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.