Analyzing the importance of talent management

Abstract

While the competition in business environment is constantly increasing, new ways in creating competitive advantage is needed. Yet companies can gain competitive advantage in various ways, managing employees and their talent has been recognized to be one key asset in this never-ending competition. Additionally, talent management practices have been increased to respond many issues and changes in workplaces. The key problem is that as the talent has be-come an engaging source of competitive advantage, more companies are facing the lack of needed talent and finds it hard to attract, manage, develop and retain talented employees. In fact, one of the biggest reasons why employees are leaving the company is the lack of a workable talent management system which leads to the feeling that there cannot happen any self-development during employment.

This thesis was a case study made in a cooperation with a case company. The objective of this thesis was to research talent management actions inside the case company and find out whether the case company is utilizing talent management currently and how the possible current talent management processes could be improved in order to meet future needs

The study was conducted with qualitative research method via semi-structured interviews. Al-together 11 employees were interviewed. The findings showed how remarkable the workable talent management system could be, yet how difficult it is to execute. Additionally, what was a crucial finding was the lack of clear talent management processes inside the case company. This was due to the lack of clear talent strategy and transparent processes.