Contemporary Issues In Talent Management: Discussion Of Challenges And Solutions- Atlassian Case Study

Discussion

Discuss about the Contemporary Issues in Management for Talent Management.

The essay is about the talent management process implemented in the organization Atlassian in Australia. Undoubtedly, people are the fundamental resource of the organization. Sourcing the best skilled people from the sector has become major priority of the companies in today’s business sector (Thunnissen, Boselie and Fruytier 2013). However, a significant and undeniable fact is that industries are rapidly changing. Thus, the industry needs are also changing with the same pace.  As the result, the organizations feel the rush of developing their products and services. 

To meet the growing needs of industry, the companies need skilled workforce or creative people who are committed to deliver the high quality of services. Nonetheless, the due to some significant external and internal forces, some companies are not able to retain the workforce or hire people (Swailes 2013). This remains as the major area of the essay. The aim of the essay is to identify the significant forces that have direct impact on recruitment and selection of new talents.  Atlassian is one of the biggest software manufacture companies that develop products for the software developers, project managers and content management (Atlassian 2017). The company is well known for its issue tacking application. The essay also highlights the challenges that organizations are currently with respect to the management. Based on the challenges discussed in the essay, some suitable suggestions have been provided that could match the requirement of Atlassian.

It is certain that the job market has shifted gradually over the past five years and it is going from employer-centric to almost entirely employee-centric. The companies struggle to retain current employees and fill any vacancy as quickly as possible. Atlassian is gearing up for an applicant desert now by developing their talent brand. This practice of the company ensures that it has market reputation as an employer of choice. It primarily relies on comprehensive talent management practices that translate well to word of mouth referrals, organizational profile and employee reviews. However, the company might face the difficulties in adjusting the talent management strategies to meet as well as exceed the employee expectation. A significant challenge, the company could face is the development of culture engagement.  Festing,  Schäfer and Scullion (2013) conducted a survey, where almost three quarters of respondents to SHRM survey marked “respectful treatment of all employees at all levels of management” as the top driver of engagement.

Conclusion

Employees also consider the trust between employees and the senior authority to be critically significant engagement factor with management’s recognition of employee job performance. However, Vaiman, Scullion and Collings (2012) commented that successful organizations could focus on a talent management strategy that considers these new priorities into consideration. Thereby, developing a culture of engagement to retain talents could be management’s significant challenge. There is an intensified “War for global talent”, which also remains as the challenge in talent management. As put forward by Stahl et al. (2012) gone are the days, when the companies hunt talent in a single market. The organizations are focusing on the whole world as the common market; consequently, the geographic as well as cultural distinctions of talent are blurring. A prolonged deficiency of high-caliber talent appears in the recent time, even as the global economy goes through a continuous state of economic downturn.

Therefore, the organizations have realized the importance or force of surviving as well as competing in today’s business world. Soon, the organization will have the need of top global talent. Thus, while maintaining a fragile balance between its human resource budget and the expense of hiring top talents, there is a force of attracting the excellent managerial talent for the company.  The stress on developing internal talent remains appears as another barrier to talent management process of the company. Providing training to existing employees and enhancing their skills to meet the advanced tools and technologies is all time requirement (Al Ariss, Cascio and Paauwe 2014).

The employees also understand the fact that unless they develop their learning skills, the chance of survival in competition against the fresh talent is too blur. Nonetheless, the organizations are also investing on the retention of existing employees with proven loyalty and experience, as long as they are intended to rise up to the new challenges of world economy. Alternatively, Digout et al.  (2013) commented that one of the significant blurring challenges in talent management process is the increasing phenomenon of outsourcing of local hiring of cheaper employees from the developed world to survive and compete in a tough world economy. Therefore, the large firm like Atlassian in Australia observes the need of maintaining a delicate balance between recruiting foreign employees at lower cost and providing enough opportunities to local talents.  It is observed that outsourcing remains as the obligation of recent times. Atlassian must find innovative ways to cut down their cost without downsizing local talent. In addition to this, it can also be mentioned that technology based companies lack a proper compensation systems. It is certain that tech professionals are in general, highly paid. Nevertheless, the action to keep them is not just to increase salaries across the board. The companies should mind that there is always going to be someone who pays more (James and Mathew 2012). It is essential to have a proper compensation system. In this context, Parkand Shaw (2013) commented that organizations that do not have career path as well as the opportunities for ongoing development is quite shocking.

