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The war for talent: Fact or fiction? - What is talent?

PwC defines talent as employees who have inherent competencies with energy and drive, and are committed to delivering excellent results in support of business results

In order for talent to have energy and drive, key individual issues must be in a state of equilibrium and or satisfaction. This will result in an employee seeing value in engaging in an environment, and unleashing the energy required to produce positive results.

Figure 1: Employee engagement model

The employee engagement model above states that for an employee to engage, she should be satisfied with key issues that affect her career and life. These issues range from satisfaction with the environment, to the perception that the work environment will allow the employee to fulfil personal wishes, and job satisfaction is another key factor. The employee weighs all these experiences with internal factors, such as the company’s strategic drivers, type of leadership; and the likelihood of progression against external factors, such as the value of external prospects in comparison with internal factors. If all these factors are to the satisfaction of the employee, there is engagement. This satisfaction will fluctuate on an ongoing basis depending on the three factors at play (internal, external and personal).

The employee engagement model requires genuine interest in the employee’s life and a degree of openness and trust from all parties. In this situation part of managing talent will be to get into the hearts and minds of employee to support the organisation to achieve its strategic objectives. A heart and mind can only engage in a situation of genuine care and nurturing, as well as in a fair, transparent environment that offers opportunities for personal fulfilment.

The above situation calls for HR professionals to improve their tools of trade, as well as heart to heart engagement with talent of the organisation. The talent strategy should inform the HR professional what the talent of that organisation should be and how will it be identified and nurtured and retained.

There is no right or wrong talent management strategy; however HR professionals should be mindful of market dominant cultures as they have a tendency to influence the way people perceive, and are perceived, in organisations.

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