Talent Management Practices: Unleashing Employee Engagement

Through Perceived Organizational Support

Pooja Nagpal

International School of Management Excellence (ISME) Bangalore, India

Keywords: Talent Management Practices, Employee Engagement, Perceived Organizational Support.

Abstract: Employees are most valued assets of any organizations paving a path to success. Talent are the ability, skill

and knowledge that employee brings to the organization to effectively perform their job well to achieve the

organizational goals. In the current world of “Talent War” Talent Management (TM) is not limited to just

acquiring a right talent but rather on deployment, development, engagement and retention of its employees.

This study analyzes the drivers of Talent Management Practices (TMP) and Perceived Organizational Support

(POS) impacting Employee Engagement (EE). The study comprises an analysis of data of 457 respondents

from IT sector companies from IT hub of Bangalore, India. The result indicates TMP and POS have a direct

influence on EE. The findings imply on theory and practice specifically in enhancing employee engagement

using various TMP along with POS. The study found scope for future research in comparing various sectors

using additional independent variables in a longitudinal manner.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the dynamic VUCA world managing an

intellectual capital becomes pretty demanding and the

unique strategy adopted by organizations is talent

management (Raju, 2021). (Mehdiabadi & Li., 2016)

asserted TMP are distinctive tactics in Human

Resources Management (HRM) that attempts to

attain a competitive advantage through the tactical

development of employees using numerous HR

strategies, so that employees contribute effectively

for achieving goals and objectives. Based on the study

by (Wellins et. al., 2009), TM is the process of

finding, employing, developing, retaining and finally

deploying high potential employees to attain the

organizational objectives in most efficient manner.

POS are the set of employee’s own beliefs regarding

to the extent to which its institute they work values

their contribution along with the care towards their

wellbeing. (Eisenberger, et. al, 1986). (Astuty &

Udin, 2020) stressed POS an affective commitment

of an employee towards its organization laterally

having a positive perception towards their

organization on the facets related to getting support,

valued and being cared about. Talent management

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0772-0943

today is a unique approach to human resource

management that seeks to gain a competitive edge via

the tactical development of competent and highly

motivated people by combining cultural, structural,

and HR methods. (Sitorus 2017). If TM strategies are

in appropriately laid in an enterprise, employees will

be able to contribute effectively and fruitfully to the

attainment of the organization's goals and objectives

(Alharebi & Khalil., 2019). Employee empowerment

results from EE strategies, which support employees

in making decisions and using their creativity to solve

problems creatively. Engaged employees are more

dedicated to their work, more productive, and more

devoted to the company. These employees have

positive attitude towards the work and coworkers and

always vigilant about the business environment

around them (Theuri, 2017). Many authors asserted

employee engagement’s as a psychological state that

has developed by the employee's interaction in the job

place and awareness of the work environment in

which they perform their day to day activities. (Khan,

1990; Turner, 2020). The primary drive for this study

is to fill some gaps in literature review regarding the

association between TMP and EE. Secondly the study

tries to examine the association between TMS (talent

acquisition, learning and development, retention and

Nagpal, P.

Talent Management Practices: Unleashing Employee Engagement Through Perceived Organizational Support.

DOI: 10.5220/0012492300003792

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR 2023), pages 499-505

ISBN: 978-989-758-687-3

499

career management) leading to POS in turn impacting

EE.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Talent Management Practices

The TM concept was introduced by McKinsey

Consultants, in the book titled “The War for Talent”

in 1998 (Michaels et al., 2001). In the present

framework the organizations are functioning in

dynamic environments that are characterized by

erratic technical, political and economic changes

(Oreg et al., 2018), demonstrating how human

resources policies plays a significant role for

successful existence, sustainability of organization

and its intellectual capital. The best strategy adopted

by organizations are TMPs like identification,

development and management of high potential in the

organization, so as these employees add value to the

company at present and future (Lyria, 2013). A lot of

ambiguity is prevalent in understanding the concept

of talent management due to various definition given

by numerous authors. For some it’s mastering of a

competence in one domain of human activity, for

other it’s resourcefully completing the task and

developing the competences (Dries, N. 2013). Even

while defining the concept of TM differs among

various organizations, for few it would be

concentrating on sustainability, for others it’s would

on identifying high potential employees, for few the

strategies of HRM practices aimed at internal

development of talent. (Cooper, D.R.; Schindler, P.S.

