1. GROUP ASSIGNMENT 4: “TALENT MANAGEMENT:
DEFINITIONS AND PRACTICES”
COURSE: MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCE FLOWS (194120090)
ENSCHEDE, 11-12-2012
Dimitrios Kordas (M-CME/s1231901)

2. AGENDA
1. Defining Talent Management (TM)
2. TM in context of Sustaining Competitive Advantages THEORY
3. Success Factors
4. Going one step further
5. Profiles of participants
6. Talent aligned to Overall Business Strategy
7. Talent pipeline approach
8. Demand / Supply Gap – A Supply Chain perspective PRACTICE
9. Global TM Challenges
9.1 Standardization Vs. Localization
9.2 Talent pool characteristics
10. Building high-quality colleagues
11. Retention of talented employees
12. Decision-making in TM age
11-12-2012 2

3. DEFINING TALENT MANAGEMENT (TM)
 The management of a company‟s pool of talent is now too important to
be left to the human resources (HR) department alone and has become
the responsibility of the top executive.
 Good talent management increases job satisfaction and improves
retention rates. Leads to smooth transitions and secures business
continuity.
 TM includes (The Economist Unit, 2006):
 Identification of leadership potential
 Performance evaluations
 Targeted development activities
 Psychological testing
 Assessment centers: deal with capabilities gaps
 Training and development programs
 Relocations
11-12-2012 3

4. SUSTAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
 WHY to take seriously in this age TM?
 Demographic & legislative changes
 Globalization of standards – requirements
 Knowledge-worker & mobility
 Failing to manage your talent pool = Failing to manage your SC
(P.Cappelli)
 Greater productivity, Higher customer satisfaction, Revenue Growth,
Improved Reputation are all wanted!
 “Our ultimate financial results are a reflection of the success or lack
thereof of our development program,” admits William Hawkins, the COO
of Medtronic. “At the end of the day, what differentiates us from some of
our competitors is the quality and capabilities of our people.”
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5. THE TM WHEEL / 6 PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE GTM
(source: Stahl et al., 2012) 11-12-2012 5

6. SUCCESS FACTORS OF TM
WORKPLACE
STRUCTURE
TRAINING
INTERNAL &
SUCCESS
CLIMATE DEVELOP
MENT
MOTIVATION
&
COLLABORA
TION
11-12-2012 6

7. GOING 1 STEP FURTHER
 The limited External Validity the research
 Threats identified if kept 1 firm (interviewee)
 Limited types of population tested
 Gender bias
 Cultural bias
 Possible Solution: Replication
 How to replicate?
 Increase the number of participants: from 1 to 4
 Mix the gender of people: still problematic
 Increase cultural (organization & country level): see next table
11-12-2012 7

8. RESPONDENTS’ PROFILES
Types of Dionysios Konstantinos Nikolaos Kermanidis
participants Panagiotopoulos José Ignacio Arraiz Seferiadis
Gender-bias
Company DOSSEK HAY TECHNIKI LATOMIKI A.T.E.
Cultural-bias
Industry Construction Human Resource & Construction IT
Organization
Cultural-bias
Country Greece Spain Greece Netherlands
Position Senior Project Management Partner Assistant Project Software Support
Manager & Local Manager Engineer
recruiter
Experience (years) 17 (Over) 20 3 1
Working schedule No No No No
availability
Communication via Skype call E-mail Skype call Face-to-Face
conversation
11-12-2012 8

9. ENGAGING MANAGERS TO EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Find out what Perception of
they really like employees on what
to do most. they really see as
TM opportunities.
Develop their
capabilities. Use their
feedback for
improvements.
Shape their
career
direction in line
with the
company‟s
profitability
line.
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10. TALENT/OVERALL BUSINESS STRATEGY
11-12-2012 10

11. DESCRIBE THE MEANING OF TM
 Mr. Arraiz said: „When we talk about talent management, basically we
mean the flow of professionals along their career. Professionals start
participating in projects, learning and finally mastering our basic tools.
Then they start to manage projects, which mean assuring the delivery for
the client, in terms of quality and timeframes. At this stage they start to
manage people in the frame of the project and also the economics of the
project. Finally they start to manage clients, which mean understanding
client needs and shaping projects.‟
 Mr. Panagiotopoulos stated: „We see talent management as the life-long
process of transforming a highly skilled (civil or electrical) engineer to a
broad on-site inspector, mediator, negotiator, and advisor holding always a
balance between technical drawings and human relationships. Our talents
have to be at least one step in front of our competitors.‟
11-12-2012 11

