Investigating the effects of talent management strategies in a South African pharmaceutical organisation

Abstract

Human capital has become the unique asset recognised by organisations worldwide as a rare commodity that can be used to compete without fear of imitation by competitors. Organizations such as Pharmaceutical companies are considered highly technical as well as consulting in nature and thus have been evolving as knowledge- based organizations to stay sustainably viable. Managing potential and talent to stay competitive has been centre to the creation of human capital. Organisations need to be able to hold on to their potential and talented employees or be left struggling to fill the cavity left by competent individuals. Many organisations have talent strategies employed and a definite approach to manage potential individuals but do employees actually recognise the value. Considering that added-value can in short be defined as the customer’s perception of a product or service’s value and keeping in mind that employees are the organisations internal customers leads to the consideration, what is the value they attach to talent and potential management outcomes and how important is it really in the context of employee satisfaction and self-realisation. The aim of this study was to answer the questions on employee views with regard to the effect of talent management strategies. This research study was conducted in a large multinational pharmaceutical organisation subsidiary in South Africa. The applied approach in this study was non –probable in nature with both elements of accidental and convenient sampling. The target population included all employees at various levels in the pharma- and consumer divisions of the organisation. The study population was subsequently created by the respondents that decided to fully complete the survey. The investigation was implemented via a survey which assessed the alignment of the organisational effort with the subsequent success achieved concerning talent management as perceived by different level employees in the organisation. The survey constructs was identified during a literature review that contributed to the creation of an own model to assist in breakdown of approaches into constructs that would drive employees perceptions (bottom – up view). The analyses of data was initiated by descriptive data analysis and the preferred manner of analyses was Cohen’s effect sizes and Tukey’s post hoc test in an attempt to provide a richer understanding of the effect of each construct on talent management. The aim of using this statistics was to find whether there is a large enough difference to indicate an effect in practice. The conclusion derived from this study regarding the effect of talent management strategies in a South African pharmaceutical company clearly showed that effort with regard to talent management constructs such as employee engagement, career development, and managerial support was not adequately translated to employee level. Even though performance management, culture and employee empowerment was performing at a higher evaluated value only culture frequently pulled through on both effort and success achieved. The results indicate that even though systems and talent strategies exist the consequences of these talent objectives and practices does not necessarily transfer into practically observable outcomes of perceived value to the employees in this study population.