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Studentsviews on Talent Management Björk Löf, Marcus Virta, Damon Westpahl, Gustav et.al.

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Page 1: Students views on Talent Management - KTH/Menu... · researcher, business consultants and coauthors of “First, Break ... retaining and utilizing people with the required ... individuals

Students’

views on

Talent

Management Björk Löf, Marcus

Virta, Damon

Westpahl, Gustav

et.al.

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1

This report has been developed with support from

Forum för industriell byggnadskonst (FIND) at

KTH.

TRITA-FOB-Report 2011:2

Copyright The authors

US-AB, Stockholm, 2011

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Preface

This publication was created during the fall of

2011 as a part of the course Knowledge

Management and Evaluation within the program

Civil Engineering and Built Environment at KTH

in Stockholm. It was written by us, 21 students

from different culture and continents; Europe, Asia

and Africa. At that time we were studying the last

year within the track Architectural Design and

Construction Project Management and were

therefore on our way out to the labor market. We

had all different backgrounds and varied

experiences from the industry through internships,

trainee and mentor programs.

We would like to give a special thanks to our

course examiner Tina Karrbom Gustavsson, PhD.

Senior Lecturer at KTH, for all her help, supportive

ideas and useful feedback. We would also like to

express our gratitude towards Väino Tarandi,

professor at KTH and Örjan Wikforss, professor at

KTH, for their expertise and helpful input. Finally,

we would like to thank the participating companies

for devoting their time and generous sharing of

knowledge.

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Joseph Aho

Sara Alizadeh Amirbeigi

Marcus Björk Löf

Fantahun Demdime

Therése Edén

Fabrizio Galliano

Ivica Kojadinovic

Frida Krantz

Valeriy Matouzko

Elin Mattsson

Natapatchara Methanivesana

Anders Ragnerstam

Jiamei Ren

Vidar Sandström

Salih Sen

Christofer Sjöstrand

Sara Sundelin

Susanna Ternstedt

Damon Virta

Gustav Westphal

Muharrem Firat Yilmaz

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ...................................................... 6

PURPOSE AND METHOD ...................................... 7

THE FAME MODEL ................................................ 9 Q1. What is a talent and what is talent

management? ..................................................... 11

FINDING .............................................................. 15

Q2. How can a company find talented

individuals? ........................................................ 15

ATTRACTING ..................................................... 18

Q3. What can a company do to attract

talents? ............................................................... 18

MANAGING ......................................................... 24

Q4. What can a company do to keep talented

individuals within the company? ........................ 25

EXTRACTING ..................................................... 28

Q5. How can knowledge sharing enhance

Talent management? .......................................... 28

IMPLICATIONS .................................................. 32

Q6. What are the advantages with Talent

management? ..................................................... 32

Q7. What are the possible problems with

Talent management? .......................................... 34

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CONCLUSION ......................................................... 36

APPENDIX 1 ............................................................ 38

APPENDIX 2 ............................................................ 39

REFERENCES ......................................................... 42

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Introduction

This publication gives a reflective view on Talent

Management within the construction industry in

Sweden.

During the recent years, construction and

consultant companies within the industry has put

an increasing focus on the importance of having

skillful employees within the organization. The

baseline of success in an organization has shifted

from being measured by the strength of the

structural capital towards being defined by the

collected knowledge of the employees i.e. the

human capital. As a result of this shift a parallel

demand of having management disciplines to

handle the human capital has risen. This is where

the concept of talent management has come into

focus.

Talent management, as a concept, has diverse

meaning to different companies within the

industry, which is reflected in their practice.

We believe that if talent management is to be

implemented in an effective way, many parts of the

company’s organization have to be involved. It has

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to be integrated with knowledge management and

the corporate culture. Talent management deals

with the employees and their entire careers, which

of course is different depending on the age,

experience, and personality of each employee.

To give a picture of what we consider talent

management to be we have created a model that

gives an overview on the connections between

talent management, knowledge management and

an employee’s lifecycle.

