Individual posts by Sharna provide an opportunity to pick up an issue connected to talent management and look at it for about the length of time it takes to have your morning coffee. Read a few of those and you’ll start to see connections and synergies for talent management as a practical experience. These themes are then picked up here in longer pieces that speak to the complexities of making talent management a real thing for the betterment of sustainable enterprise (commercial or nonprofit).
Importantly, when talking more about these more multifaceted matters, Sharna is drawing on her life outside academia. For example, before she embarked on her PhD journey, Sharna spent a couple of years as a core member of ThinkEvans Pty Ltd, a boutique management consultancy. There she worked with clients as diverse as Australian Business Foundation (nonprofit think tank), Contiki Holidays (major player in packaged holidays), Catholic Healthcare (large scale private hospital operator), Railcorp (NSW Government department), Zonta International District 24 (volunteer community service organisation, part of a world wide network), CiEvents (medium sized business in the meetings, incentives, conferences sector, operating as part of a larger travel industry conglomerate), and Wellbeing for Dogs (start up small business). This provided a terrific practical and professional foundation built on:
- collaborating to deliver strategy and transformational outcomes for client projects, to meet specified needs and allowable time frames;
- applying theoretical understanding of human resources, business strategy and organisational change to client projects;
- collating and evaluating complex information, solving critical problems, and assessing the effectiveness of broad business processes for clients; and
- generating and presenting client reports based on original research, specific to the organisation’s context and strategic ambitions.