Evaluating Talent Acquisition Strategies: A Westpac Bank Case Study

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Westpac's talent acquisition strategies, examining its alignment with Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) principles. It begins with a company overview and defines talent acquisition within the context of SHRM, emphasizing its importance in today's competitive workforce environment. The report then details Westpac's specific talent acquisition processes, including lead generation, interview techniques, and assessment tools, relating them to the broader business strategy. It evaluates Westpac's performance in this area, comparing it to the SHRM literature and providing a critical assessment in the form of a report card. The report concludes by summarizing Westpac's strengths in talent acquisition and its influence on employee performance. It references numerous journal articles to support its findings and recommendations. The report focuses on communication ability, delivering an informative assessment of the topic in a professional online manner.

Running head: HRM STRATEGIES
HRM STRATEGIES
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1HRM STRATEGIES
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Company Overview...............................................................................................................2
Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) at Westpac.............................................2
Importance of talent acquisition.............................................................................................3
Talent Acquisition at Westpac...............................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
References:.................................................................................................................................6

2HRM STRATEGIES
Introduction
In this modern era of unprecedented workforce mobility, several Australian
employers are emphasising on becoming “employer of choice” (Walker 2015). As a result of
this, employees today are enjoying more flexibilities and benefits than ever before.
Employers entice the applicants by means of hiring them for their soft skills, being more open
about the pay, giving flexible working hours etc. Workers expect more from their employers-
more accountability, more trust and more transparency. At the same time, employers too look
out for the candidates who have the ability of thinking more creatively, can adapt to change
quickly and can collaborate effectively. This paper shall elaborate on the process of talent
acquisition at Westpac, the first Australian bank to provide financial services.
Discussion
Company Overview
Westpac Banking Corporation or Westpac is an Australian bank that provides
financial services since its emergence in the year 1817 in Sydney. The business structure of
the company includes five divisions and they are- Consumer Bank, Business Bank,
Commercial Bank, Westpac Institutional Bank, BT Financial Group and Westpac New
Zealand (Blundell-wignall, Atkinson and Roulet 2018). All these five divisions serve more
than 12 billion of customers. However, it is to note that Westpac is considered to be the best
bank as it provides the investors an alternative prism through which they can assess the
profitability of the bank and value their equity and debt.
Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) at Westpac
It is to note that SHRM refers to the practice of attracting, rewarding, developing and
finally, retaining the employees for the benefit of both the employees and the organisation as
a whole. As per the theory of SHRM, human resource management (HRM) always has an

3HRM STRATEGIES
impact on the performance of a company by means of employee performance (Wallace et al.
2014). It is the Human Resource Managers who are responsible of the development of
strategic solutions to the employment related issues that influence the ability of an
organisation for meeting its performance and productivity goals. It is to note that talent
acquisition refers to the process of finding and acquiring some skilled human labour or
workforce for fulfilling the needs of the organisation as well as to meet the other labour
requirement in the company. When used in terms of recruitment and HR profession, the
concept of talent acquisition refers to the team of talent acquisition within the HR department
of the company (Albrecht et al. 2015). HR team is responsible to find out, acquire, assess and
hire potential candidates for filling up the roles that are necessary for the company to meet its
goals and fill up the project requirements. In case of Westpac, Like in any other companies,
recruitment is still an inseparable and distinct function of HR generalist. According to
Oladapo (2014), it is the responsibility of the HR management in Westpac to ensure that the
process of talent acquisition in the firm and the other HRM practices are going smooth and
effective. The company has made significant success in its planning of workforce initiatives.
The workforce planning in Westpac is very strongly related to its business strategy as the
company continuously review its workforce and ensure that right sourcing and development
decision are made that reflect the mission, budget as well as the strategic plans of the
company (Chong 2015). Like in case of ANZ bank, one of the strong competitors of
Westpac, the talent acquisition team of the company are responsible for the identification and
hiring of the best talents all around New Zealand and Australia, Westpac too hire Talent
Acquisition experts for making the process smooth and effective. The senior manager of
talent acquisition team is responsible for leading the internal team and actively engaging with
the team of leaders in Westpac and the key stakeholders of the business in the region.
Importance of talent acquisition