References and Bibliography

As Atlassian base its business ideas on technology, the company should focus on the technical career and distance itself from effective practices to be competitive. In order to be able to enhance the status of technical position, it is essential that these positions are clearly recognized as well as employees gain benefits selecting the position. In addition, the company should label a number of employees because talents bring both risks and benefits into the operation. To lessen the impact of risks, it is necessary that definition or understanding of talent is related to the behavior and skills that Atlassian is in need of.  This could lead to transparency and it improves the understanding rooted in the realty of the company. In addition to this, the company could develop different understanding of talent if these are clear as well as effectively related to their specific strategic needs. The company could also focus on the alignment of individual goals with the corporate strategy. The effective talent management plan is broadly aligned with organization’s strategic plan as well as overall business needs. The goal alignment is a strong management tool that could help the company to clarify the job role for individual employees and show the ongoing value of tech professional to the company.

Conclusion

It can be added that technology firms should create highly skilled internal talent pools. The strategically minded firm Atlassian has the ability to change ahead of the curve when they need to plan and develop the workforce with the right competencies. The company could pay attention to intensive strategic insight into its employees and it could use the sight to develop the workforce to respond to the dynamic needs of market. However, the company should consider the fact that they might have to deal with a situation with limited time to evaluate the feasible talents because a “planned change” in market condition.

References and Bibliography

Al Ariss, A., Cascio, W.F. and Paauwe, J., 2014. Talent management: Current theories and future research directions. Journal of World Business, 49(2), pp.173-179.

Atlassian. (2017). Atlassian | Software Development and Collaboration Tools. [online] Available at: https://www.atlassian.com/ [Accessed 5 Apr. 2017].

Blakely, E.J. and Leigh, N.G., 2013. Planning local economic development. Sage.

Digout, J., Azouri, M., Decaudin, J.M. and Rochard, S., 2013. Crowdsourcing, Outsourcing to Obtain a Creativity Group. Arab Economic and Business Journal, 8(1-2), pp.6-15.

Festing, M., Schäfer, L. and Scullion, H., 2013. Talent management in medium-sized German companies: an explorative study and agenda for future research. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(9), pp.1872-1893.

James, L. and Mathew, L., 2012. Employee retention strategies: IT industry. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 9(3), p.79.

Lepoutre, J., Justo, R., Terjesen, S. and Bosma, N., 2013. Designing a global standardized methodology for measuring social entrepreneurship activity: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor social entrepreneurship study. Small Business Economics, 40(3), pp.693-714.

Park, T.Y. and Shaw, J.D., 2013. Turnover rates and organizational performance: a meta-analysis.

Raman, R., Chadee, D., Roxas, B. and Michailova, S., 2013. Effects of partnership quality, talent management, and global mindset on performance of offshore IT service providers in India. Journal of International Management, 19(4), pp.333-346.

Sparrow, P., Farndale, E. and Scullion, H., 2013. An empirical study of the role of the corporate HR function in global talent management in professional and financial service firms in the global financial crisis. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(9), pp.1777-1798.

Stahl, G., Björkman, I., Farndale, E., Morris, S.S., Paauwe, J., Stiles, P., Trevor, J. and Wright, P., 2012. Six principles of effective global talent management. Sloan Management Review, 53(2), pp.25-42.

Swailes, S., 2013. The ethics of talent management. Business Ethics: A European Review, 22(1), pp.32-46.

Thunnissen, M., Boselie, P. and Fruytier, B., 2013. Talent management and the relevance of context: Towards a pluralistic approach. Human Resource Management Review, 23(4), pp.326-336.

Vaiman, V., Scullion, H. and Collings, D., 2012. Talent management decision making. Management Decision, 50(5), pp.925-941.