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Global talent shortages, new skill demand and rising numbers of unfilled posts are fuelling an increasingly challenging job market, exacerbated by economic uncertainty and transformational digital change. Seeking creative solutions in response, the authors examine talent management’s (TM) theoretical and conceptual foundations, specifically the identification and selection of talent and TM programme design to explore the challenges and benefits of side-of-desk projects as interventions.

Taking an inductive qualitative approach, questionnaires, focus groups and semi-structured interviews gathered data from three employee groups in a UK digital communications organisation.

The authors reveal inconsistencies in the definition and selection of talent, highlighting programme quality challenges to expose a direct correlation between participant experience and motivation and retention, along with the longer-term challenges of balancing talented human capital, shareholder expectations and sustainable workforce resourcing.

The authors' research extends existing knowledge concerning the effect of organisational culture, context and workforce demands upon TM programmes, providing theoretical and practical implications for leaders and policymakers in designing enrichment activities to motivate, develop and retain talent. The authors make recommendations to inform the future design of TM programmes, revealing new opportunities to develop hidden talent and presenting a realistic and sustainable toolkit for future practice in the form of an organisational logic model.