Ch. 11: Talent management
Chapter 11 is about talent management (TM). Learning objectives: understanding the concept of TM; outlining the different perspectives on TM; formulating your own perspective on what talent is; discussing to what extent talents can be identified and managed; reviewing the potential impact of TM on individual workers, organizational performance and society; outlining the 10,000-hour principle (expertise lens); the flexpertise lens (addition to the book chapter); and discussing the downside of developing the 'happy few'.
1. TM as a key theme in HRM
| Global trend | Relevance for HRM |
|---|---|
| Ageing working population | 'War for talent': young workers and talent are needed to fill the gap; attraction and retention of qualified and highly motivated workers (e.g., a growing need for care workers) |
| Globalization | Global mobility and labour market competition (e.g., the continuing war for digital talent) |
| Inclusive education and workplace | Managing a diverse workforce with different nationalities, backgrounds and potentially different norms and values, including what counts as talent. Does everyone have an equal chance to be perceived as a talent? |
| Changing business models | Increasing complexity and dynamics, requiring knowledge workers with potential; reskilling, upskilling, deskilling and expertise transfer (flexpertise) |
| Changing HR role | HR as business partner at managerial level (e.g., a Chief HR Officer); corporate talent management and workforce scenarios |
| Powerful market domain | TM is a big market for management consultants |
2. What is talent?
Talent has a visible part (performance, behaviour) and an invisible part (potential, motivation, personality), like an iceberg. Your own perspective on talent matters: as a leader, HR business partner or HR developer, your view determines who you see as talented. Reflection questions: are some people born with extraordinary talents? Can others develop such a talent? Does everybody have a talent? Were you born with your talent or did you develop it?
| Talent as people (subject approach) | Talent as characteristics of people (object approach) | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Valuable, scarce, inimitable and difficult-to-replace individuals | Capabilities of persons that are valuable for the organization |
| Idiosyncratic: the person is the talent | The type of talent (competences, skills) you seek in people |
| Inclusive (all employees) | Exclusive (a specific employee group) |
|---|---|
| Everybody is a talent | Talent pool, A-players, high performers, high potentials |
- Hard approach: subject approach combined with an exclusive approach (star performers).
- Soft approach: object approach combined with an inclusive approach.
- In practice, organizations often use hybrid approaches.
3. Archetypes of TM
Combining the two dimensions (subject versus object; inclusive versus exclusive) gives four archetypes:
| Inclusive | Exclusive | |
|---|---|---|
| Subject (talent as people) | Talent differentiation: every person has unique talents; inclusive TM (e.g., neuro-inclusiveness, making work out of your talent) | High potential competition (hard approach): ranking, potential, up or out, developing top leaders (e.g., large audit and consulting firms) |
| Object (talent as characteristics) | Human resource management (soft approach): generic measures to help all workers perform best, no specific differentiation (e.g., three talent streams such as project management, leadership and expert tracks) | Talent specialization: focus on business-critical skills (e.g., specific roles that are critical for the business) |
4. Definitions of TM
'Activities and processes that involve the systematic identification of key positions which differentially contribute to the organization's sustainable competitive advantage, the development of a talent pool of high potential and high performing incumbents to fill these roles, and the development of a differentiated human resource architecture to facilitate filling these positions with competent incumbents and to ensure their continued commitment to the organization.'
There is no single definition of TM; it depends on the underlying definition of talent. Elements in this definition:
- Key positions: functions and jobs of high strategic value to the organization (what makes a position key? 'A players on A positions');
- Sustainable competitive advantage: organizations strive for the ultimate business goal of long-term success (link with the RBV, Chapter 3);
- Talent pool: an exclusive group of employees, most likely knowledge or core employees;
- Human resource architecture: the HR architecture model of Lepak and Snell (1999, 2002) (Chapter 7).
The Lepak and Snell architecture again: internalized knowledge workers (core knowledge, commitment-based HR; e.g., experts in international organizations), externalized alliance partners (idiosyncratic knowledge, collaborative HR; e.g., compensation specialists consulted by the HR department), internalized job-based employees (compulsory knowledge, productivity-based HR; e.g., call centre workers with a high turnover rate) and externalized contract workers (ancillary knowledge, compliance-based HR; e.g., outsourced cleaning and catering, low-paid gig workers).
Talents are those individuals who can make a difference to organizational performance, either through their immediate contribution or, in the longer term, by demonstrating the highest level of potential. TM is the systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement, retention and deployment of those individuals who are of particular value to an organization, either because of their 'high potential' for the future or because they fulfil business- or operation-critical roles.
Both definitions take an exclusive view of talent (a specific group).
Popular TM practices (Thunnissen et al., 2013, literature review): recruitment, staffing and succession planning; training and development; retention management.
