Talent Management Attracting and Retaining Human Resources

Emphasizing the importance of people in an organization, management function, which is dealing with people, has evolved from ‘personnel management' to ‘human resources management', and then on to ‘talent management.' The management of human resources has a strong link with the financial performance of a company. Two recent surveys, one by McKinsey and the other by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), have pointed out this. The studies have shown that in an increasingly globalized world the ‘people strategy' is going to be the key differentiator. A recent issue of The McKinsey Quarterly in its report, ‘Why MNCs are struggling with local talent,' has highlighted a strong link between the financial performance (measured by profit per employee) and talent management policies of top multinationals. Similarly, the BCG report titled ‘Creating people advantage' has published findings from surveys covering 83 countries and markets, and has observed that sourcing talented employees globally is one action that is expected to grow most quickly around the world. This means that multinationals — both foreign and Indian — need to prepare themselves for a talent management turf war in the near future. India will have to build a suitable human capital to exploit the opportunities that would emerge in developing economies in the coming years. Harish Manwani, chairperson of Hindustan Unilever while addressing shareholders said: ‘We have a large army of youth, but this demographic dividend can be encashed only if this large army is well prepared to handle posts, positions and workstations-in offices, on shop floors and on sites across the nation and indeed the globe.' McKinsey's report also said that India would need to upgrade its skill sets of around 500 million people by 2020 to meet its growth requirements. At current capacities, however, the country can train barely 50 million. Yet another consulting firm BCG has said that of the 89 million people expected to join the work force from 2009–13, over 47 million would be school dropouts. ‘Corporate must actively commit resources, time, money and people to innovatively collaborate with educational institutions so that academic curriculum is tuned to the changing needs of the industry.'