Purpose and Method

The purpose of this publication is to be informative

and reflective on the subject of talent management.

It aims to contribute to an increasing awareness

and development of talent management within the

construction industry. To do this we have turned to

a group that are highly involved on the subject; our

self.

Being fifth year Construction Management and

Architectural Design students at KTH with

experience of career fairs, recruiting programs and

internships, we think that we can provide valuable

input to our potential employers. Our work has

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relied on dialog seminars, a collaborative

environment, interviews, literature studies and

statistics from master students within the section

for the Built Environment. This has been the

foundation from which we have produced adequate

questions with reflective answers on the subject.

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The FAME Model

The FAME-model will be the foundation from

which we elaborate on the concept of Talent

Management. It was created by Damon Virta, a

fifth year Construction Management and

Architectural Design student at KTH, and one of

the editors of this publication. Its purpose is to give

an illustrative view of how we students perceive

Talent Management and how it is related to the

construction industry and the life cycle of an

employee. The model consists of four different

roles that have a key influence when considering

Talent Management; Prospect, Employee, Senior

and Company.

The Prospect

Is an individual with potential talent that can be

valuable for the company by providing new

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insights and innovative ideas. This person is not yet

under the company’s employment and can be of

any age varying from a newly graduated student to

a senior who is interested in changing career paths.

The Employee

Is an individual who is employed by the company

because of the potential that person has or the

experience that the person possesses. This person

will eventually develop and evolve into a skillful

professional within a certain field and will become

a vital part of the company’s human capital.

The Senior

Is an individual with valuable experience and tacit

knowledge. This person is considered a key part of

the company’s human capital, nevertheless this

person could be someone approaching retirement

or is in some other way leaving the company in a

near future.

The Company

The company is described as one entity that

includes praxis, structures, structural and human

capital.

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All of these roles are illustrated in the FAME-

model and connected with four different processes;

Finding, Attracting, Managing and Extracting.

Together they form the life cycle of a talent, which

will be the foundation for the structure of this

publication, where we try to clarify the concept of

Talent Management

Q1. What is a talent and what is talent

management?

To lay the foundation for further reflections on the

subject of talent management, it is important for us

to state what we consider a talent. We argue that

talents are basically people with aptitude and better

intuition about a certain area. Everybody can be a

talent; however the talent has to be matched with

the correct task in order to achieve the best result.

According to Buckingham and Coffman,

researcher, business consultants and coauthors of

“First, Break All the Rules, What the World's

Greatest Managers Do Differently”, a talent is:

“Any recurring patterns of behavior that can be

productively applied are talents. The key to

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excellent performance, of course, is finding the

match between your talents and your role “.

Hence, the potential talent will become a talent

when put into the right environment within the

company, which enables the talent to develop

according to his or hers potential.

It is almost impossible to give a straight answer to,

or a correct definition of what the concept of talent

management is. The difficulty in defining the

concept lies in the diverse perception of the

practitioner. Anyhow, Nancy R. Lockwood, an

international human resources director for the New

York State SHRM council and co-founder of the

International Human Resources Special Interest

Group, writes a definition that coincides with our

perception of the subject:

“Talent Management is the implementation of

integrated strategies or systems designed to

increase workplace productivity by developing

improved processes for attracting, developing,

retaining and utilizing people with the required

skills and aptitude to meet current and future

business needs.”

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In addition we believe that in order for above

mentioned utilization part to function successfully,

theories from knowledge management has to be

applied. Knowledge management contains theories

and strategies that deal with the problems of

extracting, sharing, preserving and maintaining

knowledge within the organization. The ambition

should be for the companies to create the best

opportunities to extract and process knowledge

from talented individuals. This step can be found in

the extraction part in the FAME model.

In order for the talented employee to be able to

grow and develop, an environment of knowledge

sharing has to be created where the individual can

easily extract and process useful knowledge from

the organization. This step is placed in the

managing part of the FAME model.

The FAME model implies that talent management

is a process where companies use different

strategies and solutions to attract skilled

individuals on the market. The goal is to gain

knowledge to develop the organization and to

enhance talent development and motivation.

