Page 88 - RESEARCH_WING_NAVY_JOURNAL_28_02_2023

72 Sri Lanka Navy Journal

Therefore, training and development, talent enhancement and talent
management significantly contribute to build a competent workforce and
realising the vision and mission of the organization. Human resource demand
will lead to the promotion of talent management for organizations to gain a
competitive edge (Perrin, 2003). Therefore, new trends in human resource
management put more emphasis on talent management strategies as
organizational training needs to change to improve the workforce’s skills and
abilities. Even though research shows that talent management is a growing
field, the Sri Lankan Navy (SLN) still needs to emphasise how well it works.
However, SLN has invested heavily in overseas training after realising that
training is the best way to improve the talents and competencies of naval officers.

On the other hand, Sri Lankan government has made dynamic economic
initiatives to transform the country into a regional economic hub in the Indian
Ocean (Finnigan, 2019). As a result, SLN needs to ensure that its naval strategy
is in-line with the government’s maritime strategy by dealing with traditional
and non-traditional security threats. Furthermore, the maritime doctrine of
Sri Lanka (MDSL, 2020) states that SLN aims to expand as a medium-regional
power projection navy. Hence, there is an immediate need to train and motivate
naval personnel quickly to do their jobs well and efficiently. Thus, ensuring
the professional training of middle-grade executive branch officers has
become a far-reaching objective, as they are the significant interlink between
the organization’s structure at the tactical and strategic levels. Therefore,
competent and talented officers are critical to the long-term development of
a professional navy. SLN provides vital local and foreign courses for middle-
grade executive branch officers and among all its long specialization training is
given a prominence. Therefore, the study explores the talent enhancement and
competency development of middle-grade executive branch officers who have
followed long naval specialization training courses.

Methodology

This study was focused on gathering information on to what extent talent
enhancement and competency development were achieved through long naval
training specialization courses. The sample included navigation, communication,
and gunnery qualified SLN officers trained in India and Pakistan who have
served on-board SLN ships within the last five years. Primary data was collected
through a survey-based structured questionnaire distributed in Google form
amongst middle-grade executive branch officers from the above sample.

Quantitative data was analysed using bivariate analysis in SPSS version
22. As part of the conceptual framework shown in figure 1, correlation analysis
and linear regression analysis were used to look at the relationships between
the independent variable (Naval Specialized Training), the mediating variable
(Talent Enhancement), and the dependent variable (Competency Development).