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views on
Talent
Management
Björk Löf, Marcus
Virta, Damon
Westpahl, Gustav
et.al.
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
1
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.
2
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
3
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
4
CONCLUSION ......................................................... 36
APPENDIX 1 ............................................................ 38
APPENDIX 2 ............................................................ 39
REFERENCES ......................................................... 42
5
Introduction
This publication gives a reflective view on Talent
Management within the construction industry in
Sweden.
6
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.
7
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.
8
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
9
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.
10
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
11
excellent performance, of course, is finding the
match between your talents and your role “.
12
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.
13
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.
14
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.
15
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.
16
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.
17
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.
18
student. From class discussions ten different
aspects arose that we would consider when
choosing an employer.
1. High salary
2. Personal development
3. Career opportunities
19
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
20
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.
21
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.
22
company to award their employees, is something
appreciated by students.
23
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.
24
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.
25
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.
26
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.
27
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.
28
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.
29
she has to become a mentor in a mentor
program.
30
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.
31
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.
32
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.
33
valuable factor for companies. This enhances the
work process, which in the end benefits the
business.
34
help them evaluate the effects of the outcome.
(Stardust Consulting, 2011)
35
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.
36
Also, due to doubts about the ability to measure the
outcomes of talent management practice.
37
Appendix 1
Number of participants: 70
Average age: 24.96
Gender distribution: 61.4% Male 38.6%
Female
8
6
4
2
0
38
Appendix 2
Table 1. This shows the number of times an aspect
was chosen as the first, second, third, eight, ninth
or tenth choice.
High salary 8 16 13 2 0 0
Career 16 8 9 0 4 3
opportunities
Personal 14 18 7 0 1 4
Development
A mentoring 5 4 7 7 7 13
organizational
structure
Trainee 2 3 3 16 13 4
programs and
other personnel
training
39
Attractive 3 4 7 14 15 11
company profile
Company 1 6 3 6 10 9
benefits
Location of 5 2 11 12 9 6
worksite
Possibilities to 3 2 6 8 8 19
work
internationally
Good co- 13 7 4 5 3 1
workers and
atmosphere
High salary 37 2
Career opportunities 33 7
40
Personal Development 39 5
A mentoring organizational 16 27
structure
Company benefits 10 25
Location of worksite 18 27
Possibilities to work 11 35
internationally
41
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
42
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.
43