Introduction
Talent management at Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA) is done to ensure the expertise of employees improves over time as they gain experience while working in the various hospitals under its management. This practice is done by developing staffing models, which are accurate, identification of vital skills while acknowledging the role of the proper harnessing of the competencies of the employees in enhancing organizational success. McCauley and Wakefield (2006) consider talent management as a process that promotes the functional expertise of an organization with a view of arriving at informed decisions. Talent management is one of the essential concerns of human resource management. Focusing on SEHA, this paper discusses the integration of HRD function across the organization. Its specific emphasis is on the internal and external approaches to talent management as an integrated function of the HRD.
Background to SEHA
The Abu Dhabi Health Services Company markets itself under the name SEHA. SEHA (2016) outlines, “SEHA is a phonetic rendering of the Arabic word for health”. The joint-stock organization has the mandate for operating Emirates public hospitals. It operates as an independent entity. Incepted under the 10th 2007 decree of Emiri, SEHA aims at reforming the healthcare system for Abu Dhabi with the ultimate goal of ensuring it delivers the finest care tantamount to that offered in the best-in-class healthcare system in the world.
While HAAD regulates private and public sector healthcare players, SEHA has the mandate for the management of public care institutions like hospitals and centers. SEHA (2016) notes that “today, the SEHA Health System consists of 12 hospitals with 2,644 beds, 37 healthcare centers, one occupational health center, 10 disease prevention and screening centers, nine dialysis centers, and clinics, and two blood banks”. The healthcare system managed by SEHA employs over 17, 500 people.
Over 100,000 in-patients use the healthcare program. It treats more than 5 million outpatients annually. Attending to the healthcare needs of this large number of people requires high commitment and highly effective human resource capability. This underlines the need for the integration of talent management to the functional responsibilities of human resource development.
Integration of HRD with talent management at SEHA
HRM department executes functional responsibilities like training and development, recruitment and selection, employees’ conflict resolution, deriving employees’ motivation and satisfaction job programs, and taking active roles in the establishment of remuneration programs (Kramar & Syed, 2012). It also has the responsibility of ensuring work-life balance. The noble functions of HR are inspired by the perceptions that people who work for any organization act as the source of competitive advantage, especially by noting that they cannot be optimized using economic theories in the same manner as other factors of production such as capital and land (Ollapally & Bhatnagar, 2009).
Therefore, human resource professionals have an obligation to develop strategies for ensuring organizational success through people. One of the ways of increasing the capability of employees of SEHA is by looking for the approaches to effectively optimizing their talents. This realization can occur when talent management is integrated with other functions of HRM especially human resources development approaches such as coaching, training, and development.
Integrating talents to the HRD program of SEHA requires planning and determination of necessary talents for development in its human resource. Effective talent integration across SEHA requires measuring the talent of employees. When measuring the talent potential for employees, planning is necessary for determining various strategies alongside the goals of different work units (Levenson, 2011). Once goals and strategies are established, SEHA should search capabilities of its human resources to determine the employees who best fit into these units to enhance the realization of the goals of various units. This plan is accomplished through the alignment of unit goals with the employees’ capabilities (McCauley & Wakefield, 2006).
Where the search indicates that the specific talent capabilities cannot be found internally, external hiring should be considered. This state of events has the implication of ensuring that some work units will not be performed sub-optimally. This situation is incredibly important since, in a large system such as SEHA, input for some units requires outputs of other units. If the output were slow, then amid having internally recruited highly capable and effective employee in the next unit, delays, and accumulation of work at some points in the service delivery would occur. Performance levels in various unit tasks (filled internally and externally) should then be conducted to determine the fits between the employee and the performance expectations of the work unit.
After successful completion of the planning phase, the next step for the implementation of an integrated talent management process for employees’ talents at SEHA is the assessment. This phase requires performance dialogue accompanied by continuous garnering of feedback information from the employees to determine the degree of achievement of work unit anticipations. Opposed to traditional approaches of measuring the performance of employees, which are argued as ineffective by Levenson (2011), at SEHA, performance dialogue can yield success since employees are provided with adequate information on what they are expected to do and within what time limits.
Feedback, which is used to make a decision about the appropriateness of a given employee to fit in a position, should be based on the ability of the employee to achieve these work unit requirements. This capacity reflects the talent potential of the employees. This approach to measuring the talent of employees is based on the realization of specific preset expectations of a given job demands without any specified criteria for accomplishing them. This situation means that the employees bear the responsivity to look for innovative ways of executing their duties to achieve the expected results within minimal time while ensuring optimal resource utilization. After the identification of the talent potentials of different employees and allocating them to the work unit in which they can fit best for optimal productivity, the integration of the new talent management approach is accomplished following the model shown in figure 1 below.
Integrating talent management to HRM functional responsibilities at SEHA as shown in figure 1 ensures that people can flow smoothly without friction through the HRD. For effective integration of talent management at SEHA, all elements, processes and practice of HRD should not stand as ‘lone’ entities. The SEHA strategy should correspond to the most crucial input to the HRD system. Specification of positions for the job coupled with writing up the job should comprise the most important element that ensures alignment of all processes for HRD.
Conclusion
Many organizations operating in the global market contend that strategic initiatives are important in ensuring that an organization gains success both in the short-term and long-term. The HR department within any organization is established to handle issues related to employees including enhancing motivation, talent management, and conflict resolutions. The paper shows that the integration of talent management into SEHA is paramount to ensuring the smooth flow of people and processes in the healthcare system. This practice is widely recognized for increasing the efficiency of delivering healthcare services in an attempt to meet the medical needs of an increasing clientele base.
Reference List
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