Table of Contents
Introduction
Talent Plus is a privately held company, operating in the Talent Assessment in the industry of the United States. It is headquartered in Lincoln with a global office at Singapore. Developed in 1989 by Sandy Maxwell, Doug Rath, Dr. William E. Hall and Kimberly Rath, Talent Plus currently works with more than 400 world class and quality growth oriented clients (Talent Plus, 2016a). The workforce of the company contains 170 associates who help the clients in assessing the aptitude of a person to perform a specific kind of job in an excellent manner. The associates of Talent Plus do their job with the help of unique, reliable and validated assessment instruments (Talent Plus, 2016a). As a result of the talent assessment done by the associates of Talent Plus, the clients are able to get a better definition for their culture by way of acquisition, retention and recognition of the top talent while ensuring maximum human capital. This in turn results to improvement of profitability, growth and performance followed by retention of highly talented employees (Talent Plus, 2016a). Also, the clients are able to develop reliable succession plans with consistent and objective selection and recruitment processes.
Company Structure
Being a growing small company, the corporate structure of Talent Plus has still not developed in to a specific format. The company is run by the directors Sandy Maxwell, Doug Rath, Dr. William E. Hall and Kimberly Rath and the associates report directly to them. Considering the rapid growth of the company, the firm is currently planning to develop a separate Human Resource Management department in the near future.
Culture
The organizational culture of Talent Plus is a foundational one thereby setting the stage of future developments. The director board of the company has intentionally developed every aspect of the organizational culture (Talent Plus, 2016b). They select their own employees with the help of exactly the same assessment tools that they offer to the clients. As a result, the workforce of Talent Plus is a positive, highly energetic, hardworking, and caring and value oriented employees (Talent Plus, 2016b). The core beliefs of the corporation are wellness and social responsibility with the help of which they are able to meet the needs of individual employees from the very first day of job.
Mission
The operation of Talent Plus is conducted with the belief that every person has talent, the expression of which is dependent on the opportunity to express the same. The mission of the company is as follows:
“It is the goal of Talent Plus to help its clients and their employees to express this talent to the mutual benefit of the individual and organization.” (Talent Plus, 2016b)
Vision
The vision of Talent Plus is the following:
“To be the leading partner in building and sustaining high-performing and fully-engaged cultures through talent selection, development and analytics.” (Talent Plus, 2016b)
Company’s Business Strategy
The management team of Talent Plus has developed the business strategy of the company aiming at providing the clients with high quality talent assessment service with the help of unique and reliable tools and instruments (Talent Plus, 2016b). It is for this reason that the employee base of Talent Plus is managed so as to develop the firm into a healthy one for its employees, clients and all other communities related to the operation. The uniqueness of the service and the nature of the work environment along with a highly talented employee base act as the core competencies of the firm while developing its competitive advantage.
Company within Next Five to Ten Years
Based on the business strategy as well as the mission and vision of Talent Plus, it can be forecasted that the company will reach to a position represented in the figure below:
Figure 1: Talent Plus within Next Five to Ten Years
(Source: Author’s Creation)
In the next five to ten years, Talent Plus will acquire cost leadership by offering accurate assessment of human talent that can help the clientele in their employee evaluation process. However, the company will deliver this service in the lowest possible price, while linking the primary and secondary activities, thereby attaining cost leadership in the Talent Assessment industry of the US. In the process, the company will attain high relative market share thus making the services of Talent Plus easily accessible for the customer base.
In the next five to ten years, Talent Plus will develop a number of innovative human assessment tools thus attaining high level differentiation in the concerned industry. As a result, the company will add more value to the customers by way of using unique and new assessment tools and acquiring popularity for the firm. As a result, the quality of service will increase along with better customer service and value addition by implementation of unique assessment tools. These differentiations will lead to increase in cost, which needs to be managed by alternate ways of decreasing cost so as to attain cost leadership. In order to counter this increase in cost, Talent Plus will make effective use of its market share thus implying its costs of differentiation.
