The Use of Talent Management Instruments and Procedures in Germany: A Broad Explorative Study of Effectiveness and Success Factors

Jens Landwehr

doi:10.11648/j.jhrm.20160406.12

Abstract

While talent management has become a fixed term on HR agendas worldwide, it appears that that quality of talent management practices, infrastructure, and success measurements of talent management in German organizations is still low. This explorative empirical study – one of the largest ever done on this topic in Germany - shows that roles and responsibilities in the talent management process remain often unclear, processes and tools such as an IT infrastructure are often weak, and success measures are often not applied. But there is also surprising evidence that companies in Germany largely apply the wrong measures. It seems that in many German organizations, instruments and procedures are being applied which either have a rather neutral or even can have a counterproductive effect on talent management success. Reversely, instruments which can be linked empirically to talent management success, are not being applied as consistently as you would expect based on HR professionals knowledge on the subject matter. This paper presents the results of an explorative study on the scope of talent management in German organizations, the use of specific instruments and procedures, and links the use of instruments to various measures of success, most notably the assessment by talent management professionals. The results are both startling and surprising: Instruments most widespread in German organization are those which often have a neutral or even negative effect on talent management success. Starting with the question, how important talent management from the perspective of the organization, the study provides a detailed view on the use of specific measures and the processes applied by German organizations. Based on the responses of 125 participants of an online survey with talent managers and other HR professionals, we found a lack of commitment to talent management processes by leadership as a possible explanation for the state of talent management in Germany.

Highlights

While the majority of organizations in Germany apply some sort of talent management, objective success measures, IT support or even external benchmarking is used to a much lesser degree
Despite the generally high perceived importance of talent management it surprises that a suitable infrastructure is often relatively weak
Talent managers rate the importance of talent management as high or very high, and talent management practice in German organizations is deemed more important than before

Summary

Introduction

While the majority of organizations in Germany apply some sort of talent management, objective success measures, IT support or even external benchmarking is used to a much lesser degree. Talent management received little attention in Germany when the McKinsey report on the ‘War for Talents’ was first published in 1997 and gained much attention McKinsey (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001; Axelrod, Handfield-Jones, & Michaels, 2002). The talent shortage had not arrived at the time. During the boom years of 2001 and 2002, the labor shortage initially hit companies trying to fill technical and engineering roles. Between 2001 and the crisis year 2009, talent management enjoyed increasing attention within the field of

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