Effective Talent Management Practices of Small and Medium-Size Businesses

Abstract

Effective Talent management strategies to acquire, develop, and retain employees are essential, as 73% of business leaders in the United States identified that good human resources practices favorably affect the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations. Based on the people capability maturity model and transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the successful strategies that leaders of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) used to acquire, develop, and retain employees. The case population comprised five SMBs’ leaders who had successfully used talent management strategies to acquire, develop, and retain employees for more than 5 years, and four employees who had worked with the SMBs for more than 5 years. The selected leaders participated in face-to-face semistructured interviews while the employees participated in a focus group. The data analysis process followed Yin’s five-phase analysis cycle; entailed an analysis of interview responses from individual interviews, the focus group interview, and a review of related documents. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: conducting management assessments, following recruitment and selection guidelines, empowering and enabling employees, and fostering workplace loyalty. A recommendation is that SMBs’ leaders prepare training manuals from their successful procedures for internal use and benchmarking with other SMBs. The study’s findings could contribute to positive social change by enabling leaders to improve employee development and retention for more productive employees and higher revenues to benefit society through employees becoming mentors and volunteers in local communities.