Talent Management Strategies at Salford City Council, UK

This essay examines talent management strategies within the context of Salford City Council, UK, focusing on attracting, recruiting, and retaining talents. It explores the application of human resource development (HRD) theory, drawing lessons from organizations like Unilever, Barclays, and the National Health Service. The essay discusses strategies for attracting diverse talent through employer branding, recruitment strategies aligned with integrated talent management solutions, and retention strategies involving appraisals and promotions. It also analyzes the benefits of in-house training and on-the-job training under line managers, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages for both the organization and employees. The analysis emphasizes the importance of tailoring training methods to employee experience levels to optimize talent development and retention, ultimately contributing to the council's long-term human resource development goals.

Running head: ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
Talent Management at The Salford City Council
Name of the Student:
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1ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
Attracting of talents can be defined as the process of obtaining prospective candidates
to interview for job posts. Recruitment is defined as the process of attracting, selecting and
appointing appropriate human resources to work for organisations. Retention refers to the
capability of organisations to retain their employees using methods like promotions in order
to benefit from them for a longer period. The essay would deal with the human resource
development theory in relation to attracting, recruiting and retaining talents by Salford
City Council, the United Kingdom and take lessons from three British organisations namely,
Unilever, Barclays and the National Health Services. The human resource development
(HRD) theory deals with attracting, recruitment and retaining talents. This is because
management of human resources are of utmost importance to organisations because they
ensure continuous execution of operations. Salford City Council is the local governing
authority of the City of Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The body is responsible for
arrangement of civic amenities like health and education within its jurisdiction. The Mayor
heads the Salford Council and ruling party is the Labour Party of Britain (salford.gov.uk
2017).
Salford City Council should implement its project of attracting, recruiting and
retaining talents of all ages by forming human resource strategies based on the British
multinational organisations like Unilever, Barclays and National Health Services. The
government can adopt several strategies to acquire and retain human resource of all ages.
The first strategy, which Salford City Council can implement to attract talents of all
ages, is by forming a promotion of its brand as an employer of choice. The global companies
like Unilever and Barclays attract employees using their international brand equity, which act
as signs of job security for prospective employees. Their job advertisements contain the job
description in detail, which allows the candidates to judge whether they should join these
companies, or not (Tavassoli, Sorescu and Chandy 2014). The job description has clear

2ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
mention about the job responsibilities, eligibility criteria, particular area of experience
candidates should have, the expectations of the companies from the employees and an idea
about compensation packages. This detailed description allows the companies to create a
transparent and employee friendly image of itself among the prospective candidates. The
Salford City Council is a government body, which gets continuous funding from the
Government of England. It vision is to transform Salford as a great work place which would
encourage talent and diversity management. The Council envisions promoting healthy
employee cultures to ensure that employees work with respect, pride and responsibility. Thus,
the Council can form strategies to promote its vision and mission to attract employees from
diverse industries of all ages (Khan and Naseem 2014).
The second strategy of the Salford Council should aim to recruit employees of diverse
ages. The body must form a recruitment strategy, which should applicable in all the
departments throughout the organisation. The recruitment stage should follow the employer
brand strategies to attract talents by creating desire in them to apply for jobs in the council.
The government body can base its HRD policies on the integrated talent management
solutions model, which integrates the recruitment with the business needs, visions and
missions of the organisations. The body should conduct job descriptions, applicant
recognition, scrutiny of their backgrounds and health checkups before hiring them (Tajuddin,
Ali and Kamaruddin 2015). The human resource department should mention the job
description while recruiting employees. The interview questions should be framed according
to the job descriptions and the position for which the candidates are being interviewed. The
interview process should be designed to assess the real level of knowledge and experience
level of the candidates. The body should scrutinise to gain knowledge about the real
background of the employees (Dries 2013). Thus, the recruitment process should ensure the

3ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
practice of human resource development is aligned to the integrated talent management
solution model.
The third strategy, which Salford City Council should adopt, is to retain its
employees. The body should retain its employees by facilitating appraisals and promotions.
An analysis of the human resource planning of the National Health Services shows that the
non profit making government body prepare succession plans for its employees by taking into
account the future vacancies and retirements. The organisation conducts leadership
development training and mentoring as integral part of the succession plans (porthosp.nhs.uk
2017). These succession plans and appraisals create job satisfaction among the employees,
which would help the Salford City Council to retain these employees. The body must follow
uniform retention policies in all the departments to ensure equable career development
opportunities to the employees (oracle.com 2017).
The Salford City Council can take into account two different practices to obtain
highly talented human resources of diverse age groups. They are training development
programmes comprising of in-house training and coaching by line managers. According to
a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), these two
practices are the most prevalent in the United Kingdom (cipd.co.uk 2017).
The first approach to talent induction and retention, which Salford City Council can
adopt, is in-house training. The concept of in-house training refers to training of employees
within the company premises in training rooms where a trainer provides them with
knowledge they would require to carry on their job responsibilities. The Salford City can
apply this method in all the departments to inculcate the necessary skills the newly hired
employees would require to work or receive on job training under a line manager
successfully. The method of in house training has advantages for both the organisation and

4ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
the employees. The first advantage of in-house training to the Salford Council as per
Masalimova and Sabirova (2014) is that, it would be able o offer training to the employees
without bearing any extra costs to take them to training centres. Moreover, if an external
trainer is hired, the council would just require to pay for the trainer and not for hiring a slot at
a training centre. Thus, in-house training can help the council in saving costs. According to
Kazis and Molina (2016), the second advantage of the in-house training for the council is
that the new employed employees can be onboarded more successfully. The human resource
department gets an opportunity to introduce the employees to the organisation, its culture and
job environment. It gives an opportunity to the employer to induce the new employees to the
organisation and groom them. The third advantage of in-house training is that employers can
educate the new employees about diversity management (Bafaneli and Setibi 2015). The
multinational organisations like Barclays are successful employees due to their diversity
management skills(jobs.barclays.co.uk 2017). This would enable the managers to manage
their diverse human resources and lead them towards attainment of organisational goals
(Chancellor and Abbott 2015).
The method of in-house training would benefit the newly induced trainees in several
ways. Emmanuel (2015) points out the first advantage of in-house training, which is, the
trainees would get opportunity to acclimatise with the organisational culture of the body.
They would be able to understand the organisational culture and the expectations the Salford
Council has from them. Secondly, as Kweka and Sedoyeka (2014) points out, it would allow
them to develop the basic knowledge about their job responsibilities. One can also point out
that the Salford Council can use the in-house training as a platform to introduce the
integrated talent management solutions model and use it to align the trainees with the
governing and facilitating goals of the body. However, one can point that the without the
second method, the coaching and training by line managers, the in-house training of

5ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
employees has little actual benefit for the employees. It is not possible to create real job
situations in the in-house training centres and the trainers merely simulate the actual job
conditions through methods like storytelling, lectures and slide shows. Thus, in absence of
actual job situations, the newly hired trainees lose motivation or interests in the training. This
limits them from deriving full benefits of human resource development from the training.
Secondly, the absence of actual job situations and challenges prevents the trainees from
gaining in depth knowledge. These flaws of in-house would call for the Salford Council to
apply the second training method, training under the supervision of line managers in real
job situations.
The method of training employees under the supervision of line managers in actual
job situation is so effective, that more than half of the personnel in Britain prefer it. The
newly hired employees are trained under the supervision of the senior employees, which
benefits the new employees, the senior employees and the council. The council through the
on-job training process can introduce the new employees brought onboard to the actual
working conditions (Wijewantha 2016). The first advantage of on-job training derived from
the analysis of the discussion is, the new employees can as a result understand the actual
working conditions. Hülsheger et al. (2013) in support of on-job training state that the process
allows employees to gain job satisfaction by working under actual conditions. This ensures
that new employees having experiences start contributing towards productivity of their
departments faster which would allow the council to achieve more effective human resource
development.
The second advantage of on-job training under supervision of line managers is that
the managers and the employees are able to establish more cordial work relationship and
benefits from each other. Fu and Deshpande (2014) most of the companies like Unilever keep
their experienced and talented senior employees onsite. As a result, the newly hired

6ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
employees while undergoing training by these line managers would be able to learn from
them. The senior employees would be able to benefit from the innovative ideas of the new
employees. The junior employees as a result feel more important which motivates them to be
committed to perform highly(unilever.co.uk 2017). This understanding would enable
employees of all ages to work collaboratively contribute towards the performance of the
council. Moreover, the employees also perceive this as the company’s positive career
planning efforts for them. The Salford Council can integrate the new employees with its
working environment (Bonenberger et al. 2014).This analysis clearly points out that on-job
training has certain advantages which would benefit the Salford Council, the senior managers
and the junior managers. These advantages would help the council to retain the employees
because better understanding of the organisational culture and job responsibilities would
motivate them. They would be able to get involved in day-to-day operations and contribute to
the growth of the company. This would in turn create job satisfaction and they would
continue working with the Salford Council. As a result, the council would be able to retain
such employees for longer tenure and achieve long-term human resource development,
which would save its expenditure of frequent on-boarding new employees. However, Mathis,
(2014) points out the darker aspects of mentoring by line managers. He points out that if the
line managers are not expert trainers, the new employees may not develop the required skills
successfully which in turn hampers their performance and their job satisfaction. Utete (2017)
points out that transfer of knowledge is important to make employees skilful and retain them.
This clearly points out that knowledge to inexperienced newly hired employees can take
place best through in-house training. Training under line managers’ supervision would
benefit employees with some experience but not the inexperienced employees. This analysis
shows that as far as the Salford Council is concerned, the body has to adapt the training
methods across departments according to the needs of the employees. For example, the newly

7ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
hired employees with minimum experience can undergo training under mentorship of the line
managers whereas for inexperienced employees, the most appropriate process would be in-
house training. Combining these two training methods would allow the body to recruit, train,
retain and deploy talents of all ages across departments.
After analysis of the above discussion, one can conclude that, the human resource
department of the Salford City Council should form a multifaceted HR policy to attract,
recruit, train and retain employees of all ages throughout the body. The recommended HR
policy should be transparent about the job responsibilities of the employees who would be
recruited. The body must use its brand value to attract talents to recruit them and benefit from
their efficiencies. The job advertisement should be ethical and transparent about the
important areas of employment like compensation, amount of job pressure and working
environment. The aim of recruitment should be retaining talents and ensure their career
growth. The training methods to train the employees should be decided according to the
attributes of the employees like line manager training for experienced employees.

8ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
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9ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
Hülsheger, U.R., Alberts, H.J., Feinholdt, A. and Lang, J.W., 2013. Benefits of mindfulness
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10ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
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11ATTRACTING, RECRUITING AND RETAINING TALENTS
Appendix:
Figure 1. Figure showing human resource development
(Source: Bonenberger et al. 2014)