2003). There are numerous TMP, but for the study we

have adopted four strategies like talent acquisition,

learning & development, talent retention and career

management.

2.1.1 Talent Acquisition (TA)

Prior to talent acquisition, the phases starts with talent

attraction through strategies as shorter selection

cycle, sound employer branding, building employee

value prepositions and selecting suitable talent that

maps with organizational culture and values. Talent

acquisition aims to invite the potential workforces

having the requisite qualifications and the right fit for

the positions open Songa, J.V, Oloko, M. (2016), so

that their onboarding leads to improvement and

sustainability the organizational performance

(Boxall, P, Purcell, J.2003).

2.1.2 Learning & Development (L&D)

Organizations learning is becoming an norm special

in service sector, the learning and development are

taking up by the organizations to develop new

procedures, new technologies to develop day to day

knowledge and skills of employee. These are

implemented by organizations for ease of adoption of

changing internal and external environment, to gain

competitive sustainable environment and also

successfully compete with their rivals. To gain

competitive advantage the top management first

needs to identify employees have any technical or

qualification deficiencies and leverage on strategies

of learning and development. On this statement,

Phillips, D.R.; Roper, K.O. (2009) recommended that

the strategy formulation for the employees should be

tailored specific for different generations to keep

them engaged. The strategies need to be focused on

employee’s personal growth, professional

development and to map with work life balance.

2.1.3 Talent Retention (TR)

Talent retention is a strategic procedure to encourage

talented employees to be retained and sustained by

organization for a longer duration of time (Tephillah,

V.S.; Swamalatha., 2015). The strategies that can be

adopted by for retention of talent are by motivating

the employees, providing them with competitive

compensation, up skilling them with latest training

and also creating a path for career advancements

(Devi, S. 2017). Consequently, the retained talent

employees leave a great impact on both financial and

operation of the organization.

2.1.4 Career Management (CM)

Career management comprises activities like

collecting information of employees as their area of

interest, the norms that that follow, the career

objectives they have, the skill strength and weakness

they possess, integrating all these career strategies to

attain the prospect career goal (Greenhaus et al.,

2000). The career management activities adopted in

any organization maybe both formal and informal

activities as providing an employee job rotation to

learn various job roles on the floor, employees can

enrich their knowledge by various seminars or

conferences and providing different avenues for self-

improvement. A clear cut career path should be

formulated for high potential employees to climb the

ladder of top management in subsequent years.

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2.2 Perceived Organizational Support

POS is an opinion of an employee about its employer

on how much the organizations that he serves values

and care about the contributions and wellbeing about

them. Employees having POS work harder to achieve

the organizational goals also they engage with their

work along with brining positivity around. The

concept of POS rests on social exchange theory

(Eisenberger, et al., 1986). Based on the study by

(Lee., 2004), the norm of reciprocity relationship is

more relevant in today’s economic environment due

to changing norms of technology and globalization.

In present dynamic work environment employees

complete complex work assignment involving longer

working hours with integrated teams. For this the

team needs to be motivated constantly give them

requisite resources, support them for better work

outcomes. To get better outcomes the managements

representatives, supervisors constitute frontline and

these are responsible for performance feedback and

empowerment of employees. The application of

talent management strategies to promote POS helps

in improving employee behavior and as a result leads

to higher employee engagement. Employee

engagement has been documented as a significant

ordinal outcome of POS (Shams et al., 2020). Further

this study will link POS between TMPs and EE.

2.3 Employee Engagement

The maiden work done in the arena of employee

engagement was by (Kahn., 1990, p. 700 & 718)

stated engagement as an instantaneous employment

and countenance of an individual’s “preferred self in

work behavior that promote themselves and others

using “physical, cognitive and emotional ability to

full perform the role”. He further stated the three

states related to engagement were dependent upon

individual himself, the intergroup influences along

with the organizational aspects. Based on the study

by (Schaufeli et al., 2002) states engaged employees

experience a positive work related state of mind that

are characterized by vigour which is linked to energy

and mental resilience at work, followed by dedication

where an employee is strongly involved in one’s work

and finally absorption being engrossed in their work.

