To sustain in the highly competitive market, every company requires highly innovative, talented, knowledgeable work force who can make significant contributions to the company’s productivity. The ‘human inventory’ has to be well dealt to avoid unnecessary cost to the company. The success of talent management lies in its ability to have the right candidate to the right job at the right time.

The human resource management has to ensure that the company is provided with the right amount of employees who can guarantee an uninterrupted flow of work. To prevent the time lag at every stage it, requires the human resource manager to maintain the people with the skills suited for the job at the requisite time. A good strategy on human resources must be capable of identifying the future people requirement, their expected skills, and the period of service. Every year the companies approach the colleges for the regular intake of freshers from the colleges. Past experience can reveal the success ratio of the recruitments made so far. For instance all the students who have been selected will not turn up on the day of joining on account of various reasons. A check on the past counts can help to throw light into the number of people who might join the organisation. A major hit to these figures was experienced after the 9/11 when the company had to delay its appointments from a few months to a year on account of its impact on the economy. In other cases the companies appoint basic graduates who are then given training and education through the company’s learning centres. Wipro, for instance, has WASE program (Wipro Academy of Software Excellence) wherein the graduates in science and commerce are given the opportunity to pursue MS along with taking an active part in the actual business operations. The lateral recruitment is another approach adopted by the company where it can put the employees to work with immediate effect.

Once the manpower has been acquired, the next step involved is to ensure that the people are put into the right job. Most companies keep track of the opportunities and the available resources in the company intranet. If there is an immediate need for skill, the project manager checks out the intranet for the availability of employees who can be appointed to the project with immediate effect. The first preference will be given to employees who are on “bench” who were otherwise put in some in-house project until a vacancy arrives. The “bench” might be a free pool or project based. When there is not much employees in the “bench” or if the manager needs specialised skill which is otherwise unavailable, they might resort to lateral hiring or approach subcontractors for getting the work done. Most companies keep a buffer to meet the contingencies that arise on account of the resignation of a key employee in the project. In certain cases, when there is a great demand for skills in a specialised field, large scale enterprises go for acquisitions of small companies who are experts in the field.

Similarly, the company has to take pains to retain the key players within the organisation as the loss of them leads to unnecessary cost in the form of breakage of work, recruitment and training of new recruits, etc. To identify the key players, most companies evaluate the performance appraisal reports and place them in a bin. They will be provided with better compensation, ESOPs, and other benefits to make them continue providing their expertise to the company.

Managing the talent in any organisation thus, requires a conscious and continuous effort.