People deployment is a very strategic issue in global business. The ability of organization to deploy right people at the right job on right location and right time is gaining attention of global firm executives. Organizations having well placed people development programs and talent management process often complaint that they struggle filling key positions around the globe which put constraints on business growth. Effective deployment strategies can provide solution to these problems.
Having right people at the right job improves business growth especially developing business in new regions, moving into new markets. Deployment of persons with potential skill to take advantage of arriving opportunities is competitive advantage in such situations. (Douglas A. Ready D. A & Conger J.A 2007) in their article ‘Make Your Company a Talent Factory’ argues that companies have been forced to pass on hundreds of millions of dollars of new business because they didn’t have the talent with vision to see arising opportunities and develop growth strategies to make it happen. The authors presented examples from London based construction firm who lost the opportunities worth millions of euro’s because the company was dependent upon few key talents which were already engaged in many projects, and thus ran out of resources for deployment of people for new business. As they say ‘The firm’s growth strategy hinged on these projects, but the company had failed to groom people to lead them.’ (Douglas A. Ready D. A & Conger J.A 2007).
Deploying talent by developing inside talent with in organization eases burden on key personnel of the company and diverts the attention of talented employees towards new business opportunities enabling business growth. This strategy is successful way of transferring and building leadership skills of future employees. In other words succession planning for top CEO’s and executives.
The deployment is to ensure people are equipped with the right skills at the right moment and connected to the appropriate resources to achieve the best results. New technologies in information technology and advanced talent management systems makes this job easier by locating talent where ever in the globe they are stationed and provide solution to maximize talent utilization and empower their employees to drive corporate effectiveness more rapidly to achieve a new level of impact on the business and success of their company.
To conclude we can say that organization’s ability to develop goal-setting business strategy and ensuring efficient collaboration and communication among employees and managers world wide is the key to successful and strategic deployment of organizations. The aim is to gain competitive advantage by leveraging its talent by placing right people for the right job at right location and time is need of future success in business growth.
Organizational Context
Asia Petroleum limited (APL) is the owner and operator of an 80 KM furnace oil pipeline providing Fuel oil to Pakistan’s largest Power plant HUBCO. Incorporated in 1995, APL is a joint venture of four firms Pakistan State Oil Company (PSO), Asia Infrastructure Ltd of Hong Kong (AIL), VECO USA and Independent Petroleum Group (IPG) of Kuwait. The company is based at Karachi with its head office in the city and pumping station at Pipri 50 KM away from the city. The pumping station is equipped with the state of the art SCADA system in the control room and having strength of 90 employees. (The organization chart is attached in appendix A). The annual turn over of the company is £14 million approximately. The board of governors constitutes representatives of the share holders with chairman from Asia Infrastructure Ltd and managing director from PSO. The state owned company PSO holds 49% shares and remaining 51% shares are owned by AIL, IPG and VECO. Besides owners Lenders also have a representative observer in the board of directors. The company is responsible for operations and management of the pipeline with an annual budget of £ 1 million O&M cost.
The problems at Asia Petroleum Limited
The company faces reoccurring problems in retention of its key skilled workers and engineers at the head office and pumping station.
During communications with general manager technical of APL, he showed his growing concerns about exit of key skilled professionals leaving the organization and joining other firms. He said people now a days do not signup job for life, their priorities are changing, I don’t blame them since every person have the right to opt for best. The major problem is when people are leaving they are leaving along with their subordinates and coworkers. That is a big problem for us, if an entire department is leaving; there is something wrong with organization itself. People are our key resources and our service heavily depends upon their availability. We need to consider our weakness and strengths and revise our retention strategies since we are a small organization with limited resources compared to global firms and multinationals,
References:
Heskett J.L., Jones T.O., Loveman G. W., Sasser Jr W.E., Schlesinger L. A., Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work Harvard Business Review, Mar-Apr 1994, Pg 164 - 174
(Armstrong M, 2006) ‘A Hand book of Human Resource Management Practice’ (Kogan Page 2006)
(Duttagupta R, 2005) Identifying and managing your assets: talent management Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP
Jeff Brown and Lindy Williams, “The 21st Century Work Force: Implications for HR,” in Human Resources in the 21st Century, (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2003) edited by Marc Effron, Robert Gandosy, and Marshall Goldsmith
Goffee R. and Jones G. 2007, ‘Leading clever people’ Harvard Business Review, June 2007
(Luecke R, 2002) ‘Harvard Business Essentials: Guide to Hiring and Keeping the Best People’ Harvard Press 2002
Michaels, E., Handfield-Jones, H., & Axelrod, B. 2001, The war for talent, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston.
