Better talent management could lift local service delivery
If local authorities paid more attention to talent management, their service delivery levels would rise accordingly. There is sound evidence that poor service delivery is a direct result of municipalities’ failure to attract, develop, effectively utilise and retain skilled, competent staff.
While research shows that talent management practices are generally poorly applied in many South African organisations, the situation is very poor in local government institutions. In my research, I found significant problems with talent management in local government and this in turn has a significant impact on service delivery. After exploring the state of talent management in municipalities from the perspective of 578 employees at various local government institutions in South Africa the results confirmed previous studies which indicated that talent management practices are not receiving sufficient attention in the public sector.
The employees who took part were asked to rate their organisations’ performance against eight main talent management practices on a scale from one to five. These eight practices were the talent review process, management commitment, workforce planning, talent retention, staffing, talent development, and talent acquisition and performance management.
All these practices were poorly applied in the local government institutions investigated, but some of the most problematic practices were poor workforce planning, talent retention strategies, and a lack of management commitment.
Younger employees less dissatisfied
Interestingly enough, the youngest and least experienced respondents tended to be the least dissatisfied with talent management at their organisations. Employees aged between 20 and 29 years perceived that talent retention strategies are more efficiently applied compared to employees aged between 30 and 39 years of age.
One possible explanation for this finding is that management may put in more effort to retain younger employees as they are more likely to leave organisations compared to other generations. It is peculiar that talent retention practices were mostly concentrated around younger generations and largely ignored the skilled, competent and more experienced older generations who possess a wealth of knowledge and experience that are irreplaceable when they leave organisations.
Setting off alarm bells
Another finding that set off alarm bells for the research team is that poor talent management practices increase employee working hours, leading to poor individual and organisational performance. This was clear from the significantly different perceptions of employees working 20 to 40 hours a week compared to those working more than 40 hours a week. Employees working between 20 and 40 hours in a week perceived more management commitment to talent management practices and better talent review processes. They also experienced better staffing, talent acquisition and development, performance management and talent retention practices.
However, it was not just employees working longer hours who expressed dissatisfaction with the state of talent management in their organisations; employees working less than 20 hours a week voiced similar levels of disgruntlement. All in all, the study highlighted “meagre application” of talent management in local government. Although this is cause for concern, it also points the way towards possible solutions for the municipal service delivery gap: manage talent better and service delivery will almost certainly improve.