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This could result in making business more

competitive with the right employee on the right

job, making more money and reducing internal

risks in recruiting etc. It is therefore not primarily a

matter of setting up the right organs in the

organization but to create work processes and

support systems that stimulate the diverse

dimensions of talent management.

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FINDING

Almost every company is continuously searching

for employees with potential that could evolve into

a skillful professional, which can help the company

to become more profitable and innovative. To be

able to know if a specific person is right for the

company, the company has to know what kind of

knowledge they already have in-house and what

they are in need of now and in the future. This

must be done in order to make the recruitment

process efficient. This section will discuss different

methods to find these potential talents, or as we

choose to call them; prospects.

Q2. How can a company find talented

individuals?

Our perception of the finding process is mainly

based on the following three steps:

What to look for

Where to look

Who to choose

In order to know where and who to find in the

recruitment process the company has to first of all

know what is needed within the company, both

long and short term. This process is completely

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internal and managed by the companies HR-

department or equivalent. Once the specific need

has been pinpointed the process of knowing where

to look begins.

To be able to find the specific individual that the

company needs, the first task should be to narrow

the search pool of potential prospects. There are

four areas in particular from where this gap can be

filled. First, the company should search for

prospects in-house. Second is to search for

individuals on the job market. If for some reason

this person cannot be identified, the company can

search amongst the competitor’s employees within

the same industry. This option can be more

difficult to succeed in, since greater incentives

might be needed for that person to leave the

competitor. The final option is to search the

academia for prospects that could be shaped and

evolved into a future skilful professional.

Graduated students or soon to be graduates can

also provide new insights which the company

needs for further development.

Once the search pool has been defined, the

company should focus on who to choose within

that pool. Due to the fact that we are students we

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are best suited to elaborate on the academic part of

the finding process. To be able to find the right

person within the academia we suggest two main

methods.

Career fairs are an excellent way of distinguishing

which students are worth focusing on when

searching for the right individual. Both parties can

benefit from these career fairs, students get a good

overview of which companies to choose from and

what they can offer. Companies on the other hand

get personal contact with the search pool and could

evaluate both the pool and the individuals within.

The second method of finding the prospects is by

internships. These programs offer a way to

evaluate how the prospect performs in an actual

work environment. This enables the company in an

easy and inexpensive way to see if that person is

able to perform as expected, without any long-term

obligations. The prospect can in return form a

perception of what the company can offer and if

they can live up to their expectations. What the

companies may not know is that these methods of

finding the right prospects is also, from a student’s

point of view, a good way of attracting us.

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ATTRACTING

In order for a company in the construction industry

to survive they will eventually need to recruit.

However the time period for this differs between

larger and smaller companies. The industry is

affected, like many other industries in Sweden, by

the generation shift caused by the retirement of the

1940’s baby-boom generation. This recruitment

will also occur for many other reasons such as

company growth, changed focus or just

replacements. It may both include junior staff from

universities with comparatively little experience

and senior staff from the industry with many years

of experience. However, a talent by our previous

definition can be any individual having potential,

which implies that they can be anything from

newly graduated to someone approaching

retirement age. This section will primarily focus on

how companies can attract young professionals.

Q3. What can a company do to attract

talents?

This is a question that has been discussed many

times in our class and with the interviewed

companies. There are a number of aspects in a

company that can attract a newly graduated KTH

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student. From class discussions ten different

aspects arose that we would consider when

choosing an employer.

In order to get a better view of how these aspects

are prioritised by students who are about to start

working in the construction industry, we have

made a survey. This consisted of a questionnaire

where we asked the participants to rank these ten

statements from 1 to 10 depending on how

important it was for them when choosing an

employer. The aspect ranked as number one is the

one considered the most important and ten the least

important. The questionnaire was then distributed

to students in their last year of master studies,

taking one of the programmes within the Built

Environment section.

