TALENT
T
he notion of talent management has been with us for many years, but the definition, identification and
management of talent remains a complex and clouded concept. Nonetheless, organisations are clear that
proactive identification of critical talent, along with its deployment, development and evaluation, is vital to sustainable growth and, ultimately, to business success. Talent management requires targeted
selection of individuals to address skills shortages, manage projects and respond to customer needs. Once individuals are on board, development programmes and performance management are required to leverage the best outcomes from them. To ensure an effective talent management programme, organisations also need to take into consideration factors such as employee engagement and a supportive and inclusive workplace.
Talent identification and selection It is well known that the development of talent to serve a global marketplace necessarily involves international experience. The identification and deployment of talent willing to work abroad adds another layer of complexity in the management of employees’ careers. Organisations must take into account the balance between the needs and expectations of local staff to gain senior career experience and those of employees based in headquarters or operations in other countries. The deployment of expatriates to service
projects, fill skills gaps and manage local personnel helps to develop these individuals, leading to the greater likelihood of their gaining senior management and leadership opportunities. Organisations, however, need to question whether high-potential staff should always be identified from outside the local environment, thereby resulting in expatriation (and its associated costs and challenges), or whether local talent can be deployed instead. Typically, local skills shortages act as a
major driver to recruit and select individuals from outside the indigenous labour market, but talent management programmes should also consider opportunities for host-country staff to be developed if local employee engagement is to be maintained. In developing a talent strategy, it is
important to identify the overall business strategy. This is because talent management needs to be aligned with the overall corporate strategy or a locally based variant of it.
When identifying talent and reviewing
its deployment in international settings, careful analysis is needed to understand how these locations and the job roles within them contribute to strategy. Again, in terms of talent identification, it is necessary to determine whether the job roles underpin strategic actions, for instance by reacting to customer and market imperatives, or whether the job roles are the drivers of change, taking the business forward into new domains. These issues will determine the type of
talent required, and will help organisations to identify the competencies necessary to achieve the strategic goals at both local and corporate levels. It is important to evaluate the
link between identified talent and the organisation’s customers and whether one will serve the other to best advantage. In order to take this forward, talent identification and deployment is likely to need to be tailored to the locations of operation. Thus, individuals selected to work internationally must fit not only with the strategic direction of the organisation but also with the culture locally – both organisational and societal. Traditional approaches to talent
identification for international assignments have typically been relatively informal and frequently based upon home-country performance management indicators. Working abroad, however, involves a wider range of competencies. Because of this, talent selection needs to be more formalised and structured. To ensure best use of individuals who
have worked abroad, it is also important to link talent selection to succession planning in such a way that those appointed can see a career pathway beyond the timescale of their assignment.
Diversity and inclusion Survey data indicates that minorities are typically not well represented in the international assignee workforce. For example, women comprise around 25 per cent of the expatriate population, and this figure has hovered around the 20 to 25 per cent mark for many years. This suggests that women’s assignment participation may have peaked. It also indicates that employers are losing out on the talents of women and their abilities to forge relationships with clients and customers. There is little data available on the
make-up of the expatriate population with respect to ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation and other aspects of
diversity. Yet, without a focus on diversity, talent management programmes that involve international assignments lack the wider spectrum of skills and abilities that contribute to the successful business outcomes of the home-country operations. To be truly successful, talent management
programmes need to be combined with initiatives that increase diversity and inclusion. In this way, worldwide operations can harness diversity to increase creativity and build inclusivity and engagement to achieve business-critical outcomes. Creating a diverse and inclusive
international assignee population may not be as straightforward as building diversity and inclusion within the home-country environment. For example, organisations need to take account of legal factors, which may preclude certain minorities from entering jurisdictions or living within them safely. Despite the challenges, it is important
that organisations do not prejudge individuals and their circumstances but provide an open and transparent selection process that is informative and unbiased. Making assumptions that women will be unsuccessful in masculine cultures, for example, demonstrates a home-country prejudice that may not be reflected in the receiving location. Those being considered for expatriation need to know what to expect in the host environment so they can consider their options based on facts.
Challenging locations As organisations continually globalise and move personnel into new and relatively unknown destinations, international talent management raises the issue of how to deploy and develop individuals in challenging locations. Background research into factors that
can affect assignees and their families negatively must be identified and planned for. Organisations need to recognise potential obstacles, dangers and risks within the local cultural context. These may include, for example, limited medical and educational facilities, remote or harsh physical environments, unstable, insecure or violent regimes, and limited facilities in such areas as housing and goods and services. Depending on the need for foreign
nationals to work in such locations (as opposed to the deployment and development of local personnel), the talent selection process must take into account the effects of the location on accompanied status. Security reviews can identify whether the family can accompany the employee, the level of
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