THE ROLE OF TALENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE: A CASE OF TELECOMMUNICATION FIRMS IN KENYA
Yvonne Mwendwa Rukunga - Master in Business Administration, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya
Dr. Joyce Nzulwa - Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya
ABSTRACT
In the Telecommunication industry, mobile Telecommunication firms have been forced to device ways to cope with competition. Competition is more dependent on proper utilization of human capital rather than on physical capital. There has been a loss of talent as the players are competing for the few existing talents. The purpose of the study was to determine the role of talent management strategies on the organizational performance in the telecommunication firms in Kenya. The study was guided by the following objectives; to determine the role of talent attraction strategy, talent retention strategy, learning and development and career management strategy on the performance of telecommunication firms in Kenya. The study was anchored on four theories namely: human capital theory, vrooms expectancy theory, resource based theory and talent-based theory. The study was a survey research employing descriptive and analytical techniques. The target population for this study comprised of 279 management staff working in the telecommunication firms in Kenya. The study used a sample of 162 respondents from the telecommunication firms in Kenya. The researcher used questionnaires to collect data. The collected data was coded, edited and prepared ready for analysis. The study adopted both qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques which are ideal to analyze respectively and open ended and closed questions. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation. On the other hand, qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis. A multiple regression model was used to ascertain the influence that independent variables have on the dependent variable. The findings were presented in figures, charts and tables. The study found that talent attraction strategy influence performance in their organization greatly and that talent retention strategy influence performance moderately. It was clear that organizational motivation, sustaining employees in the organization, reducing the turnover of the employee and staff commitment greatly influences performance of the organization. The study also found that that learning and development strategy greatly influence performance influence performance and that career management strategy greatly influences performance in a great extent. Some of the career management strategy associated with this great influence on organisational performance was career counseling and identifying career goals. The study concluded that career management strategy had the greatest effect on the performance of telecommunication firms in Kenya, followed by talent attraction strategy, then talent retention strategy while learning and development strategy had the least effect to the performance of telecommunication firms in Kenya. The study recommends that there is a need to have organizations understands the concept of talent management to appropriately harness and leverage on intangible assets in the firm to attain competitive advantage, that employees should be appreciated for better performance. Firms should also offer satisfactory and sufficient non-financial benefits such as reward, recognition, study leave offered to their employees and that the policy makers should set policies that promote and support firms to adopt and implement strategic talent management in order to explore their employees’ full potential and effective utilize it towards improving performance. The study also recommends that firms should maintain and uphold strategic talent management best practices in order to maximize on the use of their talents and skills and conduct regular audits to ensure that strategic talent management programs are fully implemented.