The result was 70 replies and the diagrams and

tables chosen to illustrate these results are shown in

Appendix 1 & 2. However, below the ranking of

the aspects considered most important are shown:

1. High salary

2. Personal development

3. Career opportunities

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4. Good co-workers and atmosphere

5. Location of worksite

6. A mentoring organisational structure

7. Company benefits (bonuses, funds,

pension, shares and awards)

8. Trainee programs and other personnel

training

9. Attractive company profile

10. Possibilities to work internationally

The list above was based on the lowest average

score that each aspect got, which can be seen in

Appendix 1. The lower the average was, the more

important the aspect was considered.

As shown in the list above the first aspect

considered is the salary, which on the other hand is

likely to be a big improvement compared to the

average student’s income.

To support this conclusion we have Table 2 in

Appendix 2 where the three aspects that got the

most top three choices was salary, career

opportunities and personal development. Hence,

possibilities to climb the corporate ladder and

having a clear career path as well as being able to

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acquire new skills and knowledge, will be

important aspects to consider. Here either a larger

company that can offer work in a wide range of

different positions or a smaller specialized

company that requires more multi-skilled

individuals could gain a competitive edge in the

attracting process.

A larger company may provide better trainee

programs and training for their staff. On the other

hand smaller companies might have better

communication between the top and bottom layers

of the organisation, meaning that they can provide

a more open environment and stimulate employees

to take greater responsibilities and hence develop

faster.

The fourth aspect is a bit more abstract; this

includes things like personal chemistry amongst

co-workers and “having fun” at work. This is

something that can vary quite a lot between all

companies, whether small or large, since it depends

on every individual employee. However, a

company should try to promote good relations

between employees by having team building

activities, which are mentioned below in Question

4.

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The company’s geographical location (office or

project site) ended up as the fifth aspect. The

location affects the time it takes to travel to work

and the surrounding area will have effects on

employees’ well-being and services available to

them.

At sixth place a mentoring organisational structure

is found. This can partly be connected to the

company policy and point number four.

Nonetheless, a mentoring structure is more focused

on getting junior and senior employees to interact

and exchange knowledge in a professional way.

Next on the list, surprisingly enough is company

benefits. There are a variety of different benefits

that can be offered the employees, which can act as

incentives to both join and stay in the company.

These benefits can include things like different

funds (incl. pension funds), becoming a

shareholder, awards such as employee of the month

and bonus programs. This was something that was

expected to be lower on the list since the average

age of the people asked was 25. The conclusion

drawn from this is that long-term efforts from the

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company to award their employees, is something

appreciated by students.

The bottom three aspects, trainee programs,

company profile and international work

possibilities were still chosen as top three choices

by a number of students as seen in table 1 in

Appendix 2. This means that being part of an

international corporation may still affect the choice

of employer for a number of students. The same

can be said for company profile since a student is

likely to want to work in a company that has

similar goals to their personal beliefs. This can

include green, sustainable or high tech profiles.

The final, but not lowest ranked aspect is trainee

programs. This was also a bit surprising, but our

conclusion regarding the low score is that certain

trainee programs have been poorly executed and

not differentiated from normal part-time jobs. On

the other hand, we believe that a well-executed

trainee program used to its full potential can

support the second ranked aspect mentioned above,

which is personal development.

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MANAGING

Managing and keeping knowledge within the

company is basically an integral part of talent

management and one of the important concerns of

companies in general. From the perspective of a

company, keeping knowledge is retaining the

talented employee that a company possesses so that

the company can maintain its position on the

competitive market. According to David Abdulai,

CEO and executive director-Graduate School of

University of South Africa, what makes one

company different from the other is the great

wealth of tacit knowledge lying in the minds of the

employees.

A company has to be competitive in keeping

skillful professionals to take advantage of the

personal and tacit knowledge that gives a company

the cutting edge on the competitive market.

Knowledge workers are the cornerstone of

organizational success. However, in understanding

how to keep an employee within a company it is

crucial to understand what motivates them. This

can include many things, ranging from something

as concrete as high salary to something as abstract

as a sense of affiliation.

