Human Resources

Talent development for top leaders: three HR initiatives for competitive advantage

Milton Mayfield, Jacqueline Mayfield and Cassandra Wheeler

Milton Mayfield and Jacqueline Mayfield are Professors of Management, both at Division of International Business and Technology Studies, Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas, USA. Cassandra Wheeler is Executive Director at the Office of Career Services, Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas, USA.

The importance of strategic human resource in organizational development

Top leaders in today’s globally turbulent environment must continually re-align and develop their organizations to achieve and sustain competitive advantage (those unique organization strengths which are inimitable). And to drive these changes, top leaders need to know if their resources – especially their employees – are capable of attaining such innovation. One such major knowledge source that is readily available to facilitate top organizational leaders in this ongoing quest is their human resource (HR) function.

Quality HR teams have vital knowledge easily available and can act on implementing needed personnel selection, development and training which promote competitive advantage. Too often, leaders ignore employee knowledge and aptitudes that are championed by their organization’s HR function – knowledge that should be integrated into a dynamic competitive strategy. In short, HR is an untapped wellspring of strong skills, knowledge and abilities that becomes more valuable when strategically integrated into all major organizational plans (Cascio, 2010). It is also ironic that HR contributions are often downplayed when numerous, reputable CEO surveys cite employee excellence as a top priority.

While there are diverse paths in which HR knowledge can be integrated with strategic vision, planning and implementation for competitive advantage, this manuscript focuses on three main avenues: talent inventories, workforce planning and training and development. These areas are all relevant for enhancing competitive advantage through organizational development processes. Such initiatives also serve as organizational feedback loops aiding the overall learning process (Mayfield, 2010). These three paths to competitive advantage through talent are presented graphically in Figure 1.

Talent inventories

Talent inventories coordinate valuable knowledge about the employee capabilities required to fulfill strategic objectives. To successfully implement a strategic plan, top leaders must ensure that organizational members have the requisite skills. An effective human resource function will identify and compile such organizational abilities as well as audit and keep track of skill development.

Talent inventories also accumulate information on employee aptitudes and interests for further development. For example, in a global enterprise an already bilingual employee may well have the proclivity to learn a new language that is dominant in a potential new market. Similarly, someone who programs code well may be a high potential candidate for a new information technology platform.

Furthermore, talent inventories can be designed to flag gaps in knowledge, skills and abilities that need to be addressed for strategic objective attainment. As a consequence,

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talent inventories should be coordinated with recruitment, selection, workforce planning and training and development.

Workforce planning

Workforce planning – setting strategies and goals for shaping the future organizational workforce – is a vital component of competitive advantage. This process can rectify talent gaps (as identified through talent inventories) through appropriate adjustments so that the available workforce can meet current and future strategic challenges. Such adjustments impact recruitment, selection, development, retention, reward and internal promotion and transfer policies. Also, workforce fluctuations (adjustments such as talent availability, departures and retirements) can be closely monitored to ensure available talent.

Case in point, HR can alert top leaders to turnover issues. High turnover is a warning sign of organizational problems. Not only are replacement costs high, but high turnover often signifies a weak culture which translates into lower organizational performance and employee morale. While some departures are functional, overall turnover – especially among talented workers – is a red flag that the people are not serving as a competitive advantage. In particular, increased turnover during or after a major change signals change resistance and impediments to successful implementation.

Obviously, strategic integration of this HR function is vital. In addition, workforce planning can assess the metrics that identify the value that people contribute to organizational performance. For example, the added value of a position to organizational performance should also be identified in the workforce planning process.

Training and development

Training and development is an especially vital HR function for implementing a top leader’s strategic change plan (Speculand, 2006). Using such methods as the previously discussed talent inventories, HR can check for gaps between available employee skills/aptitudes and those needed to make a successful organizational innovations/changes. Where gaps are

Figure 1 Three major human resource initiatives that provide useful knowledge and support for strategic competitive advantage through employees

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identified, HR can develop appropriate training programs and monitor to ensure that the skill development programs are operating successfully, especially in terms of learning transfer. Relatedly, credibly management research asserts that most employees place high value on skills development which can be used on the job. In fact, offering such training is a potential deterrent to costly turnover.

While other HR functions contribute additional benefits, these three play critical roles in determining the probable success of needed organizational change. In addition, these HR talent development pillars can be monitored to serve as a feedback loop for effective organizational innovation and change. This feedback loop also creates opportunities for better integrating HR at a strategic level and guides top leaders to more deeply understand their organizations. A graphical representation of this feedback loop is presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2 A graphical representation of the feedback loop in the strategic human resources talent development process

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Suggestions for incorporating talent development into top leader decisions

This manuscript has put forth robust, convincing reasons for why the three talent development HR functions of talent inventories, workforce planning and training/development should be incorporated into strategic organizational change and innovation initiatives to achieve competitive advantage. In this concluding section, we will provide some tangible suggestions for such integration. First, the most fundamental step is to create an organizational climate that perceives HR as a core factor in strategic planning and resultantly integrates HR into strategic initiatives. This inclusion is embodied by having the chief HR officer as an active member of the top leadership team.

From a technological perspective, a well-developed human resource information system (HRIS) can facilitate the three HR pillars and provide vital information to top leaders. HRIS can also be used to make projections about future HR changes (Mayfield et al., 2008). Consonantly, once HR leaders have identified key metrics, an HR dashboard can be developed so that a top leader has access to critical personal data in a fashion parallel to the current practice of top leaders’ consultation of financial and inventory dashboards.

Of course, it goes without saying that these HR key metrics are tied to strategic vision and also reflect salient employee attitudes and behaviors through effective survey taking and program evaluations. Notably, the organizational reward system must reinforce HR program goals. When these proceeding steps are taken, an organization is much better primed to attain competitive advantage through the value of its people.

References

Cascio, W.F. (2010), Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, Boston, MA.

Mayfield, M. (2010), “Tacit knowledge sharing: techniques for putting a powerful tool in practice”, Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 24-26.

Mayfield, M., Mayfield, J. and Lunce, S. (2008), “Increasing tacit knowledge sharing with an HRIS”, Encyclopedia of human resources information systems: Challenges in e-HRM, p. 7.

Speculand, R. (2006), “Strategy implementation: we got the people factor wrong!: how to lead your saboteurs, groupies, double agents and mavericks”, Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 34-37. doi: http://dx.doi.org.library.tamiu.edu:2048/10.1108/09670730610690376

Corresponding author

Milton Mayfield can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Keywords: Strategy, Human resources, Top leaders

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