Strategic talent management in agricultural and forestry companies

Abstract

In a time of a constant change, a company with high-quality, talented employees not only has an advantage in the competitive environment but it is also a more attractive proposition for the potential employees. It is also a ‘great place to work’ for the existing employees. The article therefore focuses on the approaches to implementing the strategic talent management which are taken by the agricultural and forestry companies. The paper investigates the position taken regarding the talent management in theory. It is based on the aims of a primary survey, the purpose of which was to develop a deeper understanding of the supporting theoretical concepts underpinning the company approaches to talent. The objective of the work is to identify the main components of the strategic talent management based on the primary survey of companies operating in agriculture and forestry. This is accomplished by evaluating the data obtained from the primary analysis of the methods and approaches used on 101 farms and other agricultural companies. The data comes from the manager surveys for which a single manager represented the given company. The mono-dimensional and multi-dimensional statistics were used to evaluate the data. The results indicate that in 62% of the companies examined are familiar with the principles of the talent management and that the talent management forms part of the mission of the company (48%). A deeper analysis is used to further examine the differences in the approach of the companies included in the study. The paper contains an in depth discussion of the concept of the strategic talent management, as well as identifying the main processes connected with it. Moreover, the paper presents new research findings by defining and validating the main attributes of the strategic talent management (TM); additionally the gap between the awareness of the top management of the talent management concept and its use in practice is found and discussed.