HRM 6000 Module 3 Written Assignment: Talent Management and HR Technology Example

The Right People in Key Roles: Talent Management and HR Technology at Atlantic Shore Hospitality

Student Name

Master of Science in Human Resources Management, Thomas Edison State University

HRM-6000: Managing the Human Resources Enterprise

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

The Right People in Key Roles: Talent Management and HR Technology at Atlantic Shore Hospitality

The Decisions in Front of Us

Atlantic Shore plans to open a fifth property in two years. Leaders worry that the company lacks managers ready to run it and that hiring for hourly roles is too slow. A vendor has proposed a talent management system with an automated screening tool. This summary explains how talent management should be focused, what the technology can and cannot do and what we recommend.

A Strategic View of Talent Management

Collings and Mellahi (2009) defined strategic talent management as identifying the key positions that contribute most to sustainable competitive advantage, developing a pool of high-potential and high-performing people to fill them, and building an HR architecture that keeps those positions filled with competent people committed to the organization. The key idea is that talent management concentrates on key roles rather than treating every role the same.

For Atlantic Shore, key roles are those where performance differences most affect guests and revenue: executive chefs, whose kitchens drive restaurant and banquet profits; front office managers, who shape the arrival experience and service recovery; group sales managers, who fill rooms in the off-season; and general managers. Room attendants and servers matter enormously, but their performance depends heavily on these managers. Lewis and Heckman (2006) criticized much talent management writing for vague definitions and thin evidence, a further reason to tie our program to named roles and measurable outcomes.

Building Talent Pools

We currently fill manager roles mostly from outside after they become vacant. A pool approach would identify about 40 employees with potential for the key roles, give each a development plan with stretch assignments at another property, mentoring by a current manager and formal training, and review the pool twice a year. When the fifth property opens, its leadership team should come largely from this pool, which also signals to employees that growth is possible here.

What HR Technology Can Do

Stone et al. (2015) reviewed technology's effects on HR and found gains in speed, access to data and reach to candidates, alongside worries about privacy, cold treatment of applicants and decisions made with too little human judgment. The proposed system would let us track the talent pool, schedule development, share open positions internally first and analyze turnover and performance data in one place. These are valuable functions for a company spread across four properties.

Risks of Automated Screening

The vendor's screening tool ranks hourly applicants using a model trained on past hiring decisions. If our past decisions favored certain groups, the model may repeat that pattern. Federal anti-discrimination law applies to decisions made with automated tools just as to decisions made by people, and some jurisdictions, such as New York City under its Local Law 144, now require independent bias audits of automated employment decision tools. Candidates may also distrust a process with no human contact.

Recommendations

Approve the talent management system for internal talent pools and development first, where the benefits are clear and the risks low. Pilot the screening tool at one property only after an independent bias audit, with every rejected applicant's file subject to human review during the pilot. Define the four key roles and build a 40-person pool within six months, so the fifth property's leadership team can be selected from it.

Conclusion

Talent management should focus on the roles that most affect our guests and revenue and on developing our own people to fill them. Technology can make that work easier, but automated screening carries legal and fairness risks that require audits and human review before we rely on it.

References

Collings, D. G., & Mellahi, K. (2009). Strategic talent management: A review and research agenda. Human Resource Management Review, 19(4), 304-313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2009.04.001

Lewis, R. E., & Heckman, R. J. (2006). Talent management: A critical review. Human Resource Management Review, 16(2), 139-154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2006.03.001

Stone, D. L., Deadrick, D. L., Lukaszewski, K. M., & Johnson, R. (2015). The influence of technology on the future of human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 25(2), 216-231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2015.01.002