Evolution of Talent Management, Essay Example

Talent Management is a concept of business that has evolved over time as the needs, wants and tastes of markets and organizational human resource requirements have changed. This evolution of talent management has seen the definition and scope of talent management expand with these changes in the market.

Even though the concept of talent management existed since the 1970s, popularity of the concept developed in 1997 after the McKinsey & Company conducted a study and coined the term Talent Management (Silzer & Dowell, 2010). At this point in time, the concept was still premature and ill developed as its scope was limited to primitive human resource function that stretched only as far as middle-level to top-level management.

Definition in the recent past that have sought to describe talent management include:

Talent Management is the anticipation of the needed human capital for any given organization and the development of a strategy to meet these needs (Raedy & Conger, 2007).

Talent management is the use of strategic Human Resource to increase business value and to create an environment where an organization can achieve its set goals. This entails recruiting, retention, development, rewarding,the application of performance incentives and the application of a strategic workforce strategy.

Looking at the above two definitions, the first one which was one of the early 2000s definitions of talent management was limited to the concept of fundamental human resource functions as the scope of talent management. However, the second definition is much more evolved, reflecting the scope and depth of talent management today.

The second definition not only has a larger scope, it reflects the current needs of the modern market and organization as it entails the following facets:

• It is business strategy driven
• It is managed as one of the core practices of business
• It is engrained with the mind-set of talent
• It integrates with other business processes(Silzer & Dowell, 2010)

In conclusion, the scope of talent management has evolved from the more primitive function of human resource to be integrated into the business strategy aimed at attracting, developing and retention of employees across all levels of management within the organization.

References

Johnson, M. (2010). Honing a talent for retaining talent. Financial Executive, 26(5), 20-24.

King, J. (2010). IT Careers 2020. Computerworld, 44(16), 14-19.

Raedy, D. A., & Conger, J. A. (2007). Make your company a talent factory. Harvard Business Review, 85(6), 68-77.

Silzer, R., & Dowell, B. E. (2010). Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.