Approaches to the talent management agenda in forestry companies

Abstract Professional literature and practice started to focus intensively on the field of talent management. A lack of talented individuals occurred in all sectors worldwide. The war for talents has not faded out, on the contrary, it has been intensifying. The aim of the paper is therefore to analyse the perception of opportunities for development and management of talents in forestry and to specify characteristics of employee/ talent support perception in surveyed companies. The analysis is based on a primary survey conducted in 101 forestry companies. The data were obtained through surveys in which one manager and one employee represented a single company. One-dimensional and multidimensional statistics were used to evaluate the data. The results showed that employees perceived developmental conditions in companies more positively than what was stated by managers and company representatives. The average difference in the perception was 8.5%; employees perceived the conditions better than company representatives. When negative phenomena were analysed, the perception was quite opposite. The average difference was 9.5%. The limit of the paper is the narrow focus on primary sector companies. The results may help surveyed companies in the primary sector to encourage managers and employees to participate in developmental programmes as their own initiative and willingness to take part in education and developmental activities was found.