Pakistani perspective on “Talent Management” as best HR practice

Some people say Talent is God's gifted thing for a person. A person is said to be talented if He/She possessed some awesome ability in a particular activity or field. Everyone is talented in one or another way. Nourishing the talent and utilizing it to the best is a challenge. Talent levels will vary from person to person. There is a lack of talents in all areas in Pakistan. Similarly, competition is always there for getting the talents between organizations and that’s why the talent management attains significance.
Every organization needs talented persons in different levels to enhance the efficiency of the company. In this globalized era talented personnel are having demand and are offered good remuneration. For discharging specific tasks talented and work ethic specialists are needed. In every field the case is same. It is not easy to find the right talent needed for the organization and it takes a wholesome effort involving lot of human resource to find the talents and recruit them accordingly.
Talent management is simply a process of recruitment of talents, developing the skills of existing workforce, promoting and retaining the employees, attracting highly talented and rated employees from other companies etc. Talent management is practiced by human resources department of each and every company around the globe. Performance management is directly linked with talent management. In every organization the challenges as well as strategies are entirely different. Hence the focus is mainly on getting and connecting the talent with the organizational set up as well as making sure that the person can cope up with the organizational challenges and deliver it with strength.
Senior human resource executives are dealing with the talent management and it is very important for companies as there is practice of rival companies attracting away the talents. So motivation and retention of talents in an organization is a real challenge for HR officials. With companies becoming global with overseas acquisitions, keeping the upward growth will depend on cost effectiveness, internal execution of strategies precisely with existing workforce as well as integrating new talents.
Talent management as a best practice is actually competency based and some of the competencies are skills, personal traits, experience as well as knowledge. Talent management is for the optimization of the resources in the organization, henceforth achieving good business results. Developing the talent within the organization is cost effective than really recruiting new ones in some cases and it can be termed as one the talent management best practice as well regarding human resource functions.

Importance of work/life balance & Pakistani organizations

Work-life balance is a broad concept including proper prioritizing between "work" (career and ambition) on one hand and "life" (pleasure, leisure, family and spiritual development) on the other. Anyone can say it a "lifestyle balancing approach". Many employees believe that it is due to the advance technology & globalization and a critical harm to social life plus an increase in physique related neuroskeletal disorders from a combination of stress and ergonomic stressors. It is clear that problems caused by stress have become a major concern to both employers and employees.

The importance of work/life balance can count through a series of afterward problems if someone missing it and have symptoms of stress. These are manifested both physiologically and psychologically. Persistent stress can result in cardiovascular disease, sexual health problems, a weaker immune system and frequent headaches, stiff muscles, or backache. It can also result in poor coping skills, irritability, jumpiness, insecurity, exhaustion, and difficulty concentrating. Stress may also perpetuate or lead to binge eating, smoking, or dependency on antidepressants.

When work takes priority over family it is Work to Family Interference (WIF). This type of conflict is mostly seen in male employees as they are more committed toward their work responsibilities in relation to the family responsibilities. However, women are not fully exempted with this type of conflict. When family responsibilities become a hindrance to perform the work effectively it becomes Family to Work Interference (FIW). Many factors contribute to intensify family to work interference which mainly includes family responsibilities such as child and elderly care. The conflict between work and family is now become a crisis for the organizations. With the increase in dual family parents, more job demand and long working hours made it almost impossible to create a balance between work and family.

Pakistan is one of the fast growing economies in the world. Economical and social changes in the last three decades has changed the family and work settings. The increasing rate of inflation changed the working setups in the country. The monthly expenditures are also escalating because of higher rate of inflation. This resulted in the emergence of dual family earners. The monthly expenditure in the year 1996 – 2000 was Rs 6757 in the urban areas of Pakistan which increase to Rs 8997 in the year 2001 - 2004, Rs 9121 in 2005-06, Rs 10583 in 2006-08 and escalated to Rs 15000 2009 - 2010. To maintain the standard of living now both husband and wives has to work and the concept of single earner family is unfortunately diminishing.