Saks (2019) postulated that employees do not perform

only one task but usually do two roles one as the work

role demands and another as a member of

organization. The present study considers three levels

of engagements as “Cognitive, Emotional, and

Behavior Engagement”. Based on the gap of literature

review following hypothesis were formulated.

3 PROPOSED THEORETICAL

FRAMEWORK AND

HYPOTHESIS IS FRAMED

The proposed theoretical framework that incorporates

is illustrated below.

Figure 1: Conceptual Model of Author

Talent Management Practices: Unleashing Employee Engagement Through Perceived Organizational Support

501

The conceptual model of the author based on the

literature gap have taken antecedents of POS as talent

acquisition, learning and development, talent

retention and career management leading to

employee engagement. The previous study stated this

gap in analazing POS on EE.(P Nagpal & Senthil

Kumar., 2017). The present study tries to study the

impact of POS on EE

3.1 Objectives & Research Hypothesis

The hypothesis of the study for the examination of

factors TMP and POS influencing the EE is presented

below.

: Talent Management Practices positively

impact Perceived Organizational Support.

: Talent Management Practices and Perceived

Organizational Support have a positive and

significant impact on Employee Engagement.

3.2 Research Problem

The empirical study seeks to ascertain how TMPs and

POS relate to employee engagement in Bengaluru's

mid-sized IT firms. Both qualitative and quantitative

methodologies were employed to collect, examine,

and present the study's findings. Surveys are used to

collect primary data, while databases are searched

electronically for relevant published studies to get

secondary data from.

3.3 Tools, Sample, Procedure,

Constructs of the Study

The structured questionnaire had 35 statements

excluding demographics and all the items were

measured by five point Likert scale (1-5). The TMPs

questionnaire are adopted (Lyria R.K., 2013). The

POS questionaries’ are derived from (Eisenberger et

al., 1986) and engagement by (Shuck, B., et al.,

2017). The IT sector consists of tech services,

consulting and outsourcing with a contributing GDP

of 7.4% and revenue of $230 billion in the financial

year 2022, Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley

in India with 1.5 million employees in the IT and 50%

of top IT companies situated here (ibef.org). Thus IT

companies have been chosen as the population,

convenience sample is adopted to choose eight mid-

sized IT companies in Bangalore having employee

size between 50 to 249 that are in software

development and these companies were ready to take

part in the survey. Simple random sampling has been

adopted to choose the respondents and 65 participants

were randomly chosen from each company and

questionnaire was disturbed to 520 respondents

among them 457 were the useable responses that were

furthered used for analysis, analysis was done with

SPSS 25 with various test. The present study

consisted of three variables in cumulative, namely:

Talent Management Practices, Perceived

Organizational support and Employee Engagement.

4 DATA ANALYSIS AND

INTERPRETATION

The data analysis part consisted of validity and

reliability of the tool, the results and interpretation.

4.1 Validity and Reliability of the

Instrument

Table 1: Internal Consistency (Cronbach Alpha).

Sl No Variable No of Items Cronbach’s

1 TMP 15 0.841

2 POS 8 0.808

3 EE 12 0.927

Table 1, interprets the Cronbach’s alpha reliability

coefficient values, in all the above scales the values

are greater than 0.800 and these values are considered

good based on the study by (George and Mallery.,

2003).

4.2 Demographic Characteristics of the

Respondents

Total sample size was 457. The demographics

comprise of 258 were represented by male, and 199

female participants. The age group of 20-30 are 272,

31-40 are 127 and 41 and above 58. The designation

these IT professional had were as software engineer

282, senior software engineer 153 and Team lead 22.

4.3 Influence of TMP on POS

Table 2: Multiple Regression Analysis - Influence of TMP

on POS.

