Research Overview of Talent Development

By Chelsea Zhang

With the global effects and implication of the current economic crisis, more and

more organizations have realized the significance of investing in talent development, by

which employees would be able to possess multiple skills and complete multitasks,

meanwhile, they would be encouraged and motivated.

• The importance of having effective programs to address talent

development.

1. Effective programs help furnishing learners with practical experience and

driving individual growth, which drives internal talent development.

2. An effective program serves as a tool to help individuals realize their own

career growth within the organization, which maintains internal talent

development.

3. Effective programs can be served as tools that drive retention, as well as

approaches to develop internal bench strength.

4. Effective programs help managers identify potential talents, which could be

one of the indicators of succession planning.

5. Effective programs could be used to support the implementation of

organization and HR plans, also driven by those plans.

6. Through the effective programs, HR practitioners are able to identifying issues

and solutions with top management, then communicating them to employees.

• HR’s critical role in supporting talent development.

HR plays critical roles in each step of talent development processes.

1. HR is the strategic partner of the organization when developing HR strategic

plans, which serve as an approach to achieve organizational goals. Being a

strategic partner, HR needs to align employees with strategy and competency

 building, empower managers and employees, drive leadership development,

retain key employees and manage attrition and foster a high-performance

culture in the organization.

2. HR is the introducer who introduces various talent development programs into

the organization aiming at assisting employees to better achieve their personal

growth.

3. Being the employee advocate is the hardest HR roles, which requires HR has a

clear knowledge about the preferences and interests of the employees, in

order to keep employees satisfied and motivated. Besides, it is HR’s

responsibility to make an alignment between the interest of employees and

overall business objectives and strategy.

4. HR’s role as a change enabler. In the background of overall aging population

increasing and baby boomer retiring, workforce-related challenges are of

significant concern in every organizations. It is HR’s responsible to identify,

cultivate and retain top talents internally. Additionally, HR needs to initiate

various training programs to ensure the knowledge transfer between different

generations.

• To ensure overall organizational effectiveness, performance

management is most aligned with talent development.

1. Before developing and implementing any talent development programs, it is

necessary for HR to conduct a performance evaluation to analyze each

employee’s performance. The reason is to (1) identify what tasks are performed in

a job; (2) observe how tasks are performed in terms of work results, methods of

carrying out work activities, etc.; (3) rate task importance for instructional

purposes. Performance or productivity measures help HR design a talent

development program.

2. Employee performance appraisals are especially appropriate for identifying

 individual training, educational and developing needs. Information from appraisals

is used to assess and individual’s need for talent development opportunities.

3. The function of talent development programs shows as the following chart:

Present, Actual Performance Present, Desired

Performance Performance
Gap
What
What
should
is?
be?