Up to the top 5 percent of the managerial employees in a company who have real potential to grow into the senior management are covered under the talent management program. These are performers and therefore the company wants to put special spotlight on them. So by definition, talent need not necessarily be from a Premier institute, need not be only from the top management. Talent could be across levels, any background, but as long as the person exhibits the characteristics of a leader, performer and a doer that is the true definition of talent.

In the Global Talent Management and Rewards Study, 2012-2013 conducted by Towers Watson, a leading global professional services company in people, risk and financial management, India ranks no. 1 in terms of facing retention challenges of every category of employees. According to the survey, retention drivers viewed by employee and employer were similar. Particularly in India, both view base pay and career advancement opportunities as the keydrivers followed closely by convenience of work location and learning and development opportunities. Around 63 percent Indian employers felt that career advancement opportunities for most of the employees have improved over the past 12 months. Close to 41 percent of Indian employers are of the opinion that attrition levels have dipped overthe past 12 months as compared to a global average of 19 percent and an Asia Pacific average of 25 percent attrition. This clearly shows the direct link between improvement in career advancement opportunities and retention of employees and that is why talent management becomes extremely critical.

What is Talent Management?

Typically, what you mean by talent management is, now that talent has come in, leadership job is to ensure that you do not put any obstacles in the way of their performance and give them the resources and support for them to do their job extremely well and in turn benefit the company. So talent management is a process by which you are engaging with the identified talent to give them the environment for them to perform and grow. This will include many things you do in Talent Management. For example, you as talent can meet CEO periodically , you could work as an Executive Assistant with CEO for a month or an year, you could be asked to be a part of the next 10 years business plan task force of the company. Some of you could be sent abroad on special projects, or receive special compensation structures like retention bonus. Career planning is very important for that target group.

When you do a career planning or career growth, the most important thing is that the person also has to grow internally. This means that the person might be extremely good at his current job but he may not be ready for the next role. At all points of time, the responsibility of the HR department is to make sure that this talent group are on top of the current job and are also getting prepared for the next job. In a typical talent development process, you give many inputs to the person training inputs, project inputs, assignment inputs and so on. This helps a person to grow. Broadly, there are three or four components in talent development. First is long-term training you can send him for a 1 year or 6 months training program. Second, is a short-term program typically a management development program. Third are short-term assignments, for example there is a new project being launched and you co-opt in to the launch team or you could be transferred to variety of roles. Another good example is the IAS - Indian Administrative Services they develop people through very calculated postings. These postings are associated with learnings and exposure.Hence, there are multiple instruments you can use in the Talent Development process and training is one aspect of the same.