Talent Management in Difficult Economic Nvironment

TALENT MANAGEMENT IN DIFFICULT ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT

The recent global economic downturn has precipitated a lot of aggressive and self-preservative initiatives by a lot of organizations in their efforts to contain losses, sustain viability and position themselves for the future. Some of the measures that organizations have resorted to include, budget cuts, reduction in employee wages, layoffs, suspension of expansion plans, temporary work hour reductions, reduction in the investment of the growth of their biggest asset, the employee. However and ironically despite these measures taken, organizations are still expected to be efficient and produce even more. As Royal and Agnew (2011) termed it, “organizations are now forced to do more with less”.

Doing more with less as indicated by Royal and Agnew also places a great deal of burden on the organizational workforce, already suffering from sustainability cuts made by the organizational survival efforts. And this could lead to negative impact on moral and ultimately erode business productivity that is expected of the organization if not properly managed. This has given rise to the concept of talent management for greater business productivity in a turbulent economic clement. Lessons learned from measures taken by a lot of organizations during difficult times, paints a very not so rosy picture. In “Ready for Recession” insights are given to some of these lessons. And as Marquez and Frauenheim noted, in difficult times and faced with budget reductions, salary losses, organizations rather than focusing on their employees, most organizations tend to focus instead on Sales numbers from a reduced, overworked and are ready turn to greener pastures workforce. The net effect is that when business rebounds organizations are faced with a realization of a depleted, overworked limited moral workforce and this in turn can cause the organization to ultimately lose their competitive advantage. Most organizations in bad economic...