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Q4. What can a company do to keep

talented individuals within the company?

The general consensus in our class is that the key

to keeping the talents within a company is to

identify what motivates them and satisfy their

needs. Therefore, it would be best if the managers

of a company could continuously follow up what

they could do to contribute to each employee’s

personal growth. This could be done either openly

during company meetings and performance

reviews with the closest manager or anonymously

in surveys. From these results the employees

should be able to be rewarded based on their

individual needs and personal goals.

The motivational issue can be linked to the aspects

that might act as deciders between different

employers, which can be seen in the answer to the

question “Q4. What can a company do to attract

talents?”. These aspects try to give a holistic view

of what a prospect considers before choosing an

employer. However once a prospect has become an

employee the challenge is to manage their talent

and keep them within the company so that they can

evolve into a senior professional. This challenge

still remains, as a company needs to keep both their

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junior and senior employees. The difference in

motivation between a junior and a senior employee

can be very different. A junior employee may feel

that career opportunities and personal development

are very important as they have just started their

careers. The senior employee may in contrast feel

that they have finished their “career race” and

therefore rather prioritize having company benefits

like pension funds or becoming a mentor.

The hardest thing however is to ensure that the

working atmosphere is good. The individual has

many needs and there are many different variables

that can influence a person’s feeling of happiness

at work. Things like co-workers, managers, work-

load and surrounding environment affect a person’s

well-being. Our suggested solution is having a

company culture that allows open discussions

between different layers in the organization in

order to ensure employee satisfaction.

To show employees that they are developing and

progressing through the company, different titles

can be used to show rank and ensure recognition.

This can include junior and senior titles to accredit

amount of experience, but it is important that the

new title also comes with increased responsibilities

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or some other incentives for example higher salary.

If no other incentive is given there is a risk of the

title system becoming redundant. The titles could

also show the employees specialties and skills in

different areas. An example of an employment

where no title improvement at all exists is in a

Swedish government body. Their employees in a

certain department have the same title when they

start as when they retire, unless they have

progressed to becoming a manager.

I other words, the company could practice career

tracks. This is an effective way to formalize the

firm’s organization and the development of every

employee. Because of this the employee can see his

career like a project, composed by a series of steps,

represented by the roles the employee has to cover

in each part of the career path. Therefore it’s likely

that the employee’s involvement and productivity

will increase and consequently push to complete

the path and reach the project goal – the career

goal.

In addition people in the construction industry are

used to a project based working process, thus the

idea of integrating the two concepts of career and

project could be an effective approach.

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EXTRACTING

An important process for successful talent

management is knowledge sharing between people

within an organization. The difficulties are how to

manage skillful employees to share their

knowledge and experiences with the other

employees. The problem could be that the

employees think they are valued higher due to their

unique knowledge and therefore choose not to

share it. It is important to get the employees to

understand the value of sharing knowledge for their

own development and for the benefit of the

company.

Q5. How can knowledge sharing enhance

Talent management?

Our view is that in order to create an environment

that reacts positively and enthusiastically to sharing

valuable knowledge, some incentives have to be

incorporated into the organizations culture and

agenda.

First of all the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and

senior management have to promote the problem,

of not sharing knowledge, to the agenda,

acknowledge its importance and send incentives

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down the chain of the organization. These steps are

of crucial matter; if they fail this issue might not

get solved within the organizations cultural

behavior.

When the CEO and the senior managers have

raised the problem to the agenda, different

strategies could be implemented. This could

include trainee programs, mixed generations in the

project groups and after work activities to share

experiences. Depending on how positive the senior

staff is towards sharing valuable knowledge with

the new recruits, certain motivating approaches

might be of great advantage.

These incentives could for instance be:

Culture related: in some cultures and

organizations it is regarded prestigious to

have apprentices or trainees. If the senior

managers constantly work to set a good

example and highlight this issue as

important, that might influence the entire

organization.

Promotion related: if a senior staff

member wishes to advance further he or

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she has to become a mentor in a mentor

program.

