Talent Management

What talent management is

Talent management (إدارة المواهب) is the approach an organisation follows to identify the people of high capability within it, to develop them and to retain them, and to link that work to the capabilities the organisation will need in the future.

The people in question are already inside the organisation. Identifying them means finding the employees whose capability is high. Developing them means building on that capability, and retaining them means keeping those employees in the organisation. The link to the future is part of the same definition: identifying, developing and retaining are tied to the capabilities the organisation expects to need, and talent management is set against that need.

Talent in talent management is not a general quality

Used precisely, the word “talent” in talent management is tied to a specific role, not to a person in absolute terms. An employee who performs strongly in the current role does not necessarily have high capability for a wider role, and the reverse is also true.

The first half of that statement concerns an employee whose performance in the present role is high. That performance shows how the employee does the work of the role they hold. By itself, it does not show how the same employee would do in a wider role, because the wider role is a different role from the present one. The reverse concerns an employee whose capability for a wider role is high. That capability does not mean, in itself, that the employee performs strongly in the role they hold now.

Because talent is tied to a role, calling an employee a talent leaves a question open until the role is named. An employee may be a talent against one role and not against another, and the classification is made with a particular role in view.

For that reason two dimensions are kept apart when talent is assessed: performance in the current role, and capability to take on a larger role. Confusing the two is what makes high performance in the current role, on its own, a justification for promotion to a wider role.

Performance in the current role concerns how the employee is doing in the role they hold. Capability concerns whether the employee could take on a role larger than that one. When the two are kept apart, a judgement on the first is not taken as a judgement on the second. When they are confused, high performance in the current role is counted as evidence of capability for the wider role, and the promotion then rests on performance alone.

What talent management includes

• Identifying the critical roles first, because talent is managed against a need and not in the abstract.
• Assessing both dimensions, performance and capability, against written criteria.
• Individual development plans tied to a specific gap, not to general programmes.
• Linking talent management to succession planning. Without that link, talent management remains an assessment with no outcome.

The critical roles come first in that list. Talent is tied to a role, so the roles against which it is assessed are identified before anyone is assessed, and the critical roles are where that identification starts. Managing talent against a need means that the question asked about an employee concerns a role the organisation needs, not the employee in the abstract.

Assessing both dimensions applies the separation described above. Performance and capability are each assessed, and the criteria for both are written down. Written criteria set out what the assessment looks for in each dimension, so the two are not merged into a single judgement of the employee.

Each development plan is individual and tied to a specific gap. In talent management the gap is what an employee lacks for the role they could reach. A general programme is not tied to the gap of any one employee.

Linking talent management to succession planning gives the assessment an outcome. Without it, the assessment of performance and capability records where employees stand, and nothing follows from that record.

The risk that comes with talent management

Classifying one group of employees as talents implicitly creates another group. If the classification becomes known and cannot be reviewed, it can turn into a ceiling for those outside it.

The second group is not named by anyone. It consists of the employees who were not classified as talents, and it exists because the first group was named. Both groups come into being through the same classification.

The ceiling depends on two conditions together: the classification is known, and it cannot be reviewed. A classification that cannot be reviewed stays as it was made, and an employee outside it has no route into it. When it is also known, the employees outside it know that they are outside it.

What reduces that risk is a classification that is periodic, not permanent, criteria built on observable behaviour and not on impression, and access to development opportunities that stays open to anyone who meets the criterion later.

A periodic classification is made again at intervals and is not fixed once it is made. An employee who was outside it in one round can be inside it in the next.

Criteria built on observable behaviour rest on what an employee has been seen to do, not on the impression the employee has left on whoever makes the classification.

Open access to development opportunities means that those opportunities are not limited to the employees classified at one point. An employee who meets the criterion later reaches the same opportunities.

How talent management differs from performance appraisal

Performance appraisal looks at the past: what the employee achieved against their objectives. Talent management looks at what lies ahead: which role the employee could reach, and what they lack for it. The first is an input to the second, but it is not enough alone.

What performance appraisal records is achievement that has already happened, measured against the employee’s objectives. Talent management asks about a role the employee does not yet hold, and about what the employee lacks for that role.

Performance appraisal is an input because its result, the employee’s performance in the current role, is one of the two dimensions that talent management assesses. It is not sufficient because the other dimension, capability to take on a larger role, is not what the appraisal measures.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.