Abstract

The vivacious nature of global business is putting an ever-increasing pressure on

companies to be constantly on the lookout for incomparable talent in a market where
demand far exceeds supply. Given the current focus on the linkage between talent
and an organisation's business challenges and strategies, effective strategy
execution requires sufficient numbers of the right people with the right skills and
knowledge, in the right roles. Pressing business necessities, such as increasing
turnover as the economy improves, globalisation of markets and labour forces,
aggressive competition and heightened corporate oversight, have intensified the
need to acquire, develop, deploy, motivate and retain key talent. Getting the right
people with the right skills into the right jobs, a common definition of talent
management is the basic people management challenge in organizations. While the
focus of talent management tends to be on management and executive positions,
the issues apply to all jobs that are hard to fill. This has made talent management
one of the most pressing issues facing senior business executives

Introduction

Distinctly called human capital management, employee relationship management

and workforce management, among others, talent management is not a new
concept, but one that in the past corporations haven't been set to finalize. In most
companies functions such as recruitment and succession planning, learning and
development, performance management, workforce planning, compensation and
other HR or training functions have often been isolated in departmental silos. While
important individually, these programs are usually a loose potpourri of HR initiatives
with little relation to each other, little arrangement with the organization's vital few
business goals and little real way of measuring their bottom-line impact.

Talent Management enables organizations to rapidly align, develop, motivate, and

maintain a high-performance labor force. They also alleviate the hassle of writing
performance reviews by automating the task and ensuring quality of reviews and
reviewed on time. Organizations can establish and communicate critical corporate
goals, measure performance improvement, and ensure that all levels of the
organization are aligned to attain critical business objectives. The six dimensions of
talent management are as shown in table 1below

Talent management Description

dimensions
Develop strategy Establishing the optimum long term strategy for attracting, developing,
connecting and deploying the workforce
Attract and retain Sourcing ,recruiting and holding onto the appropriate skills and
capitalize, according to business needs
Motivate and develop Verifying that people's capabilities are understood and developed to
match business requirements, while also meeting people's needs for
motivation, development and job satisfaction
Deploy and manage Providing effective resources deployment, scheduling and work
management that match skills and experience with organizational needs
Connect and enable Identifying individuals with relevant skills , collaborating and sharing
knowledge and working effectively in virtual settings
Transform and sustain Achieving clear measurable and sustainable change within the
 organization, while maintaining day to day continuity of operations
Table 1 :- Six Dimensions Of Talent Management
Source: IBM Institute for Business Value/Human Capital Institute.

Talent management and HR

Talent management suddenly evoked the charm and attention for the business
world. Much of the reason may be due to the fact that technology has finally begun
to catch up. Human resource management systems (HRMS) providers, already
present in many businesses, have begun to create add-on applications that provide a
strategic layer on top of the more administrative HR functionalities they already
offer. It seems obvious then that the functions that make up talent management can
no longer be viewed independently, or hidden in HR or training departments if they
are to be truly successful. Rather, talent management must be counterfeit from a
true partnership between management and the departments that oversee the
"people function." The main characteristics of HR and TM are as shown in table 2
below.

HR process TM Process
Goals Greater efficiency , obedience Better management of people to achieve
strategic business goals
metrics Shorter time to hire , lower cost to fill, Higher quality hires , stronger leadership
higher percentage of employees reviewed pipeline
benefits More efficient HR performance Better business performance
users HR professionals / power users Business managers , HR professionals
Decision HR specialist HR specialist, senior executives, business
makers managers,
Technology Feature rich single function applications, Comprehensive , configurable cross functional
solutions designed for HR professionals solutions designed for business managers
Table 2:- Characteristics Of HR And TM Process

Many HR processes and systems that organizations use today to manage people
suffer from three fundamental flaws as shown in figure () below
 Figure 1: Fundamental Flaws In HR Systems

Because of these flaws in most HR systems – limited direct business impact, difficult
for managers to use, and poor integration – business managers use them only
halfheartedly. They do not adopt them as vital to achieving their business goals.

The greatest talent management system on the market is worthless if the

organization is not prepared to adopt and integrate it. Each company needs to take
inventory of its people and processes, answer questions about its direction and who
is responsible for getting it there. Most importantly, companies need to break down
the ever present "departmental silos" by creating an environment in which
technology can be leveraged to facilitate and maximize an already well-thought-out
program and to link it the organization's strategic goals.