4HRM STRATEGIES
It is to mention that there is a difference between simple recruitment and talent
acquisition. One of the major differences in between this two is that of focus. The process of
recruitment focus recruiting candidates into open jobs and they are less concerned about the
“fit” of theirs. On the other hand, talent acquisition takes a long lasting view. According to
Chadwick, Super and Kwon 2015). The ones who are engaged in acquiring talent are very
interested in finding out the best potential candidate for their job. Hence, it can be said that
one of the main advantages of talent acquisition is that it helps organisations to get the right
people. Secondly, having right people in place can help the business to gain a competitive
edge over the other competitors in the market. Right people would always have the right
skills to make sure that the work is completed properly in time and also, that the business
decision are sound. Furthermore, it helps in saving time and money. As talent acquisition is a
highly involved process, it saves expending of resources like training. It helps in avoiding
these processes to save both time and money of the organisation.
Talent Acquisition at Westpac
As mentioned above, the theory of HRM claims that human resource management
(HRM) always has an impact on the performance of a company by means of employee
performance. Westpac does consider this point to be true and ensure that its HRM practices
and policies within the firm are effective, ethical and are for the benefit of both company as
well as the employees. To this regard, Westpac hire Talent Acquisition Specialists who are
responsible for the recruitment processes, leadership and playing the specialist roles within
and across the different business wide units (Chong 2015). In this process, these specialists
first generate the potential leads in order to generate a pool of proper talents for the present
vacant position in the company. This process begins with a job description that define the
different roles that the staff are required to fulfil and the qualifications that Westpac desire
for. Thereafter, promotions of the job postings are done in several channels and it can be

5HRM STRATEGIES
something like the professional website for the job seeker and through the social media
platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn (Zhang et al. 2015). Furthermore, they ask right questions
for the behavioural interview. Some of the other extra tools that Westpac sometimes use for
employee assessment include EQ, IQ and personality test. Finally, the final decisions are
made.
Progress Report to rate Westpac on the basis of its Talent Acquisition Process
Name of the
Company
Westpac
Date of Reporting 25-09-2019
Subject Date Score obtained Total Score Remarks
Generating Potential
Lead
25-09-
2019
10 10 Westpac effectively
generate the leads to
gather suitable talents
for the vacant positions.
Picking the right
questions for
interview
25-09-
2019
10 10 Westpac asks questions
to know about the real
experiences of the
candidates and hence,
does not make any
hypothetical questions.
Use of Assessment
tools and exercises
25-09-
19
08 10 IQ test, EQ test,
Personality Test are
done but it should also
do physical ability test
Checking References 25-09-
19
10 10 Westpac always make
reference call and at the
same time, crosscheck
the validity of the
references content.
Overall Score 38 40 Excellent Performance
Conclusion
Hence from the above analysis it is to conclude that Westpac is performing
excellently in terms of talent acquisition. The company understands the importance of talent
acquisition for the achievement of long term success. Its process of talent acquiring involves
several steps right from lead generation to finalising the decision. This has an influence on
the company performance through employee performance.

6HRM STRATEGIES
References:
Albrecht, S.L., Bakker, A.B., Gruman, J.A., Macey, W.H. and Saks, A.M., 2015. Employee
engagement, human resource management practices and competitive advantage: An
integrated approach. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 2(1),
pp.7-35.
Blundell-Wignall, A., Atkinson, P. and Roulet, C., 2018. Business Models of Banks and
Global Contagion. In Globalisation and Finance at the Crossroads (pp. 115-136). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Chadwick, C., Super, J.F. and Kwon, K., 2015. Resource orchestration in practice: CEO
emphasis on SHRM, commitment‐based HR systems, and firm performance. Strategic
Management Journal, 36(3), pp.360-376.
Chong, F., 2015. The fintech challenge of a new generation... Asia Today
International, 33(1), p.7.
Oladapo, V. (2014). The impact of talent management on retention. Journal of business
studies quarterly, 5(3), 19.
Walker, C., 2015. ‘I don’t really like tedious, monotonous work’: working-class young
women, service sector employment and social mobility in contemporary
Russia. Sociology, 49(1), pp.106-122.
Wallace, M., Lings, I., Cameron, R. and Sheldon, N., 2014. Attracting and retaining staff: the
role of branding and industry image. In Workforce development (pp. 19-36). Springer,
Singapore.

7HRM STRATEGIES
Zhang, J., Ahammad, M.F., Tarba, S., Cooper, C.L., Glaister, K.W. and Wang, J., 2015. The
effect of leadership style on talent retention during merger and acquisition integration:
Evidence from China. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26(7),
pp.1021-1050.