Business or Human Resource Management (HRM) has a variety of responsibilities ranging from human resource planning, leadership and human resource development to skills management, diversity management, change management and talent management.
All of these practical fields of action contain various social responsibilities. An important task of HR management is certainly not only to find qualified employees, but also to develop and further develop them accordingly (internally). Especially with regard to current developments in the labour market (including demographics, shortage of skilled workers), talent management is becoming increasingly important.
Talent management is an organization-related measure or concept that simply means having the right (capable) employees in the right (suitable) workplace (Bartscher, Stöckl & Träger, 2012).
However, this simple description is preceded by a broader understanding of talent management: „Talent management refers to those organisational concepts and measures that specifically address the recruitment, maintenance and development of current or future employees who are referred to as talents due to their comparatively limited, highly sought after and for the organisation key competences.“ (Ritz & Sinelli, 2010, 10 cited by Bartscher, Stöckl & Träger, 2012, 377; translated from German).
Talents are „people […] who have the right skills and the right knowledge at the right time to meet their job requirements. In addition, they have cognitive abilities and the potential to perform further tasks in line with their corporate goals.“ (Bethke-Langenegger, 2011, 12 cited by Bartscher, Stöckl & Träger, 2012, 377; translated from German)
The concept of talent management can basically be divided into two forms: 1. the conventional (elitist) approach and 2. the integrated (broad) approach. The first approach is rather narrow, while the second is a bit wider. The conventional approach (also known as the elite approach) argues that only a small number of employees can be described as talents. It assumes that about 3-10 percent of the workforce has so-called „high potential“.
These „A-performers“ make a significant contribution to the company’s success and therefore receive a „talent status“, which is achieved above all when an employee has a very high performance potential (with career opportunities) over a longer period of time. From the perspective of talent management, such people must be identified, developed and kept in the company.
The integrated approach takes all employees of the company into account instead of only A-performers. Therefore, in this context, talent management aims to find, promote and optimally use (incorporate) all talents (employees with talents). This approach of talent management is also closely linked to personnel development, something that can easily be criticised as there is no clear differentiation in the definition (Bartscher, Stöckl & Träger, 2012, 378f.).