1.

INTRODUCTION:

Since a group of McKinsey consultants coined the phrase the War for Talent in
1997, the topic of talent management has received a remarkable degree of
practitioner and academic interest. This relatively recent emphasis on talent
management represents a paradigm shift from more traditional human resource
related sources of competitive advantage.

No subject in the past 15 years has received as much attention in the human
resource management literature as ‘talent management’. Organizations can gain a
powerful competitive advantage by tapping into their talent and learning how to
effectively organize and lead it. Although many organizations acknowledge the
importance of people, most do little or nothing to make them a source of
competitive advantage.

Oil and Gas being the most important source of energy is considered the life line
of any economy. Today the sector is at cross roads. On one hand the demand for
oil and gas is constantly increasing and on the other hand there are certain issues
such as green house gas emission and climate change, pricing, security of supply
and constantly increasing budgets of exploration and production that are pressing
the industry severely. But high on the list are the work force related issues. Such a
scenario has put oil and gas companies into war for talent.

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 In countries like India the situation is very complex. Besides the challenges that
are faced by the international oil majors, the oil and gas companies in India are
finding it very challenging to locate and attract the right skills.
The challenge for them is to develop talent management system which will ensure
the availability of the right people for the industry and create high performance
work system to achieve Competitive advantage.

 WHAT IS TALENT MANAGEMENT ?

Talent represents the best people for the job in an organization and who would
contribute to most to the achievement of its strategic goals.

Talent Management is a set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to

attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees.

“The process of managing the supply and capabilities of the workforce to meet
the demand for talent throughout the organization to achieve optimal business
performance and in direct alignment with organizational goals.”

The goal of talent management is to create a high-performance, Competitive

advantage, sustainable organization that meets its strategic and operational goals
and objectives.

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 Talent management is the implementation of integrated strategies or systems
designed to increase workplace productivity by developing improved processes
for attracting, developing, retaining and utilizing people with the required skills
and aptitude to meet current and future business needs.

 TALENT MANAGEMENT PROCESS :

Organizations are made up of people: people creating value through proven
business processes, innovation, customer service, sales, and many other
important activities. As an organization strives to meet its business goals, it must
make sure that it has a continuous and integrated process for recruiting, training,
managing, supporting, and compensating these people.
The following chart shows the complete process:

Image Source: http://www.bersin.com/Blog/post/Talent-

Management–What-is-it–Why-Now.aspx

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1. Workforce Planning: Integrated with the business plan, this process establishes
workforce plans, hiring plans, compensation budgets, and hiring targets for the
year.
2.Recruiting: Through an integrated process of recruiting, assessment, evaluation,
and hiring the business brings people into the organization.
3. On boarding/Induction: The organization must train and enable employees to
become productive and integrated into the company more quickly.
4.Performance Management: By using the business plan, the organization
establishes processes to measure and manage employee’s Performance.
5.Training and Performance Support: Of course this is a critically important
function. Here we provide learning and development programs to all levels of the
organization.
6.Succession Planning: As the organization evolve and changes, there is a
continuous need to move people into new positions. Succession planning, a very
important function, enables managers and individuals to identify the right
candidates for a position. This function also must be aligned with the business
plan to understand and meet requirements for key positions 3-5 years out.
7.Compensation and Benefits: Clearly this is an integral part of people
management. Here organizations try to tie the compensation plan directly to
performance management so that compensation, incentives, and benefits align
with business goals and business execution.

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 8. Critical Skills Gap Analysis: This is a process we identify as an important, often
overlooked function in many industries and organizations. While often done on a
project basis, it can be "business-critical."

For example, today industries like the Federal Government, Utilities,

Telecommunications, and Energy are facing large populations which are retiring.
How do you identify the roles, individuals, and competencies which are leaving?
What should you do to fill these gaps? We call this "critical talent management"
and many organizations are going through this now.
 Talent Management :
 Talent = Competence × Commitment × Contribution
C = COMPETENCE - ABLE TO DO THE WORK MEANS THE KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS,
AND VALUES THAT INDIVIDUALS REQUIRE FOR TODAY’S AND TOMORROW’S JOBS.
C= COMMITMENT- MEANS THE LEVEL OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IS WHEN
EMPLOYEES WORK ON TIME, WORK HARD AND DO WHAT IS EXPECTED OF THEM.
C = CONTRIBUTION- FINDING MEANING & PURPOSE IN WORK.

