The integration of talent management and knowledge management in the South African public service

Abstract

The South African public service is experiencing a high staff turnover and difficulties to retain staff. These will result in the loss of talented and knowledgeable employees and consequently a loss of institutional memory, and will create a knowledge gap. The purpose of the study was to explore whether talent management and knowledge management are integrated and whether they support staff retention in the South African public service. The qualitative data were collected through document analysis and semi-structured individual interviews with seven senior managers and six middle managers who were selected purposefully. Three main themes and ten sub-themes were identified and discussed. The findings indicated that talent management and knowledge management were applied in an ad hoc manner and that there were no approved policies. However, it was found that performance management formed the basis for talent management and that the current talent management approach failed to retain talented employees.