12. IMPACT ON SUSTAINABILITY
 One might initially believe that establishing sustainable relationships with
local governments is mostly affected by the quality of traditional contracts
and high-level contacts between executives and government officials. The
quality of the day-to-day relationships of regular employees with local
community members may have far more impact on the quality of those local
government relationships (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2005).
 Unseen talent contribution and HR challenges
 Mr. Seferiadis admitted that “Once I was landed at Benghazi and Tripoli’s
airport, everything changed in my organizational conception of how to take
the best talent-related decisions to maximize corporate reputation and
productivity.”
11-12-2012 12

13. ACCELERATING LEADER’S DEVELOPMENT
 Design of the talent pipeline
 Attract & Recruit
 Develop
 Monitor performance
 Engage
 Reward
 Tracking back
 Do you have a specific approach?
 How do you evaluate it?
 How unique & valuable do you consider your Human Capital?
 4 employment modes (Lepak & Snell, 1999): internal development,
acquisition, contracting, and alliance.
11-12-2012 13

14. TALENT PIPELINE APPROACH
Mr. Arraiz was the only person among the four participants having a structured view
on the Talent Pipeline, as he claimed:
“We have defined a talent pipeline, as mentioned, where we monitor specifically four
moments:
 Recruitment, hiring professionals without a limit in their potential
 From consultant to manager, where there is a significant potential assessment
about managing people
 From manager to director, where there is a significant potential assessment
about selling skills
 Leaving the organization, trying to get rid of professionals in the right moment.
This is again related to the potential assessments, reward management and the
number of external opportunities there are in the marketplace.”
11-12-2012 14

15. THE D & S GAP (I) – A SC APPROACH
 Correct number of talented people?
 Correct people in correct positions?
 (Mis)/Match between Talent (Product) and Organization(SC)?
 Is the quality of the talent the right?
 3-FIT dimensions of (Stahl et al., 2007)
 Internal-fit
 Culture-fit (Mr. Panagiotopoulos – DOSSEK S.A.)
 Strategic-fit (Mr. Kermanidis – AET B.V.)
 Mr. Kermanidis a junior software support engineer in the A.E.T B.V.
Company, located in Arnhem, stated “We have a clear motivating power
boosting us to optimize our strategic mission. The vision is the same, in all
levels; personal targets are just metrics. An organizational target is what
fulfills our strategic thinking.”
11-12-2012 15

16. THE D & S GAP (II) – A SC APPROACH
 Mr. Panagiotopoulos after working 17 years as a senior project manager,
and the last 3 years as a regional recruiter, for the DOSSEK construction
firm, in his reply about the applied rewarding system he answered;
“Psychological contracts are not just words for us. We want to work and
live as a family. In this culture, money comes after. If you ask our
employees about their annual bonuses they will tell you which bonus of
all? Each day we try to eat, train, and laugh together as we will do in our
houses after the end of work.”
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17. GLOBAL TM (I)
 3 main global challenges (Tarique & Schuler, 2010)
 Get easily the right skills in the right numbers
 Spread out knowledge and HR practices
 Screen and develop talent
 Mr. Seferiadis claimed that he always tries to build up a recruiting strategy
for expanding the firm‟s talent pool in the Middle East area, by assessing
the available know-how, the number of candidates and the potential
distribution of talent throughout the firm.
11-12-2012 17

18. GLOBAL TM (II)
 Trade off: Localization (local talent development) – Globalization
(global branding) (Stahl, 2007)
 Transnational orientation of company Top Management Teams
legitimate and support the geographical dimensions of a firm in order to
become a truly transnational company (Mellahi & Collings, 2010).
11-12-2012 18

19. LOCALIZATION VS. GLOBALIZATION
(source: Stahl et al., 2007) 11-12-2012 19

20. TALENT ALIGNMENT
AET B.V.
HAY GROUP
DOSSEK S.A.
&
TECHNIKI
LATOMIKI S.A.
(source: Stahl et al., 2007)11-12-2012 20

21. THE IMPACT OF RECESSION AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY
 Beginning of 2000s high investments in TM Recession: scrutiny of
business expenses Increased HR-pressure for demonstrating adding
value in „critical business units‟ Cost-cutting focus and decreasing
development budgets (CIPD, 2010).
 Mr. Arraiz when speaking about the problems in TM practices, supported
that “The main problems are related with the social and economic
situation. In the years of economic expansion, professionals have lots of
opportunities, turnover is over 20%, feeding the talent pipeline is
expensive and sometimes we need to take high risks with inexperienced
people.”
11-12-2012 21

