation of leaders within your organization? That’s a vital part of the talent management process. Once these high-performance, high-potential individuals have been located, businesses need to consider the best way to retain them over the long-term. Often, this process requires a focus on training, stretch assignments, and mentoring.

Organizations work towards the achievement of their mission and strategic objectives. This requires a thorough understanding of the resources required for achieving the same. Resources here imply financial and non-financial both and they are equally important and interdependent.

Technically these resources have been divided into two, non-contingent and differentiating capabilities. Whereas non contingent capabilities are basics that enable an organization to compete and exist in the marketplace, differentiating capabilities are those that differentiate an organization from that of the other and offer competitive advantage. Effective marketing management, for example can be one of non-contingent capabilities. Similarly, many HR processes aspire to develop non contingent capabilities but they often fail to align with the strategy and offer competitive advantage. Most of these processes end up developing people in similar areas and similar capacities as their rival firms but this fails to provide any competitive advantage.

For organizations to develop competitive advantage through HR processes it is very important to define strategic differentiating capabilities and then develop a process for identifying and developing the same. This empowers the HR people to create an impact on the organizational strategy and also provides a link between talent management and strategy.

For HR to prove that talent management can be of strategic importance to organizations, the critical relationship between the two must be proven. Talent management specially needs to be projected as a differentiating strategic capability that can offer real and substantial competitive advantage.

According to research conducted by various bodies it was found out that creation of differentiating strategic capabilities signifies the relationship between business strategy and human resources. Human resources, it was deduced are the primary sources of strategic advantage. The research study was primarily based on Resource based view (RBV) of an organization. This view has gained significant ground among HR practitioners as basis of models for formation and structure of resources.

Unlike other non-contingent capabilities that can be developed easily and cannot contribute to a large extent towards the development of a sustainable competitive advantage, differentiating strategic capability such as strategic HR through talent management can. However, for human resources to qualify as potential sources of competitive advantage they should fulfil the following criteria:

• Strategic Value: The resource has to contribute substantially and add value in his/her area of expertise.
• Rare: Unique in terms of skills, knowledge and abilities in order to qualify as rare.
• Appropriable: The extent to which the resource is owned by the firm.
• Inimitable: Such that the resource cannot be replaced even after the competitors having spotted the same.
• Cannot be Substituted: This means that the resource cannot be substituted by the rival firms and that there is no match for the talent.

There are not many things in the business environment that can fulfill all the above criteria and offer unique competitive advantage except human resources and that is under the jurisdiction of talent management. There is also a need to understand the strategic intent of the organization before defining strategic capabilities.

Strategies:

1. Adopt a growth mindset. A scalable and expanding customer and values-driven mindset is a living, breathing thing. It begins with the existing leadership of the organization and permeates throughout the organization, its functions, and its stakeholders. It is not only led but managed and habitually normal; it is culture. This mindset connects the organization to the people who matter.
2. Have organizational character. Reference and align the corporate vision, values and mission. Know and understand the current/future state of the organization and industry. Integrate strategy and aspirations for any innovation, disruption and digital strategies. Be prepared and flexible as the progression of transformation takes place and begins to thrive.
3. Have ethics. Good business practices create good business value.
4. Embrace technology. Digital, automation and self-service technologies are creating change in talent management services.
5. Rethink the HR lifecycle. Address the future of automation and technology, analytics, service models, governance, etc. to ensure it is affording the organization value now and in the future. The future of talent management strategies are flexible, people-oriented and reliable.
6. Champion the strategy. Existing leadership teams should collaborate to prioritize, support and lead the success of the organization’s talent management strategy.
7. Assess and redesign talent management programs to support all levels of leadership in the organization. Keep them people-centric through experiential learning to ensure they are ready to lead. These programs should support and measure cultural diversity, creativity and legacy, leadership and team excellence, brand equity, employee engagement and productivity, and revenue prosperity.
8. Conduct assessments. Align talent to future value. Develop individual career frameworks and leadership plans for effective insight, growth and success.
9. Develop your workforce. With scarcity in talent and the ever-growing desire for job security, it is critical organizations provide professional development programs to up-skill and reskill their workforce. Enabling the workforce to thrive ensures positive and lasting employee experience and engagement, resulting in positive productivity and profitability.
10. Create a brain trust. Develop an internal and external data source that attracts social interaction from employees, stakeholders and suppliers. Utilize the data to analyze, validate and identify innovation, disruption and key business information to support leadership decisions and corporate strategy.
11. Redefine metrics. Redefine traditional performance management to a coaching culture. Align metrics to mirror the organization’s mission, vision, strategic initiatives, transformational goals and milestones, all while streamlining incentives and rewards accordingly.