Human Resource Management Strategy – Committed Expert
In order to emphasize the current business strategies of Talent Plus, the company can develop a Committed Expert Human Resource Management strategy. On the basis of its strategy, the company will be able to hire and retain such employees who can specialize in performing the talent assessment projects done by Talent Plus. Since the firm is about to attain differentiation in next five to ten years, in terms of innovative human talent assessment tools, the employees of Talent Plus will need to have a great deal of freedom for the innovation. In order to attain this differentiation, Talent Plus needs to develop a Committed Expert Human Resource Management strategy.
After the development of the human resource management department and the implementation of the aforementioned human resource strategy, Talent Plus will be able to hire those candidates who are potentially fit for the foundational culture of the organization. Moreover, they will be required to have expertise in the particular areas based on which Talent Plus assesses individuals. Employees will be hired at the early years of their careers so that there remains room for training and education of the workforce. Once hired, employees will be provided with long-term on-the-job training that will help the young employees in developing strong expertise.
The performance of the employees at Talent Plus will be appraised on the basis of cooperation and fair competition observed within the employee base. There will be extensive career development programs that will provide the employees with regular promotions into similar kinds of job profiles, with increased responsibility, within the firm itself. High salary and good benefit packages will act as motivation for the workforce thereby tying employees to the organization.
The Committed Expert HR strategy has competitive advantages in the following manners:
- Hiring of employees with specialized knowledge helps the organization in providing its clients with high quality service (Aswathappa, 2013; Bamberger, Biron, & Meshoulam, 2014).
- Extensive freedom to innovation and improvement as well as regular promotion with healthy compensation generate motivation for the employees (Bamberger, Biron, & Meshoulam, 2014).
- Hiring of employees in the early years of their career provides the company with a considerable period of time to train and develop the employees into experts (Bamberger, Biron, & Meshoulam, 2014).
- Antagonistic appraisal leads to fair competition within the workforce (Aswathappa, 2013).
HR Scorecard Table
The following figure represents the Human Resource Scorecard Table for the suggested human resource strategy of Talent Plus:
Table 1: HR Scorecard of Talent Plus
| Financial | 510% | |
| 15% | ||
| Customer Service | 230% | |
| 25% | ||
| Internal Process | 130% | |
| 5% | ||
| Learning/Growth/Sustainability | 5% | |
| 10% |
The above table represents the learning, growth and sustainability activities that will allow the new HR department to do its job properly. Also, the projects and processes that will be done within the HR department have been shown. Moreover, the requirements of the clientele of Talent Plus that will have to be fulfilled by the HR department have been represented and the financial implications of the HR activities have been shown.
As per the HR Scorecard table, the HR department of Talent Plus will have to focus on the talent pool and recruit the right people who will in turn form the right culture to exploit the assessment tools. In order to meet the needs of the customers, the HR department will have to develop the employee base so that each of the employees become an expert and can merge into the culture of Talent Plus. The customers want to assess their talent pool with the most appropriate assessment tools and experts for conducting the evaluation process. Hence, the prime job of the HR department is to hire the right person at lowest possible salary.
Conclusion
Talent Plus is a privately held Talent Assessment company headquartered at Lincoln in the United States. It is a growing small company run by the directors Sandy Maxwell, Doug Rath, Dr. William E. Hall and Kimberly Rat. With no prominent Human Resource, the associates of Talent Plus report directly to the owners. The company has a foundational culture which aims to help its clients and employees to express their talent for the betterment of the individual and the organization. The employee base of Talent Plus is managed with focus on development of the firm into a healthy workplace and a reliable service provider. In the next five to ten years, the company will gain cost leadership by way of high differentiation of service. For this, it needs to acquire the committed talent human resource strategy so that young professionals can be hired and developed into experts with proper training and career development. In the HR scorecard, delivery of innovative HR solutions and building of competitive capabilities have been provided with the highest weightage.
- Aswathappa, K. (2013). Human resource management: Text and cases. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
- Bamberger, P. A., Biron, M., & Meshoulam, I. (2014). Human resource strategy: Formulation, implementation, and impact. Boston: Routledge.
- Talent Plus. (2016a). About us. Retrieved from http://www.talentplus.com/about-us-footer
- Talent Plus. (2016b). Our culture. Retrieved from http://www.talentplus.com/our-culture