 Today, human capital at every level is considered more important than ever to organisations that hope to raise their competitiveness, both globally and locally, as organisations face a global, complex, dynamic, highly competitive, and extremely volatile environment. Nonetheless, organisations need to increase their attention to their human capital who owns unique qualities and greatest potential, and those who can sustain the competitive advantage of the organisation to stay on top. Notwithstanding the growing recognition of the importance of qualified employees, the main challenge facing most organisations is the shortages of managerial and professional talent. Shortage of talent is a major obstacle facing many companies in the implementation of their global strategies. Based on the increased need for basic skills and advanced skills level, talent management (TM) has emerged in many works of literature that emphasises the importance of human capital as a first step in gaining and sustaining a global competitive advantage. The McKinsey study was a turning point on how organisations today think about employees, where the change as an initial step in addressing the challenges of human capital. Talent management issues are becoming increasingly significant in a far wider range, not only for the private sector but also how it affected the public sector. The review of the literature revealed that the amount of research that has gone into talent management could be categorised in the following order: North America and Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East at the bottom. From the above extant literature, it is evident that very little research has gone into talent management in the Middle East. Therefore, a gap has been identified, which provides an opportunity to conduct more research in talent management in the Middle East. This research will attempt to fill this gap by contributing to the body of knowledge in exploring the effect of talent management developments in Saudi Healthcare Sector. This study adopted a qualitative approach using a case study. Interviews will be conducted with a target of 80 respondents in Saudi public hospitals using a semi-structured questionnaire to gain an in-depth understanding. The data collected will be analysed using thematic analysis. However, from the literature, it is suggestive that there is a positive impact of talent management in the public health care sector in the developed countries.

This research aims to identify the challenges confronting the delivery of training and development in the context of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a country which is currently in a transformational phase, triggered by domestic factors like Vision 2030 and global factors. Through a process known as Saudization, the government of Saudi Arabia seeks to improve the quality of human resource in the country and provide the maximum opportunities to its youth that constitutes a significant part of its population. To this end, the government is heavily investing in training and development programs and the education sector. This study collects secondary data from government documents, databases, articles, reports, books, and previous studies undertaken by the government to measure the effectiveness of its training and development programs. Various findings have been summarised from the perspective of challenges confronting the delivery of training and development programs in Saudi Arabia.

This research examines the problems encountered by the Training Needs Assessment (TNA) system from the perspective of faculty members and Human Resources (HR) managers in emerging public universities in the Saudi Arabian Higher Education sector. It aims to understand how problems with this will affect the success rate of Training and Development (T&D) curriculums. The research comprises an analytical study using a case study method of analysis. Qualitative data collection was carried out using semi-structured interviews with 75 senior managers and faculty members of four selected universities, selected using purposive non-random sampling. The data was analysed using Thematic Analysis (TA). The results highlight the insufficiency of the TNA techniques applied to ascertain training requirements. The primary obstacles to successful TNA were inadequate HR processes, insufficiently experienced HR directors, poor engagement, and favouritism concerning the selection of candidates for T&D. These issues affect the enthusiasm of those in the department. Additionally, resources required for T&D, particularly time and money, are misused, which could influence the growth potential of the universities against the country’s Vision 2030 plan. The findings indicate procedural differences in selecting and approving staff requests for Human Resource Development (HRD) support, managerial discretion in selecting participants for HRD programmes, and selective or restricted access to HRD programmes for foreign-born employees, which raises significant questions about equality policies. This study is unique as a contribution to the literature in exploring the challenges faced by the TNA process in Saudi Arabian Higher Education, therefore broadening understanding in the field as a whole, especially concerning the developing countries and Gulf Cooperation Council of Nations. The study concludes that there is currently unsatisfactory commitment in determining the staff training needs by the HR departments of Saudi Arabian public universities, which damages morale and leads to a lack of faith between HR directors and departmental staff. Finally, this study contributes to the area of policy decision-making by reporting the present situation surrounding the issues related to the application of TNA in T&D.

PurposeThis article aims to investigate the challenges faced during the training and development (T&D) evaluation process from the point of view of faculty members and HR managers in Saudi Arabian public universities, and to examine the influence of these challenges on the effectiveness of T&D programmes in public universities.Design/methodology/approachExploratory research using semi-structured interviews to determine the challenges faced during T&D evaluation was employed. Participants included faculty members (n = 23) and senior managers (n = 05) working in four public universities in Saudi Arabia. The interviews were transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis.FindingsThe outcome highlights the challenges faced during the T&D evaluation process: a lack of performance measurement and role ambiguity H.R.M. practices. Finally, this study aims to investigate how do these challenges influence the higher education sector.Originality/valueTo the best of the researcher's knowledge, this is one of the first attempts to explore challenges within the T&D evaluation process in Saudi Arabian higher education. The results should therefore broaden the scope of the available literature and fill a research gap, particularly regarding the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of Nations.

Talent management (TM) is now firmly pursued by organisations globally as a strategic imperative. Although the present talent shortage is a global challenge, it is more critical in emerging economies, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The enormous challenges associated with the attraction, development and retention of talent by firms operating in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) call for the adoption of robust talent management (TM) strategy to navigate these challenges. However, the extant literature on talent management has failed to examine in detail the talent management practices of organisations in Africa to feed into the stock of global knowledge on talent management. This chapter therefore provides empirical evidence on talent management with a contextual focus on Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in a sub-Saharan African country.