Functional Expertise Talent Management and Benchmarking Research Paper

Benchmarking

Discuss the importance of aligning human resource processes with business strategy.

HR strategy has to align with business strategy in order to enable the growth of a business. This in turn allows employee performance to improve, lowering the overall cost of doing business. When employee performance is decreased, this may cost the organization more in turnover, absenteeism, and other expenses associated with dissatisfaction or inefficient operations. HR strategy is not just about employee satisfaction however; it is also about aligning employee goals with organizational goals so the employees can feel they are supporting the organization as much as the organization supports them. Aligning HR strategy and business strategy is a complex process that involves communication, collaboration and planning. One of the ways of doing this is by benchmarking, surveying and assessing employee needs, organizational needs, and the needs of the customers, internal and external, that the organization services. Measuring past performance with present performance, and assessing potential future performance can also provide an indication of how well the company may do if changes are implemented.

Discuss how the firm used benchmarking to determine the performance standards for leadership, client-facing and specialty/support functions.

Benchmarking allows a company to compare their practices to other business practices in the industry to determine the best course of action to follow (Boxwell 1994). In this case the company can determine the best performance standards for leadership, client-facing and specialty support functions. With regard to client-facing, the CTO used the result profile as a reference document "driving individual performance planning and review discussions." A goal setting approach was selected so individual role specificity could be provided to enable general performance standards by level (p. 237). This resulted in differentiation of job categories within each leadership level including managing of self or individual contributor level for administrative support positions for example, and the management of others level for supervisors.In this case, the company also administered a biannual staff climate survey measuring operating culture among thirteen dimensions including categories like "teamwork, organizational culture, strategic planning, leadership, and long-term focus." These measures helped management outline important metrics for assessing the effectiveness of the company at the point of new strategic development and the effectiveness of the human resources management team at the point where strategic interventions were about to be developed. The chief officers of the company can use this information to plan and then go back and see how effective new strategies are when implemented at a later date.

Identify and explain three objectives of the talent management system including one from each category of operations, customer, and financial objectives.

Talent management is typically aimed at enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of individual and organizational performance. This means talent management must align with organizational and individual goals. Thus, a talent manager should be effective at communicating organizational goals with employees so they can streamline processes.

Three objectives of the talent management system included: (1) align with leadership pipeline principles at the level of operations (2) to clarify and prioritize job expectations and structure development discussions on a "more specific, quantifiable work requirements basis for different job levels from a customer-based approach, which differed from the competency based approach; this also embraced the prominent objective of serving and growing clients and cultivating new client prospects which was a prominent part of the operating vocabulary and (3) in the process of streamlining the system and making the performance review available online, improving morale and….....