Talent management challenges

Business success relies on successful talent management. If a hospital executive

can't find nurses, a retail store executive can't develop and engage store managers,
or a lab director can't keep great scientists, they will have difficulty meeting their
organization's strategic business objectives. The challenges of finding, keeping,
developing, and motivating people in key positions are precisely what progressive HR
professionals should be focusing on. These managers face ongoing talent
management challenges that are critical to their achieving business goals. The main
challenges are as shown in figure 2 below

Figure 2: Challenges in Talent Management

Many organizations believe that effective talent management practices can be a

significant source of demarcation in today's cutthroat competition in a globally
integrated economy. At the same time, industries face their own set of unique
challenges – a situation that has led ventures to focus on different pieces of the
talent management "puzzle." A recently completed study by IBM highlights how
knowledge- and service-intensive industries tend to spend significant time and
attention on talent management activities, while not-for-profit organizations appear
to struggle to make the most of their workforce. Knowledge-intensive industries tend
to focus on developing and connecting their employees. Financial services companies
tend to focus on employee attraction and retention, Retailers apply a notable number
of talent management practices overall and finally Government agencies, educational
institutions and some healthcare firms fall short in managing talent and sustaining
change

Effective talent management processes and systems can have a significant positive
impact on business. The most valuable systems are those that deliver direct value to
the business manager, which are easy to use, and that are integrated across
functions. Processes and systems that meet these criteria are well-suited to help
companies meet their critical talent management challenges.

Strategies for talent management

Talent Management, usually referred as Human Capital Management, is the process

recruiting, managing, assessing, developing and maintaining an organization's most
important resource—it's people!

The typical strategies include:-

1. Merge talent management data by having incorporated exceptional capabilities in

learning, performance, and compensation management software

2. Automate the talent management process into an online solution there by

reducing time and costs of performance reviews.

3. Recognize and close employee performance gaps by instantly turning automated

performances appraisals into training development plans.

4. Align training demand with performance needs and strategic goals directly there
by reducing time and money spent on non-strategic training activities.

5. Eliminate conflicting evaluation criteria by applying a standardized solution that

impose consistent language, feedback, and evaluation criteria

6. Use reliable, fair pay-for-performance initiatives

Talent Management processes is typically found in numerous parts of an

organization. Thus, many organizations struggle to align their talent management
under one consistent strategy. It may be a considerable challenge to make this
happen. For example, a cohesive talent management strategy is as shown in figure 3
below
 Figure 3: Cohesive Talent Management Strategy

To apply these strategies a 4 level engagement model is applied the business

managers which is as shown in figure 4

Figure 4: 4-Level Engagement Model

Conclusion

Failures in talent management are mainly due to the mismatch between the supplies
and demand not due to the failure in the concept. We need a new way of thinking
about the talent management challenge. A new framework for talent management
has to begin by being clear about the objectives. Talent management is not an end
in itself. It is not about developing employees or creating succession plans. Nor is it
about achieving specific benchmarks like a five percent turnover rate, having the
most educated workforce, or any other tactical outcome. The goal of talent
management is the much more general, but the most important task of TM is to help
the organization to achieve its overall objectives.

References

1. Kevin oakes,(2008), "talent management :the new silver bullet."

www.talentManagement101.com
2. Authoria.Inc, (2008), "Make Talent Count: Talent Management for Progressive HR
Executives", www.authoria.com .

3. "what is talent management: defining a clear technology strategy" , (2007)

www.talent management101.com

4. "Integrated talent management Part 3 – Turning talent management into a

competitive advantage: An industry view", (2008), www.IBM.com

5. Peter Cappelli , (2008),"Talent Management is a Business

Problem",www.nasscom.in

During the boom time, Real Estate companies inclusive of Fund Houses grabbed the best
skills available in the market. With over- ambitious vision of timely execution of
projects, coupled with nascent nature of industry that was attempting to hurriedly
professionalize its operations in the over heated market, resulted in many companies
chasing few people with requisite skills leading to high cost compensation payout. ROI
was not an issue with them until the downturn started. The scenario changed with
downturn, which impacted the Indian real estate sector tremendously in terms of
slowdown of construction activities, shelving of projects/ restructuring loans and over
night loss ofjobs leading to disappearance of buyers from market , though we initially
believed that Indian economy was quite insulated from any such forces. Economic crisis
resulted in cost reduction by companies, which in turn lead to large scale layoffs; even
the best of employees were laid off perhaps to help improve the company bottom-lines
as a survival strategy.

Problem persisted for months & few quarters of 2008-09 and it is only recently that after
quarterly results & Capital Market revival that the Real Estate market began to pick up
moving away from earlier the negativity. Accompanied by Govt stimulus, low bank
rates, lower property prices, affordability orientation of builder – developers and return of
buyer / investor to the real estate market has again started fuelling the hope of millions of
Indians to acquire a roof over their head.

