PREFACE
The people who work for organizations are usually referred to as their employees or workers or maybe their human resources. Despite this, I prefer to use the word talent to refer to them. Why? Because I think it is a term that better captures who they are and how they should be managed. They are very valuable, often the most valuable assets of organizations. Because of what they can do, they determine how effective their organizations are. Increasingly, they are highly skilled and need to be managed in ways that utilize and develop their skills.
An organization’s talent is not just employees who are expected to do a job. Talent comprises individuals who differ in what they can do and can learn, and what they want to do. To be effective, organizations need to manage talent in ways that makes it a major contributor to their success. Doing this requires talent management systems and practices that are not common practice or best practice in today’s organizations.
Most organizations still use a job-based bureaucratic talent management approach that does not fit today’s world of work and workers and will not fit tomorrow’s. It is not enough to modify the old approach; a reinvention is needed. There is a considerable amount of research that shows what practices and programs will be effective in the new world of work and workers. It is thus possible to identify and specify the direction in which talent management practices should head and to describe in detail those that are being used by some organizations today.
This book identifies the major direction in which talent management needs to go and identifies specific programs and practices that will take it there. Consideration is given to the design and management of the key activities of an organization’s talent management systems: attracting, selecting, developing, rewarding, and appraising. The book provides principles and practices that will reinvent talent management so that it will be aligned with an organization’s strategy and become a key source of competitive advantage. It concludes with how organizations should be designed and led to effectively manage their talent management systems.
The audience for this book is anyone who is interested in the development and implementation of talent management strategies, principles, and practices that are effective in the new world of work, workers, and organizations. This includes executives and line managers in all functions who hire, develop, and supervise talent as well as human resource professionals in all types and sizes of organizations. Thought leaders at consulting firms and universities who are drivers of talent management principles and practices are an important audience, as are students of human resources, since they are the future of talent management.