Assignment 4: Southern Company—Case Study
Author/Student: Antoine Jean “AJ” Garand
Instructor/Professor: Dr. Marie-Line Germain, Ph.D.
Course: Talent Management – HRM 532
Date: Sunday, February 26, 2012 Evaluate the effectiveness of the roles that the strategic leaders played in the formation of the performance management strategy. Silzer and Dowell (2010) define Talent Management as “ an integrated set of processes, programs, and cultural norms in an organization designed and implemented to attract, develop, deploy, and retain talent to achieve strategic objectives and meet future business needs” (p. 18). And lists the following as components necessary for a talent management program strategy: recruitment; selection;
Other key workforce segments include “core” employees (people critical to executing the strategy) and “support” employees (whose value are real but could be delivered through alternative means, including outsourcing). Finally, there are the “noncore” segments (featuring skills that no longer serve the company’s capability requirements). See below graphics from page 12:

Outline the functional expertise component of this strategy and how it optimizes the company’s ability to identify highly qualified individuals. According to the American Society for Training & Development (2011) “Successful talent management calls for a high level of integration of all the functions and processes that contribute to putting the right people with the right skills in the right jobs at the right time” (p. 1). ASTD recommends the following action plan to identify, address, and take charge of talent management for the future: 1) Understand the organization’s key strategies and key metrics; 2) Determine and prioritize the human capabilities needed to support key strategies and key metrics; 3) Define talent management throughout the life cycle of employees from recruitment to retirement and identify the key processes that comprise talent management for your organization; 4) Create an integrated model for managing talent