Gain or Loss to Stakeholders

In mergers and acquisitions it largely depends upon the terms and conditions of the merger and the track record of the transferee or acquirer company. Based on the cardinal principle, every buyer, in other words transferee or acquirer has to pay more than the book value of the transferor or target company. However, the terms and conditions of the transaction depend upon their present operations and past historical records.

Implementation of Objectives

We have so far discussed various objectives, motives, reasons and purposes which are to be achieved and accomplished by implementing them after completion of merger, amalgamation or acquisition. Much of the senior management’s attention must be focused on developing a ‘post-transaction’ strategy and integration plan that will generate the revenue enhancements and cost savings that initially prompted the merger or acquisition. After merger or acquisition, the resources of two or more companies should be put together for producing better results through savings in operating costs because of combined management of production, marketing, purchasing, resources etc. These economies are known as synergistic operative economies. Synergy is also possible in the areas of Research and Development function of the combined company for optimum utilization of technological development, which could not be taken up by the separate companies for want of resources.

A key challenge in mergers and acquisitions is their effective implementation as there are chances that mergers and acquisitions may fail because of slow integration. The key is to formulate in advance integration plans that can effectively accomplish the goals of the M&A processes. Since time is money and competitors do not stand still, integration must not only be done well but also done expeditiously.

To implement the objectives of mergers or acquisitions, there are various factors, which are required to be reorganized in the post merged or acquired company. Such factors can be grouped in the followed heads:

(i) Legal Requirements

Fulfilment of legal requirements in post-merger reorganisation of any amalgamating company becomes essential for an effective and successful venture. The quantum of such obligations will depend upon the size of company, debt structure and profile of its creditors, compliances under the corporate laws, controlling Integration of Businesses and Operations regulations, distribution channels and dealers network, suppliers relations, labour etc.

(ii) Combination of operations

The amalgamating company has to consolidate the operations of the transferor company’s operations with its own. This covers not only the production process, adoption of new technology and engineering requirements in the production process but also covers the entire technical aspects like technical know-how, project engineering, plant layout, schedule of implementation, product designs, plant and equipment, manpower requirements, work schedule, pollution control measures, etc. in the process leading to the final product.

Integrating two different technological systems for complex business entities while continuing to run the business can be a massive challenge. It requires proper planning for phased transitions, extensive preparation and intensive testing. It is necessary to define workable implementation plans as to what needs to be integrated, when it should happen and how it can be done successfully.

(iii) Top Management Changes

The takeover or merger of one company with another affects the senior managerial personnel. A cohesive team is required both at the board level as well as at senior executive level. The reorganisation would involve induction of the directors of the transferor company on the Board of the amalgamating company, or induction of reputed and influential persons from outside who have expertise in directing and policy planning to broad base the Board for public image as well as smooth functioning of the company. Selection of directors, finalising their term of holding the office as directors, managerial compensation and other payments or reimbursements of expenses etc. are issues to be sorted out.

At the senior executive level also, changes are required particularly in respect of compensation depending upon the terms and conditions of merger, amalgamation or takeover and to adjust in suitable positions the top executives of the amalgamated company to create a congenial environment and cohesive group leadership within the organisation. Understanding different cultures and where and how to integrate them properly is vital to the success of an acquisition or a merger. Important factors to be taken note of would include the mechanism of corporate control particularly encompassing delegation of power and power of control, responsibility towards accounting, management information system, to and fro communication channels, interdivisional and intra-divisional harmony and achieving optimum results through changes and motivation.

(iv) Management of financial resources

Takeover, merger, amalgamation or demergers facilitate the attainment of the main objectives of achieving growth of the company’s operations. Growth is dependent upon the expansion, modernization or renovation or restructuring. Generally, the management plans in advance about the financial resources which would be available to the company to finance its post-merger plans. Such preplanning is based on certain assumptions which might change post-merger depending upon the volatility of a variety of factors involved.

(v) Financial Restructuring

Financial restructuring becomes essential in post merger reorganisation. Financial restructuring is characterised by liquidity crisis, ‘abnormal’ balance sheets and negative equity. The ‘clean-up’ must happen fast. Replacement of costlier fundings by cheaper borrowings on a long and short term basis as per requirement is one of the several ways and means of financial restructuring for a company. This being an important aspect concerns most of the top management, creditors, bankers, shareholders, regulatory bodies like stock exchange, SEBI as well as the government where provisions of corporate laws are attracted and their permissions or approvals for planned changes are required. Generally, financial restructuring is done as per the scheme of arrangement, merger or amalgamation approved by the shareholders and creditors but in those cases where takeover or acquisition of an undertaking is made by one company of the other through acquiring financial stake by way of acquisition of shares, e.g. IPCL by RIL, reorganisation of financial structure would be a post-merger event which might compel the company to change its capital base, revalue its assets and reallocate reserves.

