The first three articles in this series presented the context in which talent management and all of its related definitions emerged, as well as the definitions and components of the terms “talent” and “potential,” the characteristics of high-potential employees and a model to help identify employees who are “A players.” This fourth and final article will present some thoughts on and critiques of the talent management approach.
With the recent craze for talent management, more and more texts are attempting to outline and explain its associated concepts, like “potential.” In this respect, Silzer & Church (2009) developed a practical model of the different dimensions associated with potential. In addition, Robinson et al. (2009) created a potential pyramid to guide decision-makers in their identification of potential among their employees. Although this work provides a practical starting point for anyone who wants to identify people with high potential at their organization, these models have not yet been empirically validated. This raises a number of questions. For example, in the interest of efficiency, how often should organizations re-evaluate their employees’ potential? Beyond consideration of organizational characteristics like mission and values, what approach can be used to accurately identify current and future key positions? How do work experience and corporate culture affect individuals’ potential? The authors seem to agree on the importance of performance and past behaviours (Robinson et al., 2009), but what about the assessment of potential in junior staff members, who may also have high potential?
Another issue in talent management is the very act of identifying high-potential employees. Although the authors have identified characteristics and means for identifying these individuals, how can potential be identified, measured or predicted when it remains unrealized? Under the talent management approach, managers try to predict the direction and speed of possible changes in individual team members. To make this prediction, they need to know both the employee’s point A (current state and characteristics) and his/her point B (the state and characteristics which the organization considers sufficient in order to succeed in a key position). However, it is impossible to predict, with complete accuracy, how a position will change in the future, and this is all the more true of what the employee will be “put through” in order to reach this point B.
In short, ten years after the publication of The War for Talent, talent management has evolved, and responses have been developed to a number of key questions, particularly practical ones. Yet many more remain unresolved and will require the attention of researchers and practitioners alike. The fact that the success and future of organizations will be determined by the talent that they can attract has now been proven. Moreover, there are significant benefits to a strategic integration of HR functions into an organization’s other functions and a better integration of human resource management activities among themselves. But the need for scientific confirmation of the models and assertions of this management approach and of the impacts of these practices (like the creation of a separate, parallel HR structure for “A player” employees or the recent spike in psychological health issues in the workplace) on the employees themselves is becoming more and more pressing. The same is true of evaluating employee potential, a speciality with little scientific evidence to back it up, particularly regarding how to measure this potential. On the other hand, the professionals who initially proposed the talent management approach, and its subsequent enhancements, have tended to emphasize its managerial aspect, while neglecting to incorporate the large volume of practical and scientific knowledge of these activities, such as the best practices for evaluating staff performance, best practices for skills assessments, etc. It is obviously no easy task to build a management model that explicitly includes the best practices of all the domains involved. But in the meantime, we strongly recommend that managers examine not only the benefits of talent management, but also its limitations, and that they seek to overcome these latter by using information that might be gleaned from other approaches or models. Otherwise, neglecting to do so could prove very costly to their organizations. To make a long story short, the potential of the talent management approach, although very promising, must still be accurately assessed…
Philippe Longpré, Ph.D. Cdt.
Marilyne Pigeon, Ph.D. Cdt.
