Strategic Talent Development: Develop and Engage All Your People for Business Success

Caplan, an international human resources consultant and coach-mentor associated with the U. of Portsmouth, UK, contends that organizations should value every employee, not just the high performers, and meet their aspirations and engage them with business success, to improve long-term business performance. She outlines a model for strategic talent development that takes into account the changing business environment affected by globalization, communications and technology, and changing societal attitudes, and discusses the relationship of strategic talent development with employee engagement and impacts on profitability and implications for how to lead and manage people, as well as the role of values in creating a common identity. She then details the systems and processes needed to assess, develop, deploy, and retain people, presented in terms of a four-point framework involving shared management, a people databank, self-managed succession, and a focus on the future. She ends with practical actions for leaders to take. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
In recent years globalization and technological advances have changed the business world. Organizations must be sufficiently agile, future-focused, and innovative to keep pace with rapid change. In these new conditions, command and control systems no longer work effectively, nor do extended hierarchies of management. To be successful, leaders have to recognize the importance of their people.Strategic Talent Development helps top management executives develop talent for the future, encourage an organizational culture that is collaborative and innovative, direct and coordinate their people to encourage flexibility and rapid responses, and actively harness employee engagementThe book is structured into three phases: Phase one makes the case for Strategic Talent Development through its relationship with employee engagement and offers a deep understanding of organizational culture; the second phase describes the processes needed to assess, develop deploy and retain people. These processes are brought together with a new model, the Four-Point framework; the final phase covers the practical actions leaders must take to lead effectively and achieve a highly engaged workforce. Strategic Talent Development enables leaders to transform their employees' talent as a competitive advantage in order to deliver success.