 What is Competitive Advantage ?

Competitive advantage is the ability of the firm to occupy a superior position in an
industry and outperform its rivals on the primary performance goal- profitability.

A company’s superior competitive position allows it to achieve higher profitability

than the industry’s average.

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Firms strive to survive and succeed in competition by pursuing strategies that
enable them to perform better than their competitors. There are basically two
types of competitive advantage: temporary and sustainable competitive
advantage.

Competitive advantage typically results in high profits, but these profits attract
competition, and competition limits the duration of competitive advantage in
most cases, therefore most competitive advantage is temporary. On the other
hand, some competitive advantages are sustainable if competitors are unable to
imitate the source of advantage or if no one conceives of a better offering.
2.LITERATURE REVIEW :

RESEARCH PAPERS REVIEWED:

1. In the research paper titled: “Role of Talent Management in Sustainable

Competitive Advantage : Rising to Meet Business Challange ” by Dr. Harshita
Shrimali , Bhanupriya Gidwani, In this research paper the study is conducted
based on the resource based view on earning competitive advantage . Talent
Management is the strategy to identify, develop, deploy & retain the best talented
people in the organization. In the recent times talent management has become
the advantage differs from the all others environment focused strategies because
the human resources cannot be substituted by rival firms and there is no exact
match for the talent .Now Companies realize that they have to invest in the
human capital for attracting & retaining the top talent and for this now all the
companies have to focus on providing winning environment, building reputation,
creating link between the employers and employees, understanding the

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motivators that will influence the talent. All the companies have to focus on the
creating open & innovative atmosphere to getting the right Candidate. At the end
it is essential for the company to realize the value of competitive advantage by
realizing the real value of human capital and align the talent with its corporate
strategy in this Competition era.

2. In the research paper titled: “Talent Management and its Role in creating High
Performance Work System: A Study of Oil and Gas Industry in India ” by Dr. P.
Kumari, P.C. Bahuguna, The aim behind this research is to find out the talent
management for high performance working system in oil & gas industries in India.
Oil & Gas is one of the most important source of energy and it is the life line of the
economy though it faces many of the problems like green house gases, price hike,
exchange rate fluctuation, high risk etc and the major problem in poor
performance of this sector lack of awareness regarding opportunities available in
oil & gas sector. Oil & Gas industries in India are facing the difficulties in finding
the qualified and trained human capital. By Adopting the Integrated Talent
Management model the Oil & Gas companies improves the performance. To
improve the performance of the organization they have to focus on the
employees, their competency, team work, linking the performance with reward,
creativity, innovation, career development etc. The organization gains the
competitive advantage when they follow the best talent management practices &
integrate the organization policy with talent management policy.

3. In the research paper titled: “Effective Talent Management Practices: A

Strategy for Organizational Success” by Vijay Kumar Thota, .Talent is something,

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which is highly on demand. Talent management refers to the expectation of
required human capital for an organization and the planning of those Capitals to
meet the needs of organization. Talent is the behavior, the things we do better
than other people. Basically the talent management is usually associated with
competency based management. The competency means knowledge, skill,
experience, traits etc. Talent management is the strategies that improve business
value and puts the organizations towards the door steps of the success. The goal
of Talent Management is to help the organization to achieve its overall objectives
with overcome the talent shortages and obstacles, which can directly or indirectly
help in multiply the talent for the organization. Effective talent management
includes strong participatory leadership, employee engagement that will leads
towards the long term growth in Business. With the help of the talent
management the organization earns Competitive advantage & improves the
Productivity. Every Organization has to understand the importance of talent
management and should develop a strategy to attract and retain the talent that
the organization needs to succeed. Talent management is the continues journey
not a rigid process. It is changed according to the change in environment,
competitors and technological development.