Variables B SE of B t value P value

Constant 4.705 0.307 4.005 0.001**

TA (X

0.466 0.057 8.204 0.000**

L&D (X

) 0.320 0.131 2.441 0.015*

T&R (X

0.138 0.060 2.303 0.021*

CM (X

) 0.780 0.091 8.563 0.001**

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Multiple R value = 0.746 R

value = 0.557

F value = 142.287 P value = <0.001** <0.005*

Table 2 states, R

is 0.557, indicating that 55.7% of

the variation in POS can be explained by the four

TMPs variables considered. Furthermore, the F value

of 142.287, obtained from the regression analysis,

establishes the overall significance of the model.

The multiple regression equation is -

Y = 4.705+ 0.466X

+0.320 X

+ 0.138X

+ 0.780X

From the regression analysis it was found that

coefficient of X

is 0.4705 represents the partial effect

of talent acquisition on POS by holding other

variables as constant and with the p value <0.000 at

95% confidence interval, POS would increase by

0.4705 for every unit increase in talent acquisition,

like wise for all other factors as stated in table 2.

4.4 Multiple Regression Analysis –

Influence TMP, POS & EE

Table 3: Variables in the Multiple Regression Analysis

TMP&POS on EE.

Variable

SE of

t value P value

Constant 11.013 12.186 16.027 <0.001**

0.366 0.054 6.838 <0.001**

0.708 0.091 7.789 <0.001**

Multiple R value = 0.681 R

value = 0.463

F value = 195.932 P value: <0.001**

The multiple regression equation is

Y = 11.013 +0.366 X

+0.708 X

The positive sign of this coefficient suggests a

positive relationship, implying that for every unit

increase in POS, EE would increase by 0.708 units.

Like the coefficient for TMPs, the coefficient for POS

is also statistically significant at the 1% level,

underscoring its strong impact on EE.

5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The study found TMPs influences EE by providing

support to both the hypothesis. Hypothesis H

proposed that TMPs significantly influence POS, and

this hypothesis was accepted with TMPs accounting

for 55.7% of the variance in POS. Hypothesis H

suggested that both TMPs and POS significantly

influence EE, and this hypothesis was also accepted.

The study found that TMPs and POS together explain

46.3% of the variation in EE. Thus, the study

confirms the relationship among TMP, POS and EE

(Sumarto, L., & Rumaningsih, M. 2021).

5.1 Managerial Implications

Increasing EE is a critical issue for managers.

Researchers are paying a lot of attention to EE as it is

critical to organizational effectiveness leading to

productivity, loyalty, along with leveraging a huge

impact on customer satisfaction and building the

brand image of the organization (Gruman & Saks

2011; Lockwood, 2007). Employees probably will

increase their engagement altitudes if they have a

greater impression of management support and

believe they are treated fairly well along with the

acknowledgement of their contribution towards

organization. Thus this study provides a noteworthy

guidance’s to the managers and policy framers about

the factors that enhance EE among the workforce.

Practically speaking, the managers from Indian IT

sector can benefit greatly from the present research's

findings to enhance EE in service sector and

knowledge workers. Moreover this study gives

insight in adopting various TMP like talent

acquisition, learning and development, talent

retention and career management so that employees

have positive perception towards POS thus leading to

EE. The study supports on the idea of choosing the

right TMP to develop strong POS to enhance EE in

turn leading to employee satisfaction and elevating

productivity levels.

5.2 Recommendations for Future

Research and Limitations

The future study can delve into multiple areas to gain

a deeper understanding of how these TMP operate

and their impact on organizational outcomes. The

scope of the study can be boarding by including

various industries, sectors, or countries can

significantly enhance the robustness of the evidence

available. Additionally, adopting a longitudinal

research method could yield more comprehensive

findings while minimizing the risk of potential bias in

employee perceptions.

6 CONCLUSION

This study explored the TMPs and POS leading

towards EE. TMP primarily like career management,

talent acquisition, learning and learning &

development and retention impacted POS and this

Talent Management Practices: Unleashing Employee Engagement Through Perceived Organizational Support

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leading to EE. The study adds to the body of

knowledge both empirically and quantitatively

examining the relationship between TMP and EE in

an Indian IT context. Many studies have not found

link between TMP, POS and EE as outcome variable.

The study also suggests to examine the same

relationship in other country, sectors and longitudinal

parameters to replicate the finding.

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