Integrating Talent Development and Retention to Strengthen Talent Attraction: Evidence from a Mediation Model

This study examines the relationships among talent development, talent retention, and managers’ ratings of talent attraction in Saudi retail organizations. A cross-sectional questionnaire was completed by 162 managers in four large retail companies in the Makkah Region of Saudi Arabia, representing an 81% response rate from 200 targeted managers. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the measurement model, while the hypothesized structural relationships were estimated using observed composite scores with HC3 heteroskedasticity-robust inference. Talent development was positively associated with talent attraction (β = 0.345, p < 0.05) and talent retention (β = 0.700, p < 0.001), while talent retention was positively associated with talent attraction (β = 0.439, p < 0.001). A bootstrap analysis based on 5000 resamples estimated the indirect association between talent development and talent attraction through talent retention at 0.319 (95% CI [0.103, 0.591]). The model explained 52.4% of the variance in talent attraction and 49.0% in talent retention. These findings highlight the interconnected roles of talent development and retention in managers’ assessments of organizational talent-attraction capacity and provide context-specific evidence from the Saudi retail sector.