Sartain, L. (2003). Getting Extraordinary Results from Ordinary People. In: Effron M, Gandossy R, Goldsmith M Human Resources in the 21st Century. USA: John Wiley & Sons, INC. 3-9. (Smith B, 1999) Topgrading In: Hiring and keeping the best. USA Harvard University Press 2002 p12
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Talent’ European Management Journal Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 422–430, 1999 Elsevier Science
Chapter 8 Methodology
In the previous chapter, a literature review was conducted on the relevant research associated with talent management concepts and process. This chapter presents the research questions and prepositions, the operational definitions of the constructs, and the methodology and instruments to be utilized in collection of data. The research called for both qualitative and quantitative methods for data gathering.
The selection of research approach is linked to research philosophy. Saunders argues that research philosophy is aimed at development of knowledge and nature of that the knowledge. The research philosophy reflects our thinking and important assumptions about the way in which we view the world. There are three major ways of thinking about research philosophy: epistemology, ontology and axiology. We will briefly introduce each of these in the next
The research onion Source: Saunders
Saunders defines “Epistemology as representation of acceptable knowledge in the field of study. Epistemology has two perspectives; the positivist position and Interpretivist position. Positivism defends scientific approach to the study of social reality and develops law-like generalization similar to those applied in the field physical and natural sciences. Positivist approach is based on highly structured methodology to facilitate replication and generalization (Gill and Johnson, 2002)” (cited in Saunders 2003). It formulates hypothesis which could be tested to answer a question. This approach concentrates on facts and looks for causality and fundamental laws.
The role of researcher is to gather evidence; record how often occurrence of certain pattern appears repeatedly, find relationship in data and test the theories whether evidence from data advocates or contradicts the theory. This leads to two main choices deduction and induction. In Induction the data is first collected and analyzed and then theory is developed on footing of analytics of data. Whereas in deduction the theory is first developed, and then tested on the basis of collected data. The positivism approach requires large samples of data to form a generalized consensus and is used to define big picture with little details. Positivism adapts deductive approach to research and considers structured and independent data collection tools such as structured interviews with standardized questions. Studies show that researchers adopt a mixture of positivist and interpretivist position while conducting business and management related research.
Van Maanen (1983), Bogdan and Taylor (1975) and Gummesson (1991) argues that although positivism is commonly associated with a quantitative approach to data generation and collection, qualitative techniques tend to dominate in the interpretivist approach. Quantitative methodology utilizes the deductive logic of natural sciences. The main strengths of quantitative techniques are that they can provide wide coverage of the range in solutions, are fast and economical to conduct and are relevant where they are derived from large samples of data. Furthermore quantitative data can be applied more efficiently for testing the hypotheses, but may miss contextual detail. Researcher can remain objectively separated from the subject matter. Whereas in qualitative data gathering researcher tends to become subjectively immersed in the subject matter. The Researcher is the data gathering instrument. The weakness of quantitative
methods lies mainly in their failure to address underlying meanings. They are not very powerful in understanding process or the significance that people attach to actions. Qualitative methods are not helpful in generating theories and tend to be inflexible and artificial. Quantitative methods are objective and are mostly based on surveys and questionnaires. Whereas qualitative data is in the form of words, pictures or objects. Qualitative data is more 'rich', time consuming, and less able to be generalized, moreover the design emerges as the study unfolds. ‘Subjective - individuals’ interpretation of events is important, e.g., uses participant observation, in-depth interviews etc.
Due to these reasons we will be using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods for data collection.
Having a research philosophy helps in building a research design that is it helps in gathering evidence: what kind of evidence and from where. It also helps the researcher to interpret the gathered evidence and provide answer to basic research question. (Easterby-smith 2002) argues that having a research philosophy is very helpful in selection of a research design.
The information gained from existing research on talent management helped in identifying some primary research questions. For instance questions on employee job satisfaction, remuneration, work environment, motivation, career growth etc… are among the related questions asked by many surveyors and researchers in this field. Similarly researchers found in-depth interview of line managers, executives, CEO’s useful in gathering information to form a basis for analyzing business ground reality to theoretical findings.
Yin (1994) proposed it is always a good start research design by beginning it with a statement outlining research question and preposition if any. Our main focus of research revolves around the following research questions for this study:
1. Are managers able to precisely identify the processes, skills, assets and technologies essential to successfully implanting a talent management process in their organization?
2. What are the major areas of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the employees of Asia Petroleum limited?
3. What are the employee value proposition factors for the employees of the Asia petroleum Limited. (The most demanding element which employee values for example base pay, healthcare benefits, share option, development or job security)
The propositions are:
a) Managers believe that talent management process is a way to get the competitive advantage.
b) Employees understand that talent management is the responsibility of entire members of the organization.
c) Managers and employees have clearly understood core elements of talent management process.
d) Management has clear understanding of employee value propositions.