4. In the research paper titled: “The Influence of Talent Management on

Sustainable Competitive Advantage of Small and Medium Sized Establishments”
by Wael H. Ramadan, The objective of this research is to fill existing gaps by
providing an analysis of the relationship between talent management and
objective measures of the outcomes of sustainable competitive advantage. This
research provides empirical evidence on the links between talent management

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and competitive advantage. Organizational resources, human resources, and
physical resources are three types of capital resources that can be identified as
the sources of a business competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is at the
heart of firm’s performance in competitive markets. Competitive advantage
typically results in high profits. But profits attract competition, and competition
limits the duration of competitive advantage in most cases, therefore most
competitive advantage is temporary .On the other hand, if competitors are unable
to imitate the source of advantage or if no one conceives of a better offering then
competitive advantages are sustainable. This century is belonging to the WAR Of
TALENT. Unused human skill and knowledge within the firm is a competitive
disadvantage. Talent management forms a basis for creating a framework for
understanding and, more importantly for investing in a firm's sustainable
competitive advantage.

5. In the research paper titled: “Integrated talent management -Turning talent

management into a competitive advantage: An industry view (IBM) by Tim
Ringo, Allan Schweyer, Michael DeMarco, Ross Jones and Eric Lesser examine
that now world-class companies develop within emerging economies and begin
to compete with more familiar global corporations, the competition for top talent
intensifies. The study shows different industries are responding to the need to
more effectively manage talent with varying degrees of intensity. Findings show
that knowledge-intensive industries such as Telecommunications,
Electronic/Technology and Professional Services build talent by supporting
collaboration and knowledge-sharing among individuals and across the enterprise
so that they have to focus on developing and connecting their employees.

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Financial Services firms focus more on attracting and keeping superior talent,
rather than developing top-tier skills and capabilities “in house.” Retail companies
saw a strong correlation between their success in managing talent and the success
of their overall business strategy, they have to concentrate on talent Strategy and
applying talent management practices. Government agencies, educational
institutions and some healthcare firms fall short in managing talent and sustaining
change. The study confirmed that public-sector institutions face numerous
challenges, including motivating and developing talent, and dealing with change.
Now the Companies are migrated towards more knowledge or service business
with focusing on motivating, developing, and enabling workforce. All the public
sector organization have to take steps for proactive approach.
3.TECHNOLOGY GAP :

In this technological era, there was a dotcom bubble, which made the most
talented to shift from traditional to Information Technology. This recession created
a big gap between the supply and demand of talent resulting in over-supply of
technical people in comparison with demand, and under-supply of multi-talented
work force over demand.

To overcome this problem, companies have to follow the best retention strategies.
Another development that took place in recent years was that of contract job
opportunities, that is outsourcing. The recruits may have the talent, but
commitment will be less because of lack of sense of belongingness. Good

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organizations outsource only the secondary activities. They retain the talent for
primary activities.

The following have been observed as the research gaps based on the review of
literature:
 What are the financial and non-financial parameters to be considered in
measuring Talent of the employee?
 Neglect of the Organization Culture; Work-life balance of the employee is
not given due importance,

 There has been a larger degree of research about talent management in the
western context. Not much work has been done in Indian context and
Gujarat.

4. RATIONAL OF THE PROBLEM:

Talent management is the process through which employers anticipate and meet
their needs for human capital. The decisions you make about talent management
will shape your organization's competencies and its ultimate success; from the
perspective of the people who work for you, these decisions determine the path
and pace of their careers.

Most of the organization faces the challenges like Attracting & Retaining,
Developing a robust leadership pipeline, Creating a value proposition that appeals
to multiple generations, Transferring key knowledge and relationships.

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5 . OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

 To present the basic understanding of Talent management.

 To study the factors that influences the talent Management practices in Oil &
Gas Companies in Gujarat.
 To examine how talent management helps in achieving competitive advantage.
 To identify the reasons to attract, motivate, reward and retain the talented
employees.
 To Find out the Challenges & Opportunities against the Talent Management.
 To obtain the best possible suggestion in order to increase the effectiveness of
talent management practices.
6. METHODOLOGY FOR THE STUDY:

The methodology that will be followed in research will be ex-posto facto research,
evaluation research, and personal interviewing.

1. The ex-posto facto research:

The data published in several magazine, journals, publications, websites and
outcome of the several surveys conducted by different research agencies will be
used for the research.

