Development of a high talent engagement model in Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential relationship between the HRD roles in talent management and talent engagement in Thailand. The study also explores the antecedents to employee engagement as mediators that explain the direction of the association between HRD roles in talent management and talent engagement. Under the main purpose, this study investigated the impact of HRD roles in talent management on talent engagement in the public and private sectors in order to compare the antecedents of talent engagement in these sectors and to develop a talent engagement model for Thailand. The findings of this study are expected to provide meaningful theoretical and practical knowledge.

The conceptual model reviewed western and Thai literatures. The conceptual model consists of four components: talent management, the personal factor, and the organization factor and talent engagement. The research procedures began with a literature review related to talent, talent management, the antecedents to employee engagement, and talent engagement. The literature review was used to develop a conceptual model of talent engagement. Then, the researcher made a draft of the questionnaire and conducted content validation by using indexes of item objective congruence (IOC). Next, the researcher refined the questionnaires and did a pilot test. For this study, the pilot test was verified with 100 participants in the talent groups in HiPPS and CP All. After the pilot test, a reliability analysis was made using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Following this, the researcher sent the final questionnaire to the respondents from the population and conduced a validity analysis by using confirmation factor analysis (CFA). In the last step, both correlation statistical and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used for the data analysis.

The participants for this study consisted of talents from both the public and private sectors in Thailand. HiPPS and CP All were selected based on the definition of talent, which in this study is a leader that has high potential and high performance and will play key roles in the future. The public organization chosen was a high performance and potential system (HiPPS). The population talented employee in HiPPS program was 350. The private organization chosen was CP All Public Company Limited. The population of CP All was 177. The number of talented employees in both groups was 527.

The findings revealed a positive relationship between the HRD roles in talent management and talent engagement in the HiPPS group, whereas there was a negative relationship between the HRD roles in talent management and talent engagement in the CP All group. Next, in order to find the differences in the antecedents to employee engagement, a correlation matrix and SEM were used to analyze this hypothesizes. There was a negative, significant statistical relationship between talent engagement and the other variables at CP All. The researcher found that within the talented group at CP All, the organization categorized those talents into 2 groups: ruby and blue sapphire. On the other hand, the results showed that the HRD roles in talent management had a significant and negative relationship with talent engagement in HiPPS. Moreover, the results suggested that the fulfillment of talent engagement was mediated through the personal factor and organization factors. Last but not least, the findings of this study did not support conceptual model of talent engagement in Thailand