Talent Management
Individual Paper #2
Even as organizations become more strategic in how they manage talent, they remain faced with
making thoughtful decisions regarding which talent is necessary to achieve today’s objectives and
the kind of talent that will be necessary for meeting tomorrow’s challenges. Today, forward looking
organizations consider talent an investment not a cost. However, funding and resources should
always be managed efficiently and effectively and will never be unlimited. Trade off decisions and
return on investment regarding human capital will always be necessary and important. Estimating
talent needs, identifying and sourcing critical talent populations, creating a credible leadership
pipeline, developing talent and integrating the key elements of talent management, is recognized
as a source of strong and sustained competitive advantage.
This paper is an opportunity for you to leverage and apply class discussions, readings, videos, and
your own experience and learnings; with a focus on the key areas of managing talent covered in
the second half of the course. This assignment asks you to respond to a series of questions and
topic areas that will require you to synthesize, integrate learnings and then express your own point
of view and include your rationale. Although there are no right answers, what is expected and
required is well-developed, specific, complete and thoughtful responses.
The talent management elements that your paper will cover include:
● Identifying and managing talent populations that are key to business/organization performance
and success.
● Building and maintaining a leadership pipeline.
● Strategic workforce planning including forging strong connections to the business/organization
strategy and objectives and addressing talent requirements.
● Developing talent.
● Building and sustaining an integrated talent management approach.
● Increasing the chances that a talent management approach will be future proof.
● Your brief assessment of how your current organization, or an organization that you recently
worked for, manages each of these elements.
● Your individual paper #2 is due on Sunday, April 28, 2024 by 11:59 pm.
Here are the specific focus areas and questions for each of the above elements that require a
response:
1. Identifying and managing talent populations that are key to business/organization
performance and success
● What is your view/perspective regarding what organizations should and can do regarding
focusing on specific population segments of talent?
● What special populations would you identify and focus on and why? How would you identify
and manage these populations?
● What special programs would you develop and introduce to retain and develop these
populations?
2. Building and maintaining a leadership pipeline
● What are the key elements of establishing and maintaining an effective succession
planning process/program and building a credible leadership pipeline?
● What are the key challenges of building and maintaining a leadership pipeline and how can
you mitigate these challenges?
● What other elements/parts of talent management would you connect to succession
planning and the leadership pipeline? Provide your rationale.
● How would you explain to senior leaders the importance of having a strong succession
planning process and a leadership pipeline?
3. Strategic workforce planning (SWP) including forging strong connections to the
business/organization strategy and objectives and addressing talent requirements
● How would you define strategic workforce planning? What are the typical steps of SWP?
● Why is it important and what role does it play in an organization’s success?
● What is necessary for SWP to be effective and valuable?
● What are the challenges associated with utilizing SWP? How would you mitigate these
challenges?
4. Developing talent
● How would you describe your approach to developing talent? What are the key elements of
talent development?
● What do you believe is the role/responsibility of the organization, leaders/managers and
employees in development?
● If you were the head of talent development, how would you distribute your budget
regarding development approaches, processes and programs?
● How would you measure the impact/effectiveness/ROI of talent development processes
and programs?
5. Building and sustaining an integrated talent management approach
● Define integrated talent management; what does it mean to you both as a concept and in
practice? What should be integrated? Integrated to what?
● How would you explain to the senior leaders why having an integrated approach to talent
management is important?
● How do you know if an organization’s approach to managing talent is integrated?
● What would help maintain an integrated approach to managing talent and why?
6. Increasing the chances that a talent management approach will be future proof
● What are the most likely key threats, challenges and opportunities to managing talent in the
future? Be specific.
● What are your recommendations to ensure that an approach to managing talent will be
able to anticipate and respond to these future threats, challenges and opportunities?
7. Your brief assessment of how your current organization, or an organization that you
recently worked for, manages each of these elements.
● For each of the above six elements, in a few paragraphs, assess the effectiveness of how
this element is managed and include your rationale.
Individual Paper Format
●
The paper should be from 8 -10 pages.
● APA format.
● Arial 11-point and double-spaced.
●
The paper should include at least 8 robust references from class content including
readings, videos and class materials, along with your research and use of other external
references and sources from respected publications. For example: peer-reviewed journal
articles, business publications such as the Harvard Business Review, etc.). Although you
may use sources such as the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), Wall
Street Journal, etc., you are also expected to go beyond such sources of non-peer
reviewed, “newsy” information and white papers.
● Sources should be cited using full APA style citations.
Refer to the Revised Rubric for Individual Paper #2 for guidance regarding achievement criteria
levels/points.