22. BUILDING HIGH-QUALITY COLLEAGUES
 A lot of employers tend to define talented people as the ones who will be
potentially transformed into valuable, high-quality colleagues. High-quality
colleagues bring many things at the table like sources of information,
helpful critics, client interfaces, and reputation (Groysberg, Lee, &
Abrahams, 2010, p. 3).
 Mr. Panagiotopoulos says that “I expect the way our recruits behave
towards the carpenters or masons to behave during our daily interactions.
This is why a core ethical target in the firm, is that we want firstly High-
Quality colleagues, not just stars. If a candidate passes successfully
through our human capital processing we will likely consider him as
talented.”
 The same professional did not hide the faults of past, as he admitted that
the firm did fall into two classic traps, the one of “allowing stars to go
solo” and the other of “overestimating the importance of pay”.
11-12-2012 22

23. HIGH-QUALITY EMPLOYEES
 The main hypothesis of (Höglund, 2012) summarizing that „skill-
enhancing HRM is positively related to talent inducements, thus the use of
extensive skill-enhancing HRM practices does communicate the centrality
of employee qualities reflecting talent‟ is in accordance with the overall
perception of Mr. Panagiotopoulos on Talent Management practices.
11-12-2012 23

24. RETENTION OF TALENTS
 Human Capital metrics – Score Index (min.1 - max.5) for each respondent
 Leadership
 Employee motivation
 Training and development
 Performance improvement
 Pay and reward structures
 4 spider diagrams for benchmarking the perception on TM targets
 Individual-level comparisons Firm/Industry-level comparisons
(source: Stahl et al., 2007)11-12-2012 24

25. HUMAN CAPITAL METRICS – SCORE INDEX
DOSSEK T. LATOMIKI HAY GROUP AET B.V.
INDUSTRY Construction Construction Consultancy IT
COUNTRY Greece Greece Spain Netherlands
Leadership 5 5 3 1
Employee 4 4 2 3
motivation
Training & 3 3 5 5
development
Performance 2 3 3 4
improvement
Pay & reward 1 2 5 3
structures
11-12-2012 25

26. DOSSEK S.A. / MR. PANAGIOTOPOULOS
Leadership
Pay & reward Employee
structures motivation
Performance Training &
improvement development
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27. TECHNIKI LATOMIKI S.A. / MR. SEFERIADIS
Leadership
Pay & reward Employee
structures motivation
Performance Training &
improvement development
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28. / MR. ARRAIZ
Leadership
Pay & reward Employee
structures motivation
Performance Training &
improvement development
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29. / MR. KERMANIDIS
Leadership
Pay & reward Employee
structures motivation
Performance Training &
improvement development
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30. FACTORS AFFECTING THE RETENTION RATE (I)
 Sufficient and challenging learning opportunities
 Collaborative atmosphere and co-support
 Mr. Kermanidis pointed out that “I was offered three times the opportunity
for having a free dinner in any restaurant I would like to choose in 2
months. And my line manager the next day, sent a direct mail to
congratulate me for my good job. After all, the next day I feel more
committed and more open to learn.”
 The IT fresher admitted that “The general feeling of being always and
systematically supported in all the emerging technical and relational
problems concerning my job-position constitutes the highest value in my
personal perception about managing the internal talent of our organization.
I am never dealing with the fear of being abandoned in case of complex
issues.”
11-12-2012 30

31. FACTORS AFFECTING THE RETENTION RATE (II)
 The age counts more than education or seniority: The older an
employee, the more likely he is to stay and the less likely he is to leave
the organization (Govaerts & Kyndt, 2011).
 Mr. Arraiz‟s case, an HR-manager and partner for HAY Consulting Group
over 20 years opinion is in line with the previous hypothesis.
 Mr. Seferiadis due to his awareness that modern young employees are
likely to change jobs in the start of their career, said that when designing
HR strategy for recruiting talents, prefers firstly to choose the best from
the lower internal organizational levels and after to outsource for recruits.
11-12-2012 31

32. DECISION-MAKING IN TM
(source: Boston Consulting Group, 2007)11-12-2012 32

33. CORE TALENT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
(source: Jonathan Rosin, 2009) 11-12-2012 33

34. EMPLOYER VALUE PROPOSITION & TOTAL REWARDS
The “give &
get” between
company
and worker.
The full portfolio of total rewards programs
(source: Talent Management and Rewards Global Survey Report 2012-2013) 11-12-2012 34

35. IN THE END…
 WHAT BECAME CLEAR; ORGANZATIONS – REGARDLESS THE
NATURE OF INDUSTRY – CARE SERIOYSLY IN:
 Progressing EVP & TR systems to achieve (re)-designed OUTCOMES
 Talent Management is the critical strategic path for transforming
employees into talented leaders which will highly differentiate firms and
will lead them to deliver the most competitive/satisfying services and
products to their customers.
11-12-2012 35