A competitive talent management strategy for a natural resources mining company in selected countries in Africa.
Van Hoek, Catharina Elizabeth
Van Hoek, Catharina Elizabeth
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Abstract
The mining industry in Africa faces specific challenges relating to different cultures, beliefs, norms, languages, standards, geographical areas, talent retention, performance management, remuneration, ethics, communication, training and development, black economic empowerment and management relationships. Demand continues to strengthen as reflected in strong growth, and supply is increasingly constrained as development projects become more complex and are typically conducted in more remote, unfamiliar territory. The aim of the study was to build a competitive talent management (TM) strategy for a natural resources mining company in selected African countries, by investigating the following objectives: (1) to determine the attitudes of the employees in the mining company towards the five perspectives of talent management, namely procurement, remuneration, performance management, training and development and retention; (2) to determine the main factors that contribute most significantly towards a TM strategy; (3) to determine whether the citizens of the different African countries differed in their views on compensation; (4) to determine whether the different mine types experienced differences in their views on the importance of compensation; (5) to determine whether the different race groups had different views on the importance of organisational behaviour; (5) to determine whether the different job levels felt differently about career development; and (6) to build a competitive TM management strategy for ENRC Africa.
TM should be measured in order to make it more effective and to adapt or design a strategy accordingly. Five critical dimensions in a TM strategy were identified by conducting a thorough literature review. Each of these dimensions has five subdimensions, which adds up to 25 critical dimensions that may have an impact on the effectiveness of a TM strategy. The 25 TM dimensions were integrated into the questionnaire. The population of 784 employees for this study included all permanent staff members in ENRC (Eurasian Natural Resource Company) in the following African countries in which the company operates: Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa. A total of 784 questionnaires were distributed via the SurveyMonkeyâ„¢ website. A total of 396 questionnaires were completed, which represents 51% of the population in this study, the factor analysis program of SPSS was used. A principal factor analysis was conducted, and the items that loaded high on each of the five factors respectively were investigated for common themes. The five factors labelled were performance management and motivational processes, remuneration, career development, organisational behaviour and manager-employee relationships. The reliability of the factors was assessed by means of a Cronbach alpha and all the individual items contributed significantly to the overall reliability of the instrument.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine whether differences existed between two or more population means. A post hoc procedure was applied to determine whether there were any differences between the means. Post hoc tests consist of pairwise comparisons that are designed to compare all different combinations of groups. The major findings were as follows: The gender distribution indicated that more males (77.3%) than females (22.7%) responded to the questionnaire. In terms of the population distribution from the 394 responses received, 200 respondents (50.5%) were black, 16 (4%) coloured, 36 Indian (9.1%) and 142 white (35.9%). A total of 18.7% had a Grade 12 or equal qualification, 28.8% a national diploma,
25.3% a degree and 27.3% a post-graduate degree. Most of the respondents were South African citizens (46%). A total of 36.4% were citizens of the DRC and 7.3% from Zimbabwe, 3% from Zambia, 5.3% from Mozambique and 0.5% from Malawi. Of the respondents, 1.5% were citizens of other countries such as Britain, Russia and France. Regarding the different job levels, the majority of respondents were managers (37.1%), administration (21%), the professionals (17.2%), operational staff (12.9%) and technical (11.1%). Further investigation revealed that
remuneration was not that important to the French, but the Afrikaans-speaking group regarded it as more important. There was also significant differences between the race groups regarding remuneration (F = 25.927; p = 0.000) and organisational behaviour (F = 5.458; p = 0.020). Following an integration of the literature review and the business plan of ENRC, an empirical study was conducted to build a competitive TM strategy for a natural resources mining company in selected African countries. In conclusion, recommendations were
made to the company regarding specific TM interventions for immediate implementation.
Description
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree, Doctor Technologiae in the Department of People Management and Development,
Faculty of Management Sciences at the Tshwane University of Technology
Date
2014-02-01
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Tshwane University of Technology
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Keywords
Competitive talent management, Remuneration, Performance management, Talent attraction, Organisational ethics