With the revival of interest both for residential and commercial premises, it is obvious
that the construction industry would accelerate it’s activities in the coming months to
meet the new as well as the pent up demand to cater to increasing urbanization at 40%,
population growth at 1.5 % per annum, rising income levels and new risk profiles.
According to 10th five year plan, there is a shortage of 22.4 million dwelling units,
translating in to construction of 80 – 90 million housing units for middle class. Both the
National building Organization & Deutsche Bank report put the shortage at 20 million
units and new requirements at 10 millionhousing units per annum till the year 2030.
Further the McKinsey report estimates average profit from construction in India at 18 %,
which is rather double than in US.

With the above backdrop of huge demand – supply gap and profitability for the investors,
the developers & real estate investors began to re-look at ramping up their operations
and acquire human capital / talent in the near to medium term; the activity as such has
already gained momentum. But the companies in their anxiety to acquire best talent
should not go overboard with erroneous assumptions without putting in place certain
recruitment fundamentals as the direct & indirect cost of bad recruitment is tremendous
with its negative cost & consequences.

The prerequisites to check are Knowledge, Skills and most importantly the ‘Attitude of a
person to perform the job, as the saying goes…. You are hired for the aptitude, but fired
for the attitude.

Firstly, one need to do the ‘Requirement analysis’ to identify whether the position can
be handled by the existing internal person as an add on responsibility before embarking
on therecruitment from outside & once it is established that, new incumbent is required,
it advisable to create the fundamental job descriptions, functional requirements of job
together with required behavioral specifications, which would help identify short listing
of right candidates and focus on role clarity when they join.

Secondly, after receiving applications either through consultants, website or

advertisement and referral, the applicants need to be filtered to ascertain the exact facts
before the candidates meet up with the interview panel, which also helps in further
reducing the short listed volumes. For identifying skills/ aptitude, one should not only
go by what is stated in the bio-data, but actually test the skills through psychometric
tests, besides time tested instruments ( like TAT, MBTI & FIRO-B), lately the battery of
reliable & accurate instruments by Thomas International are found to be very useful to
reasonably predict the future outcome of job performance, which include Profiling of a
person on DISK theory, TST Ability test, HJA profile – Behavior required on the job or
Person – Job Compatibility , further his fit with the team and prevailing Corporate
culture. Through the basic Thomas tests, one can filter the candidates as per the agreed
benchmarks to decide which applications are to be taken forward for interviews /
selection.

Thirdly, the interviewers should have interview plan to test the specific competencies
by probing through Behavioral Event interviewing techniques in the Quan-com
competency frame work to assess the motivational check & degree of future success of a
person on the job. This would prevent lot of performance headaches at later stages as
most of the issues crop up due to incongruent job-competency fit and results in attrition
& replacement cost.

Fourthly, the Interviewing is an art and comes at a massive cost, if we review the time &
resources being spent on the activities right from sourcing talent, short-listing, filtering to
final interview stage to selection. Therefore, organizations should get ready for this
institutional initiation with all seriousness, if required take professional help as the direct
&indirect cost of bad recruitment is colossal. Further, interviewers should be well trained
to identify the required competencies for the job rather than enamored by Halo effect of
candidates or do ‘hit & miss’recruitment. This could be true of most sectors.
Next comes the structured Induction, Mentoring and continuous productive engagement
of new joinees which is a crucial factor in assimilating them into the organizational
culture. Organizations should also periodically review theirRecruitment metrics like
attrition rate , retention rate, cost of filling jobs , Number of persons applied, short listed
verses selected candidates etc to improve these ratios continuously to help re-engineer
their internal processes. As the Real estate domain is still evolving, organizations should
create avenues for continuous learning foremployees inclusive of much needed ‘soft
skills’ to facilitate greater effectiveness & also help as a retaining strategy.

Finally, the Compensation & benefits should be structured to take care of the need of the
person with greater emphasis on pay for performance having a linkage with Individual &
team deliverable in the context of benchmark pay outs and Individual length of service
with the Organization. It has to be a balancing act, any anxious attempt to grab a superior
talent from the market at any cost may have long term effect on the morale &
motivational aspects of existing employees, though under paying would reversely lead to
avoidable attrition.

The Edelweiss June ’09 –Pan India Job Survey, latest D & B survey and CRISIL – Aug
’09 outlook also points out that large order inflows are expected due to improvement in
economic conditions and increased outlay in the Budget for development of infrastructure
coupled with easing of liquidity pressure would further propel construction activities. All
these coupled with Govt impetus to the sector through proposed regulatory mechanism
means the business is expected to grow further in a more transparent way requiring
talented people in terms of large number of Civil Engineers, Architects, Marketing /
Sales force, Finance, Legal & other support functionaries to man the activities through
leveraging the newer construction technologies to meet our huge demand-supply gap in
Realty, rising aspirations & increasing appetite of large Indian middle class.

Good Talent Management leads to capability building at Micro level which help achieve
Organization’s sustainable competitive advantage .Talent Management should always be
aligned with corporate strategy particularly in service industries to serve as a great
differentiator for superior returns