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Human Capital Development And Talent Management

By Professor KC Chan and Dr Kevin Vince Fernando

The outcomes of human capital development are the capability to perform, excellence in execution and a culture of continuous learning. The purpose of talent management is to attract, retain, develop and engage talented people, i.e. human capital. Thus, human capital development and talent management is the ultimate sustainable competitive advantage of any organisation.

In essence, human capital is recognition and respect for people, in organisations and businesses, who contribute to development and growth, in a similar way as physical assets. The collective attitudes, skills and knowledge combine to create the abilities of people within organisations that enable the achievement of organisational performance and productivity goals. Expenditures in training, development, health and support are an investment, not just an expense. Returns of correct investment in human capital will appreciate with time.

Human capital development strategy needs to be driven by the business strategy and the capabilities required. Next is identifying the right people to be trained and developed. Effectiveness of training and development can be measured or experienced by the improvements made or observed during the performance in work or projects. See Figure 1. People with the right attitude, who practise results-driven leadership displaying good potential and assume full accountability for decisions, etc should be promoted through a fast track into roles of increased responsibility and scope.

Structured training, development and career advancement actions will attract a consistent flow of the best talent. Continuous talent and leadership potential assessment is important. Leaders need to supplement training, development and career advancement of their talent with coaching and mentoring support, providing feedback on their strengths and weaknesses; give them stretch assignments/targets and get them to cross functions and geographic borders.

The Assessment Centre provides a structured mechanism to: conduct competency profiling test on the human capital; capture his/her performance scores before and after training and development programmes; chart out career plans and manage the transition of his/her successor. It ensures human capital investment is only made on talents that can be developed. See Figure 2.

The Centre of Excellence is to measure the outcome of the investments in talented staff. At any time organisations have multiple ongoing projects, these projects may be classified as lightweight, medium-weight and heavyweight in terms of project of project complexity and their contribution to improved business performance and results. Lightweight, medium-weight and heavyweight projects are used as a barometer to measure the different levels of leadership competencies of a manager. The sum of these talents managing different types and complexities of projects contribute to the organisation’s execution excellence. See Figure 3.

The Learning and Innovation Development Centre ensures that the building blocks of competence training is aligned with the needs of the customer and remains customer-centric. The different types of competencies drive continuous learning and development to higher levels of competence and capability to perform and cope with constant changes in business requirements. See Figure 4.

The Assessment Centre is to identify the right people and the right development needs; Learning and Innovation Development Centre to equip the people with the right attitude and the right competence; Centre of Excellence drives successful execution of different types and complexities of projects as the school for leadership development to inculcate the sense of full accountability and results-driven behaviour.

Human capital development and talent management myopia and myth must be eradicated. Organisations that focus only on improving individual competence must realise that one focus alone not good enough. Companies that concentrate only on improving project team leadership to become a high performance organisation is also inadequate. Organisations that enhance human capital competence and offer enough exposure to these talented project managers to hone their leadership skills from lightweight through to heavy-weight projects will improve the execution capability of the organisation. Only when the organisation transition change management progresses from Ad Hoc to Planned to Managed to Integrated and Optimised stage then the organisation has attained a homogenous culture of supreme performance. See Figure 5.

Human capital development and talent management is easier said than done. It cannot be developed overnight. It requires conscientious efforts, whole-hearted commitment and long-term conviction from the top management to invest in people, not just strategy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professor Dr K C Chan had over 25 years of senior management experience covering agricultural, industrial as well as commercial products and services.

Specifically, Dr Chan led the turnover project in one of the largest conglomerates in Indonesia during the economical crisis beginning 1997. With a debt of US$14 billion in 1998, Sinar Mas Group’s Agribusiness Division came out of the reds to achieve total revenue of US$1 billion by 2004. Its banking and insurance, pulp and paper, agriculture and real estate businesses then posted annual revenue of US$6 billion.

Dr Chan is also a corporate trainer. He has been actively teaching for the past 20 years on a part-time basis. He is today the Founding Director at the Centre for Professional Training and Development Pte Ltd.

Dr Chan had been visiting Professor to Southeast Asian universities for their EMBA degree and senior executive programmes. He was a visiting Professor to the University of Glasglow, Department of Business & Management, for a tenure of five years before being conferred a Distinguished Professor in Action Learning in 2003 by IMCA (UK) for the original and pragmatic concept of the ‘Management by Olympic System through Integrative Leadership’.
Chan also sits on editorial advisory board of Furniture & Furnishing International and is Chief Judge for the Asian Furniture Leadership Award 2009, as well as for the Malaysian Furniture Leadership Award 2008 and 2009.

Dr Kevin Vince Fernando brings with him more than 18 years of industrial experience, including holding management and senior management positions in Operations & Strategic planning, Human Resource management, Contracts management and Materials Planning and control.

Dr Fernando holds double Doctorate Degrees majoring in Business Administration, and three Masters degrees majoring in: Professional Accounting; Human Relations Management; as well as in Strategy and HRM.

As a professional trainer and speaker, Dr Fernando is certified by American Management Association (AMA) and has taught a wide range of management subjects at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He also conducted leadership training for organisations such as Pfizer, Caltex, SAP, IHS Energy, Sumitomo, Textron, etc.

He is a certified Professional National Accountant (Australia) and a Consultant for various local organisational development programmes in the areas of Work Redesign, People Developer Standards and National Skills Recognition System. He is also the founder of The Association for Strategy and Leadership Professionals TM.