Sustaining Human Capital in an Organization: The Role of Talent Management

Talent management, based on an exclusive approach to talents and focusing on high achievers, may place excessive performance pressure on employees, jeopardize their well-being, threaten workplace equity, and lead to detrimental long-term outcomes for human capital. Research is needed on how organisations can develop more inclusive talent management that aligns the interests of both organisations and employees to sustain human capital. To explore how human capital sustainability is understood and how talent management contributes to it, qualitative research, including 30 interviews with human resource managers from international companies operating in Europe, was performed. The research reveals four pillars of human capital sustainability enhancing talent management and contributes to talent management literature by expanding it with a long-term perspective covering employee-organisation mutual value development.