2. Questionnaires/Personal Interviewing Technique:

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Questionnaires/Interview technique will be employed to get information
regarding the various factors relating to Talent Management in Oil & Gas
companies in Gujarat. This technique will be used with a view to get more
information than the secondary data. The information is collected for the
establishing the relationship between the Talent Management & Competitive
advantage.

The scope of the research would be covering various Oil & Gas companies in
Gujarat including Reliance Refinery and Essar oil, Adani, Indian Oil, GSPC etc.

The research design being exploratory in nature, personal interviewing of

Employees, Engineers & Managers. It will be supported questionnaire to collect
relevant data information.

(1) Universe of the Study: The study would be conducted in Oil & Gas companies in
Gujarat.

(2) Unit of Analysis: Employees & HR managers

(3) Sample selection:
The study will use method for data collection. The
sampling strategy used for this study is non-probability
sampling. This study followed a convenience sampling
approach. The study proposed to cover major oil & Gas
companies in Gujarat.

(4) Proposed sample size: 300

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(5) Sources of the Data:
(6) Data Analysis:
(7) Assumptions of the study:
The study would be conducted using both the primary and
secondary data:
1) The primary data would be collected using structured
questionnaire & personal interview method. 2) The
secondary data for the study will be collected from
different websites, magazines, journals and several other
sources.
The entire set of data information proposed to be collected
from primary & secondary sources shall be analyzed using
appropriate statistical tool. Besides, appropriate Talent
Management models and computer aided software’s will
also be used for analyzing and interpreting the data.
The prime hypothesis of the study is as under:
H0: There is no significant Impact of Talent Management On
Competitive advantage.
H1: There is significant Impact of Talent Management On
Competitive advantage.
H0: There is no significant Impact of Talent Management On
Productivity.
H1: There is a significant Impact of Talent Management On
Productivity.
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 H0:There is no significant relationship between designation
and talent Management Practices.
H1: There is a significant relationship between designation
and talent management practices

H0 : There is no significant relationship between age and

talent management practices.
H1 : There is a significant relationship between age and
talent management practices

H0 : There is no significant relationship between experience

and talent management.
H1 : There is a significant relationship between experience
and talent management.

7. OVERVIEW OF CHAPTER PLAN:

Chapter 1 - Overview & Introduction:

This chapter will briefly cover concept and overview of Talent Management – the emergence of
Talent Management - Talent Management & India – Problems in Talent Management - Oil & Gas
Industry in India - Oil & Gas Companies In Gujarat.

Chapter 2 - Conceptual framework:

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This chapter will include introduction and concept of Talent Management & Competitive
advantage – Process of Talent Management System - Advantage & Disadvantages of talent
management - Ways of Competitive Advantage – Organization View towards Competitive
advantage and any all other relevant information which will required for research purpose.

Chapter 3 - Review of literature:

This chapter will include the review of existing literature available from several journals,
magazines, website and published data from several research agencies.

Chapter 4 –Methodology, Data Collection & Analysis

This chapter will include the methodology adopted for the research – it will include the universe
of the study – sampling design – sampling unit - Classification of samples – period of study –
Data collection and analysis tools adopted for the study – Establishing relation between the
Talent Management & Competitive Advantage.

Chapter 5 – Findings, Suggestions and Limitations of Research:

This chapter will give its emerging conclusion based on analysis carried out and also include
findings, suggestions and limitations of the research.

8.BIBLIOGRAPHY & WEBILIOGRAPHY:

Books referred:
 Gary Dessler ; Human Resource Management, New Delhi, Pearson, 12 th
edition
 Edward E. Lawler III – Talent

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 A handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, By Armstrong,
Michael
 Kothari, C.R., Research Methodology, New Delhi, New age international (P)
limited publishers, 2nd edition, 2006.

Web site referred:

 https://hrnt.jhu.edu/tmod/talent_mgmt/talent_mgmt.cfm
 www.shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/2419/.../09_chapter
%202.pdf
 http://www.managementstudyguide.com/competitive-advantage-talent-
management.htm
 http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9781409418139
 https://www1.ethz.ch/entrepreneurship/education/lectures/dm/DM.ST12/HR
M_ABB_Article_Collings_2009.pdf
 www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJEBS: Volume: 01, Number: 06, April-2012
 http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-06-20/todays-top-10-talent-
management-challengesbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-
financial-advice

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