Once we have reached an agreement on research questions and prepositions, we will move to next step of research methods. We have selected case study method as suggested by (Yin, 1994) who proposes that case studies are the preferred method of investigation because it uses a vide variety of evidence documents, arti-crafts, interviews, observations and questionnaires. Furthermore case study provides a basis of application of findings of previously known knowledge. Case study research is particularly useful in understanding of a complex issue or object and extends and strengthens what is already known from the previous research. Case studies are helpful in detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of events or conditions and
their correlation. Case study research method can be applied to a variety of disciplines particularly social sciences. It is mostly useful in examining contemporary real-life situations and provides the basis for the application of ideas and extension of methods. (Yin, 1984) proposes case study method for investigation of empirical inquiry of a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident and where there are multiple sources of evidence.
According to (May 2001) philosophical assumptions are mostly based on realism. ( Bryman & Bell 2003) claims that reality is “out there” exists independently and is separate from individual who observes it. Further to this we must understand that an individual constructs his own world from his experiences and beliefs, and has influence on his life due to interactions with other individuals. I am studying this research with positivism philosophical approach. Positivism is an epistemological position that advocates the application of the methods of the natural sciences to the study of social reality and beyond (Bryman & Bell (2003). Researcher assumes role of Objective analyst and interpretations and separate and detached and assure that data is collected in value free manner (Saunders et al 2003). Positivist approach is mostly based on comparisons and experimentations, where it deduces results through specific predictions. This approach supports questions to be derived from theory and research problem.
Limitations of the survey
The aim of my thesis has been to find what perception of talent management is carried by the organizations in developing countries such as Pakistan especially in small to medium private organizations. Before we analyze the data and survey results some points should be taken into consideration. First of all the sample size is too small for such kind of survey and an opinion can not be formed and carry strength on small sample size. It can be argued that the results are not representative of the whole population. Also we shall bear in mind that on individual level, one needs to account for the way some individuals’ state of mind at that present time. For example
relaxed or were they stressed because of a busy day, work place tensions or other reasons. Each individual employee has their own unique experiences within the company. Furthermore it would be impossible to get employees from organization that had the same experience and felt the same way on a given day unless the questionnaire was strictly controlled. Although, the fact that a sample size was small could be rectified if the study was to be carried out again on a much larger scale.
Secondly hindsight, improvements could be made to the actual questionnaire. The tick box system, which was deemed convenient, does limit a person on the answer they can give and the depth of hat answer i.e.: it is a closed question. Some questions did include space for employees to justify their answers however. Possibly the phrasing of the questions could be altered to make them more concise and tick-box option could be changed. For example Q.4 of employee survey has a major fault.
Q.4. How long have you been working for the organization.
a. 1-2 years b. 2-5 years c. 5-10 years e. more than 10 years
If some person worked for 5 years he would tick option (b). 5-10 years box. This means that in actual fact, with this mistake, there is not distinction between those two choices as he can also choose option (c) 5-10 years. The result would become 5-10 years with the result of x no. of employees.
Although the content of the questionnaire was limited as the pilot run showed that participants wanted a tick box system which was quick and easy to complete. There was no option for in depth feed back, either through the questions or conduction interviews. Nevertheless, the pilot questionnaire should have identified these faults, which suggests that the design of the pilot questionnaire was not of a sufficient standard. In future to avoid these significant mistakes again,
the pilot questionnaire should be conducted more than once to make sure every part has been checked and double checked.
Finally, even though the questionnaires were anonymous, some participants may have subconsciously felt that they could not answer freely; which is understandable, as some of the questions were of slightly sensitive nature. Measures should be considered to erase this problem, if the study was to be conducted in future. These could be rephrasing the questions as to make them seem more general and less about the feelings towards the company or specifically asking participants to complete the questionnaire away from the work environment, for example, at home to give a sense of security about the answers provided.
The results could have been extended or extended further ( as a reference for a repeat of this study) in the form of following up with face-to-face interview to ask questions about certain answers in more depth, for example, why some individual satisfaction level as work place is not same as compared to his former work place. Even though this would give important insight into employee’s psyche and could build employee engagement to retain employees for the future, it does pose its own problem.
For follow up interview to be conducted it would have to be known who filled out the questionnaire, therefore not making it anonymous. One way around this would be to have the participant complete the questions in a controlled environment and then be asked questions based on their answers immediately after. The employee would not have to put their names on the questionnaire but may still feel that their answers may be held against them and therefore provide biased feedback. As well as this, there would be opportunity cost of taking employees away from their busy work place thus disrupting company’s operations and impact on finances.
In any case Asia Petroleum seems to understand Human Resources in context of talent management and employee retention and regard it as a serious part to the success of the business. For now more than ten years they have been successfully managing their operations and harnessing the motivation, engagement and commitment of their employees.
Survey Questionnaire
Primary data
Research shows that organizations conduct attitude and opinion surveys time to time, to identify any areas of satisfaction or dissatisfaction and concern of the employees. These surveys are good source of knowing overall organization climate and psychological contract of employees with the firm. The questions addressed in survey help preparation of risk analysis. Retention plan should propose actions that would focus on each of the areas where lack of commitment and