Social related: creating environments

where senior and junior staff will meet

and interact on a daily basis. Planning and

designing the facilities and spaces so they

will maximize the opportunities for formal

as well as informal communication and

interactions amongst employees. They

should also encourage their staff to

engage in activities such as after works or

sports.

IT related: every company that already

has an Information System/IT

infrastructure, can create a question and

answer database between different

departments of the company. The

possibilities of asking questions will

improve the chance of learning faster than

usual. It can also improve the knowledge

sharing between departments from

different countries. Another aspect to

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consider is for all divisions of the

company to have questions and answers

section. It makes it easier for the junior

staff to learn basic processes and rules of

the company, meaning that this learning

process is shortened.

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IMPLICATIONS

Q6. What are the advantages with Talent

management?

One of the main focus areas of talent management

is attracting and recruiting talents to a company

with the purpose to capture human capital that can

contribute to financial growth. By having a well-

defined strategy the organization can provide

channels and tools that enhance the search for new

employees.

Beside finding and attracting, talent management

also involves making the present organization more

efficient by utilizing the staff and their competence

i.e. putting the right people on the right job. As

stated in the first question, "Q1.What is talent and

what is talent management?” a talent can only

reach its full potential when assigned a task for

which the individual have a special aptitude.

Hereby above stated utilization part is important to

consider.

We believe that in combining above-mentioned

aspects the companies will attain higher

productivity and organizational growth.

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This statement has been shown as a result of a

study made by the Hackett Group where companies

working with talent management reported up to 20

% higher profitability than other companies that do

not emphasize the approach. (Dataföreningens

kompetens, 2011) Even though the study did not

solely represent the construction industry or

exclusively the Swedish market, we believe that it

is an indicator that can be translated in to the

Swedish construction industry.

In addition we believe that the advantages with

talent management do not only facilitate the

financial growth in an organization, but could also

improve the working environment and the

employee satisfaction. By providing the

possibilities for personal development and the

ability to move upwards in the organizational

hierarchy, the employees will feel appreciated and

respected.

By having high employee satisfaction a company

could expect lower employee turnover, which

results in longer and better relationships among the

employees and with the clients. A good

relationship between the employee and client is a

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valuable factor for companies. This enhances the

work process, which in the end benefits the

business.

Q7. What are the possible problems with

Talent management?

A major issue with talent management is that it is

hard to evaluate the effects of the performance. It is

hard to measure the individuals’ performances and

how it is connected to the overall profitability of

the company. In other words, since the process of

working with talent management is both costly and

time consuming, companies investing in it want to

gain from their investment. As a result of this

problem, we believe that the construction industry

have been skeptical to implementing talent

management. Therefore, it will be crucial for

companies to work towards improving the

strategies and tools of how to measure the effects

of talent management.

A possible factor that can explain why it is hard to

measure the effects of talent management is the

lack of well-defined strategies of how to work with

the concept. In a study from Bersin & Associates,

only 5 % of 975 companies working with talent

management had a well-defined strategy that could

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help them evaluate the effects of the outcome.

(Stardust Consulting, 2011)

We believe that another risk could be that

companies implementing talent management

misinterpret the concept in putting too much focus

in attracting and finding new talents. Hence,

putting more focus on recruiting than utilizing

already employed individuals. This could

eventually lead to low employee satisfaction.

In contradiction, one argument is that a higher

employee turnover is essential in order to meet the

talents’ ambitions to develop and grow within the

organization. (Nordling, Granath, 2009) We do not

agree with this, and believe that this rather is a

result of the misinterpretation of the talent

management concept. We therefore find it

important to have the above mentioned reasoning

in mind when establishing a talent management

structure within the company.

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Conclusion

When we started to analyze the subject of talent

management, we realized that it is putting high

emphasis on human capital rather than structural

capital. That is, how to manage new recruits and

people already working within a company and

what kind of strategies that can contribute to

having a successful business. Our insight in the

subject of talent management developed the FAME

model, which divides the process into four stages:

Finding, Attracting, Managing and Extracting. By

answering relevant questions to each stage we went

into detail describing, analyzing and finally

deriving conclusions.

