Integrating Talent and Knowledge Management Practices in the New Normal Business Environment: Developing Future Leaders in Public Sector Organizations

Introduction

The retirement of executive leaders and baby boomers poses business disruption, knowledge erosion and business continuity risks (Pandiyan & Jayalashmi, 2016), and therefore millennials or young generation is poised to take over leadership roles once they retire. Weber (2017) further stated that millennials enter the workforce with a typically strong desire to prove themselves by taking initiatives and having high self-esteem. Human resource managers need to develop agile strategies to handle baby boomers’ exiting the workforce. Emerging trends also demand human resources managers to develop new strategies to support talent management and succession planning initiatives. White (2018) described succession planning as a process of building next generation or future leaders considering current and future business challenges, critical skills, future skills, all core technical competencies and career development plan. Therefore, bridging the skills gaps that have also occurred during the pandemic era is one of the factors to consider although the “war for talent” continues unabated. Business organizations are now competing against each other to acquire and retain talents in order to maintain their operations and continue to grow (Arora, 2018). The transition to new normal business environment is also forcing public sector organizations and its employers to reimagine their talent and knowledge management strategies. However, human resource and knowledge managers in public sector organizations are faced with a challenge of ensuring business continuity and retaining talent and knowledge in a knowledge-based economy and new normal business environment. There is therefore a need for best practices and implementation of innovative strategies for managing talent and knowledge during this COVID 19 pandemic era.

Kehinde (2012) further observed that, in order to increase the effectiveness, organizations’ resources such as money, men and machines can be used to achieve this, and of these resources the most important of them all is the people. Human capital is considered as a key resource to adapt the business organizations to the knowledge-based economy and global competition. Employees’ knowledge, skills and competencies need to be maximized and recognized as a distinctive source of competitive advantage (Collings & Mellahi, 2009). Public sector organizations thus need to develop and strategically manage talent and knowledge flows to ensure that employees with the needed skills and competencies are available and are aligned with the right jobs based on the organization’s objectives. Public sector organizations are organizations set up by law to run services on behalf of the government, and they are owned or controlled by the government (the state) which makes all decisions. Nowadays, human resources managers in the public sector organizations requires hiring employees with good moral character, work ethic and talent above those with a specific skill set. Talent and knowledge are considered as fundamental resources to help public sector organizations to reach its goal and success. The notion of talent management has become increasingly popular, and the global war for talent is becoming a critical driving force in corporate competitiveness and performance (Axelrod, Handfield-Jones & Michaels, 2002). Talent management thus has the enormous potential of retaining and developing the most valuable assets of an organization to gain competitive advantage in a new normal business environment, whereby organizations are striving hard to survive and gain competitive edge over rivals. It is concerned with developing strategy, identifying talent gaps, succession planning, recruiting, selecting, educating, motivating and retaining talented employees through a variety of initiatives (Guthridge & Komm, 2008).