TM in the HR value chain: TM follows the same chain as other HR practices: organization strategy, HR strategy, intended, actual and perceived HR practices, HR outcomes, critical HR goals and business goals, next to other strategies and critical non-HR goals. The value chain for TM requires a balanced approach: attention not only to performance but also to fairness towards those not labelled as talent.
5. Critical questions on talent
- What is a talent? How can we detect a talent? When can we detect and trace a talent best?
- What motivates talents to do something with their talents?
- Where do talents at the top come from, and what happened to those who were considered talent?
- What happens to those who do not make it to the top? What is the impact of TM on the 'non-talents'?
- What makes a sports talent?
These questions point to the downside of developing the 'happy few': exclusive TM can demotivate the majority who are not in the talent pool, create a self-fulfilling prophecy (those labelled as talent get more opportunities and therefore perform better), reinforce bias (who is 'seen' as talent may depend on gender, background or similarity to managers), and put pressure on those labelled as talent.
6. The 10,000-hour rule (expertise lens)
About 10,000 hours of deliberate study and practice are needed to become an expert in well-defined domains, showing consistent superior performance. Deliberate practice means focused, effortful practice aimed at improving specific aspects of performance, with feedback. Example: a world-famous singer-songwriter who practised songwriting and performing for years before his breakthrough. At about 20 hours per week, 10,000 hours takes 10,000 / 20 = 500 weeks, or roughly 9.6 years.
The lens implies that talent is largely developed (object approach, inclusive potential), rather than only innate.
7. Occupational expertise
Van der Heijden (1998, 2000) distinguishes domain-generic dimensions of occupational expertise:
- Domain-specific knowledge;
- Domain-specific skills;
- Meta-cognitive skills (knowing what you know and don't know, self-regulation of learning);
- Social recognition (being recognized as an expert by relevant others);
- Growth and flexibility (flexpertise).
Billett et al. (2018) distinguish three bases of expertise: canonical (the general, occupation-wide knowledge shared by the profession), situational (knowledge needed in the specific workplace) and personal (the individual's own way of applying expertise).
8. From expert to flexpert
Expertise needs are shifting (Frie et al., 2024):
- Decreasing half-life of knowledge (knowledge becomes outdated faster);
- Upskilling, reskilling and deskilling;
- Being skilled in multiple domains (multi-skilled);
- Development in ill-defined and emerging expertise domains;
- Multiple contexts to materialize one's expertise (expertise transfer);
- Different stakeholders having different expectations of what counts as expertise;
- Using unutilized expertise.
The ability of professionals to 'maintain a certain amount of expertise under changing circumstances and in different situations, and also the mastery of certain learning strategies and learning skills to reach a certain level of expertise in any domain'.
A system dynamics model with reinforcing (R) and balancing (B) loops. Contextual changes (e.g., AI) increase the perception of need or opportunity to adapt. This leads to expertise redevelopment and/or expertise exploitation, which affect confidence in mastering a new expertise field. Confidence leads (with delay) to identity adjustment and social recognition, which in turn affect employability. Employability and recognition feed back on the perceived need to adapt (e.g., high employability can reduce the felt need to adapt, a balancing loop). Leverage points show where interventions work best. Message: 'the biggest threat is not AI, but those people who take advantage of AI'.
From expertise to flexpertise development (Frie, Sjoer, Van der Heijden and Korzilius, 2024): classic expertise development is a linear process (novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, expert). Flexpertise development consists of cycles of expertise renewal: an iterative process in which professionals repeatedly move into new domains and rebuild expertise.
9. To conclude
What is your definition of talent? And what does it mean for your role as a (future) HRM professional or leader? Your view (subject or object, inclusive or exclusive, innate or developed) determines which TM practices you choose and who benefits from them.
Key take-aways
- TM is driven by ageing, globalization, diversity, changing business models, the changing HR role and consultancy markets.
- Talent as people (subject) versus talent as characteristics (object); inclusive versus exclusive; hard versus soft approach.
- Four archetypes: talent differentiation, high potential competition, HRM, talent specialization.
- Collings and Mellahi (2009): key positions, talent pool, differentiated HR architecture, sustainable competitive advantage.
- Popular practices: recruitment and succession, training and development, retention.
- Expertise: 10,000 hours of deliberate practice; flexpertise: maintaining and renewing expertise under changing circumstances.
Andere hoofdstukken van Strategic Human Resource Management
- Ch. 1: SHRM in the 21st century
- Ch. 2: SHRM and context (guest lecture)
- Ch. 3: Adding value through people (guest lecture)
- Ch. 4: Human resource metrics and measures
- Ch. 5: Mutual gains?
- Ch. 6: High performance work systems (guest lecture)
- Ch. 7: Selective recruitment and selection
- Ch. 8: Performance management
- Ch. 9: Compensation
- Ch. 10: Career development
- Ch. 12: Employee participation
- Ch. 13: Human resource roles
- Ch. 14: International HRM