Post Merger Success and Valuation and Impact on Human and Cultural Aspects

Every merger is not successful. The factors which are required to measure the success of any merger:

1. The earning performance of the merged company can be measured by return on total assets and return on net worth. It has been found that the probability of success or failure in economic benefits was very high among concentric mergers. Simple vertical and horizontal mergers were found successful whereas the performance of concentric mergers was in between these two extremes i.e. failure and success.
2. Whether the merged company yields larger net profit than before, or a higher return on total funds employed or the merged company is able to sustain the increase in earnings.
3. The capitalisation of the merged company determines its success or failure. Similarly, dividend rate and payouts also determines its success or failure.
4. Whether merged company is creating a larger business organisation which survives and provides a basis for growth.
5. Comparison of the performance of the merged company with the performance of similar sized company in the same business in respect of (I) Sales, (ii) assets, (iii) net profit, (iv) earning per share and (v) market price of share.

In general, growth in profit, dividend payouts, company’s history, increase in size provides base for future growth and are also the factors which help in determining the success or failure of a merged company

6. Fair market value is one of the valuation criteria for measuring the success of post merger company. Fair market value is understood as the value in the hands between a willing buyer and willing seller, each having reasonable knowledge of all pertinent facts and neither being under pressure or compulsion to buy or sell. Such valuation is generally made in pre merger cases.
7. In valuing the whole enterprise, one must seek financial data of comparable companies in order to determine ratios that can be used to give an indication of the company position.
8. Gains to shareholders have so far been measured in terms of increase or decrease in share prices of the merged company. However, share prices are influenced by many factors other than the performance results of a company. Hence, this cannot be taken in isolation as a single factor to measure the success or failure of a merged company.
9. In some mergers there is not only increase in the size of the merged or amalgamated company in regard to capital base and market segments but also in its sources and resources which enable it to optimize its end earnings.
10. In addition to the above factors, a more specific consideration is required to be given to factors like improved debtors realisation, reduction in non-performing assets, improvement due to economies of large scale production and application of superior management in sources and resources available relating to finance, labour and materials.

Human and Cultural Aspects

The merger is a period of great uncertainty for the employees of the merging organizations. The uncertainty relates to job security and status within the company leading to fear and hence low morale among the employees. It is natural for employees to fear the loss of their revenue or change in their status within the company after a merger since many of these employees literally invest their whole lives in their jobs. Hence the possibility of a change in their position is likely to be viewed with fear and resentment. The possibility of a change in compensation and benefits also creates a feeling of insecurity and unease. The influx of new employees into the organisation can create a sense of invasion at times and ultimately leads to resentment. Further, the general chaos which follows any merger results in disorientation amongst employees due to ill defined role and responsibilities. This further leads to frustrations resulting into poor performance and low productivity since strategic and financial advantage is generally a motive for any merger. Top executives very often fail to give attention to the human aspects of mergers by neglecting to manage the partnership in human terms. By failing to give attention to the problems faced by their employees, they fail to fully develop their companies’ collaborative advantage.

The successful merger demands that strategic planners are sensitive to the human issues of the organizations. For the purpose, following checks have to be made constantly to ensure that:

sensitive areas of the company are pinpointed and personnel in these sections carefully monitored;

• Serious efforts are made to retain key people;
• A replacement policy is ready to cope with inevitable personnel loss;
• Records are kept of everyone who leaves, when, why and to where;
• Employees are informed of what is going on, even bad news is systematically delivered. Uncertainty is more dangerous than the clear, logical presentation of unpleasant facts;
• Training department is fully geared to provide short, medium and long term training strategy for both production and managerial staff;
• Likely union reaction be assessed in advance;
• Estimate cost of redundancy payments, early pensions and the like assets;
• Comprehensive policies and procedures be maintained up for employee related issues such as office procedures, new reporting, compensation, recruitment and selection, performance, termination, disciplinary action etc.;
• New policies to be clearly communicated to the employees specially employees at the level of managers, supervisors and line manager to be briefed about the new responsibilities of those reporting to them;
• Family gatherings and picnics be organized for the employees and their families of merging companies during the transition period to allow them to get off their inhibitions and breed familiarity.