As the wave of globalization captured the Pakistani markets the job became more demanding and the working hours also increases. The fast pace economical development in the country has demanded more efforts from its employees. Now organizations in Pakistan are paying off good salary packages, compensation and benefits but the nature of the work is more demanding. The work related stress, work pressure, long working hours leads to job dissatisfaction which is one of the main hinder in the factors related to work/family interferences.

Major Functions of HRM – HR Practices in Pakistan

In Pakistan all organizations almost paying attention to three functions more than others that is as discussed below:

Human Resource Planning; First Function of HRM
In poor human resource planning we are encountered with two types of problem.

1. Understaffing
2. Overstaffing

Proper staffing requires an assessment of present and anticipated needs of the organization compared with present and future predicted resources. Simply we can say that efficient human resource planning bring demand and supply into balance. So, planning mean you must have a clear picture of your existing work force profile. The things you must consider of your employees are as: No. of employees, Ages, Gender, Skills, Experiences, Character, Flexibility, Capabilities and Potential.

Recruitment and Selection: Second Function of HRM.

Recruitment means discovering the “potential candidates” and Selection is a process start from applicants CV scanning. Recruitment is of two types as:

1. Internal Recruitment
2. External Recruitment

Overall the major sources of recruitment are as: Internal promotions and transfers, Head hunters, University / campus hunting, Professional agencies, Employment agencies and Advertising.

After CV is being scanned an interview is carried out immediately by sending an interview letter to the applicant through post. Mostly an expert panel interview the candidate and it may take several days. Interview testing includes the following portions: Aptitude testing, Skill testing, Behavior testing, Stress testing and General intelligence.

Training & Development- Third Function of HRM

Training means imparting skills, abilities & knowledge in employees which help them in performing their current job duties.

Development means grooming of employees keeping in mind job anticipated needs & obviously for the sake of their growth in the organization

• Survival of Fittest

But above all these old concepts one thing is important that any change in life brings a lot of learning opportunities no matter whether it comes from training or other developmental techniques. One should take these activities in a positive way & it’s very important for the “survival of fittest” both from organizational perspective and from individuals’ perspective.

Pakistani organizations should focus on the other pillars of human resource management as well like Compensation & Benefits, Employee Relations, Talent Management and most crucial one “Change Management” with the same intensity to achieve even better zeros achieved on their side. Zero is the new word in the management terminology for the word goal.

 

Real Dilemma of Human Resource in Pakistan as well as abroad!

It is right that each and every company in Pakistan like to have a Human Resource Department but not much clear with what’s this department’s boundary, functions and requirements are? Just by following western management style or multinational companies it is not possible to get the desired domino effect. In Pakistan we need to modify HR functions with creativity to achieve our desire goals. We also need to train not only HR students but truly our organizations, for better use of this Human Resource Department functions.

In this ever changing competitive world it is become very difficult for the companies to become differentiated from others. Each company can have the same infrastructure, technology, policies, SOP’s, raw material and processes. The only resource which can give competitive edge to any company over the other one is its human resource. This competitive edge enables the company to sustain and increase their market share. The strategic role of Human Resource Management has been realized world over a period of time. Organizations have realized the dire need of establishing well developed Human Resource Department that can contribute toward organization’s productivity. Human Resource Department performs both core and supporting functions.

Unfortunately not much attention has been paid to Human Resource Department working in Pakistani local organizations. We are still in the process of renaming our Personnel Departments as “Human Resources”, whereas the job market is raising question: “Is HR a career in crisis?” The fact is, the role of Human Resource is evolving constantly and we need to move away from the traditionally administrative function and consider it as a major contributor in organizations successes by aligning the Human Resource goals with the Organizational Goals. But our local organization’s state of affairs is different to that of the multinationals because Human Resource here is truly practiced by multinational companies only. A few liberal Pakistani firms also have Human Resource functions but mostly intermingled and not well defined. There is an increasing trend of outsourcing the Human Resource functions like recruitment and selection, training and development. In many organizations various Western Human Resource models are applied as such ignoring the cultural difference, infrastructure difference and size of organization. Many organizations even use this department to take advantage in the form of human psychology and play with it as a strong marketing tool for the firm credibility, trustworthiness and strength. 

However, the criticisms about Human Resource seem to be the same around the world and this is at the heart of the issue.