Based on our impressions from seminar dialogues,

lectures, literature and questionnaires we were able

to reflect upon the consequences of talent

management. It became obvious that the subject of

talent management is new for the construction

industry in Sweden. Therefore it is hard to say that

construction companies have a well-defined

strategy of how to implement talent management.

This could be due to the characteristics of the

construction industry being reluctant to new ideas.

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Also, due to doubts about the ability to measure the

outcomes of talent management practice.

We believe that as long as there is consistency

between the company objectives and the purpose of

talent management, it is going to add value to the

company in the long run. Values added in the long

term can be having a more robust knowledge

management implementation with the use of tools

such as internships, apprenticeships, mentoring

programs and IT. It will also add value by having

a more effective business process through

increased productivity and a more collaborative

working atmosphere that creates trust among

employees and customers.

Finally, we believe that the advantages of having

an effective human capital management system

outweigh the disadvantage. Talent management is

therefore a necessary process tool for the

construction industry to implement.

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Appendix 1

Number of participants: 70

Average age: 24.96

Gender distribution: 61.4% Male 38.6%

Female

A bar chart illustrating the average score that each

aspect was awarded in the survey

Note: The lower the score, the more important the

aspect was considered.

0

2

4

6

8

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Appendix 2

Table 1. This shows the number of times an aspect

was chosen as the first, second, third, eight, ninth

or tenth choice.

Nr.

of

1’s

Nr.

of

2’s

Nr.

of

3’s

Nr.

of

8’s

Nr.

of

9’s

Nr.

of

10’s

High salary 8 16 13 2 0 0

Career

opportunities

16 8 9 0 4 3

Personal

Development

14 18 7 0 1 4

A mentoring

organizational

structure

5 4 7 7 7 13

Trainee

programs and

other personnel

training

2 3 3 16 13 4

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Attractive

company profile

3 4 7 14 15 11

Company

benefits

1 6 3 6 10 9

Location of

worksite

5 2 11 12 9 6

Possibilities to

work

internationally

3 2 6 8 8 19

Good co-

workers and

atmosphere

13 7 4 5 3 1

Table 2. This shows the number of times an aspect

was chosen as a top or bottom three choices.

Nr. of top

3’s

Nr. of bottom

3’s

High salary 37 2

Career opportunities 33 7

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Personal Development 39 5

A mentoring organizational

structure

16 27

Trainee programs and other

personnel training

8 33

Attractive company profile 14 40

Company benefits 10 25

Location of worksite 18 27

Possibilities to work

internationally

11 35

Good co-workers and

atmosphere

24 9

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References

Abdulai, D. N., 2009. Managing and retaining

knowledge workers in a hypercompetitive era.

(Electronic) Available at:

http://www.leader.co.za/infocentrearticle.aspx

?s=5&c=15&a=1075&p=2, 09.10.2011

Buckingham, M., Coffman, C. W, 2009. How

Great Managers Define Talent. (Electronic)

Available at:

http://gmj.gallup.com/content/532/how-great-

managers-define-talent.aspx, 09.12.2011

Dataföreningens kompetens, 2011. Talent

Management och entreprenörskap.

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http://www.dfkompetens.se/trendspaning/vec

kans-entreprenorskap/2011-04-

04_agptw/index.xml, 2011-09-28

Lockwood, N. R., 2006. Talent Management:

Driver for Organizational Success' (SHRM

Research Quarterly 2006). (Electronic)

Available at:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is

_6_51/ai_n26909340/, 09.12.2011

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Nordling, C., Granath, A., (2009). Talent

Management, the right people- in the right

jobs- at the right time. Thesis in sociology

and social psychology from Örebro

University.

StardustConsultning, 2011. Varför Talent

Management? (Electronic) Available at:

http://www.stardustconsulting.se/varfor-

talent-management/, 2011-09-28

Taleo Research, 2011. What is Talent

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http://www.taleo.com/researcharticle/what-

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