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Summary Two assumptions about employee reactions are currently driving debates around talent management (TM): First, that TM leads to positive outcomes in employees identified as talents; and second, that TM creates differences between talents and employees not identified as talents. This review critically evaluates these assumptions by contrasting theoretical arguments from the non‐empirical literature on employee reactions to TM with the empirical evidence available. Our analysis partly supports both assumptions. Although positive reactions to TM were indeed found in terms of affective, cognitive, and behavioral employee outcomes, our review also found evidence for negative affective reactions in employees identified as talents. Significant differences between talents and non‐talents were found for behavioral reactions, but not for affective and cognitive reactions; for the latter types of reactions, our review found mixed effects. We summarize these findings in an integrative framework on the basis of social exchange theory, which our review shows is the dominant theory underlying assumptions about employee reactions to TM. We propose that 3 elements are missing in our current understanding, which can help explain our review findings: uncertainty, power, and social identity. We conclude with recommendations for TM research and practice.

In this article, we explore the use of strengths interventions, defined as activities and processes that target the identification, development, and use of individual strengths, as an organizational tool to increase employee well-being. Engaging with one's strengths is assumed to be a pleasant activity that elicits positive emotions like joy, pride, and gratitude, which, in turn, contribute to feelings of overall well-being and satisfaction. Building on this assumption, we hypothesized that participating in a strengths intervention leads to increases in general (i.e., psychological capital and satisfaction with life), and work-related well-being (i.e., increased work engagement and decreased burnout), and that positive affect mediates these effects. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a field experiment with a sample of N = 116 Dutch working people who were assigned to either an experimental group (participating in a strengths intervention) or a waitlist control group. All participants filled in a pre-intervention, postintervention, and 1 month follow-up questionnaire. Results indicate that participating in a strengths intervention creates short-term increases in employee positive affect and short-and long-term increases in psychological capital. We did not find evidence for a positive, direct effect of the strengths intervention on satisfaction with life, work engagement, and burnout respectively, but we did find support for indirect effects via the mediator positive affect.