Talent Management: The Foundation of Business Success

Organizations across all sectors and sizes face significant challenges in managing their operations, whether at the strategic, administrative, or organizational level. To ensure they can meet these challenges, organizations need to invest in human resources and manage these talents to effectively run their businesses in all activities and administrative sites.

Human competencies are a crucial element for achieving individual and institutional performance excellence. They consist of a diverse set of qualities and skills that enable individuals to achieve high levels of performance. Therefore, focusing on developing these competencies and leveraging them in all the organization’s activities is vital to ensure its superiority and success in the competitive labor market.

Concept and Types of Competencies

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) defines competencies as an integrated set of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, and behaviors that contribute to enhancing employee performance, leading to institutional success. The primary goal is to identify the performance standards required for employees to ensure the organization’s success.

We view talent management as an integrated system of human resource management processes aimed at attracting, developing, motivating, and retaining employees, and enabling them to achieve maximum productivity.

Competencies include three main types: core competencies, leadership competencies, and technical (specialized) competencies.

Talent Management Framework

The talent management process should be based on a comprehensive approach that focuses on identifying, developing, and evaluating workforce capabilities across several dimensions:

• Knowledge: Assessing the breadth and depth of employees’ understanding in relevant areas and identifying the experts among them.
• Skills: Identifying required skills and crafting this through what is known as a skills framework, which includes all the necessary skills to effectively fulfill job roles.
• Competence: Evaluating the level of competence and effectiveness in task performance, including assessing behaviors, professional ethics, and personal skills in line with the organization’s values.
• Experience: Identifying and leveraging the existing experiences of employees.
• Training: Selecting and evaluating the most appropriate methods for developing the workforce’s skills, ensuring the effectiveness of training programs, and identifying areas that need improvement.

By systematically assessing and enhancing these aspects, organizations can effectively manage their talents and benefit from this process in:

• Improving Employee Performance and Increasing Productivity: Tailoring development plans to enhance employee performance and boost productivity based on identifying strengths and areas needing improvement as previously discussed.
• Identifying and Addressing Skill Gaps and Development Needs: Through targeted assessments, organizations can identify skill gaps and development needs, facilitating targeted training and development initiatives to bridge them effectively.

Written by:
Dr. Reema Al-Qahtani
Human Resources Consultant