Human resources plays many roles in a company. The department manages employee relations, talent acquisition, payroll, onboarding, and much more. One more duty of HR is talent management.
This is key to keeping your organization moving ever closer to its goals.
Discover:
Talent management is a constant process that involves attracting and retaining high-quality employees, developing their skills, and continuously motivating them to improve their performance.
The primary purpose of talent management is to create a motivated workforce who will stay with your company in the long run. The exact way to achieve this will differ from company to company.
Talent management naturally encompasses many of the responsibilities of HR.
All the same, it is not enough to expect that just because you have an HR department, you are managing talent.
You need to have a talent management strategy in place designed just for your company to gain optimal results.
The simple answer is because it capitalizes on employees — arguably, the most important asset of your company.
Talent management helps you maximize the value of employees.
As you can see from the graph above, there is widespread agreement that talent management is effective (or even very effective) at attracting and retaining talent as well as improving overall performance.
There are a few main reasons why this is the case.
With top specialists in your organization, you can reach any goal.
Talent management is most effective of all when it combines three key components: rapid talent allocation, positive employee experience, and a strategic HR team.
By hiring and developing talented employees, your organization becomes stronger and better prepared to face changes and risks.
New technologies are always hitting the scene, whatever your industry. Talented employees are able to find ways to harness the capabilities of new tools and solve problems or come up with original ideas.
The appropriate talent management strategy will allow you to form a more productive team. This is far more useful than just having a bunch of creative and talented people in your organization.
When employees feel valued at a company, when they know they will have plenty of opportunities to grow in the business, they are less likely to seek work elsewhere.
Talent management brands your company as an employer. This helps you to attract the best candidates for future hires.
Having inspiring talent on your team will motivate other employees and help them grow.
Whereas there is no standardized model for talent management, some HR professionals have proposed excellent models that any company can use.
However you choose to develop your model, it must include the following.
Planning aligns your talent management model in line with the overall goals of your organization.
Only with the correct planning can you ensure that you seek talent with the right skills and experience. In addition, it assesses current employees to see what is working well for the company.
For instance, if employees with certain characteristics tend to stay at the organization for longer, you should plan to hire more workers like them.
It is not always as simple as when one person leaves the company, you start a search for someone else to fill the role.
For instance, your needs may change or employees may take on new responsibilities. Talent management ensures that you always have sufficient staff to carry out all your operations and prevent heavy workloads that could cause demotivation.
The right strategy will attract just the kind of workers you want at your business. Such hires will be driven, skilled, and seeking to advance within the company.
Attracting talent is all about branding your company as an employer. You’ll need to find ways to increase visibility in ways that allow you to present company as a best place to work. The main consideration here is to make your business more approachable.
Even if you choose not to hire someone for a particular position, you still need to create a positive experience. This will give you the opportunity to hire these candidates for other jobs or use them as ambassadors to acquire other talent.
The development part of the model involves taking steps to help talent grow within the company.
It should be aligned with the employee development plan and includes identifying roles where particular employees could move to in the future as well as considering how to expand workers’ skills and knowledge to fulfill new challenges facing your organization.
Talent management also looks at what will keep employees at your company enthusiastic and willing to go the extra mile. It is necessary to provide employees with value.
Motivation also requires the correct onboarding — to give new hires a great impression of your company from the very beginning. This will increase the chance that they stay with the company and work hard.
Another purpose of talent management is to keep people at your company for longer.
Employees need to continue feeling that the company is an enjoyable, meaningful place to work.
Through training and other types of engagement, employees have the chance to create a career without leaving the company. You may achieve this by focusing on compensation (monetary and otherwise) as well as company culture.
After hiring and developing their skills, you need to plan for employees’ transitions.
Your aim at this stage is to keep their knowledge within the company — this is called knowledge management.
You need to have a plan in place to promote employees or move them to another role, department, or office. If a worker does decide to leave, you need to know why.
A talent management strategy is based on the talent management model. It should match your organization’s goals and clearly define what type of talent you need.
You organize the talent management process based on the talent management strategy.
There are few different types strategies you can choose from.
The advantages of this strategy are obvious:
However, there are some disadvantages:
This second option has a couple advantages:
The main disadvantages are:
This quote describes the strategy best:
“Your team’s strength is not a function of the talent of individual members. It’s a function of their collaboration, tenacity, and mutual respect.”
Finally, the pros of combining the two above are:
All the same, there is one con:
Lastly, before you go ahead and launch your recruitment and talent management strategy, make sure you include the essential components of a talent management strategy.
Every organization has its own unique goals. Whether they relate to better performance or higher revenue, your goals need to be clearly stated and achievable. You also need to know exactly how employees will play a role in helping you meet your targets.
You need to know how to measure results to see if your strategy is working. Define the metrics you’ll use and how often you’ll take measurements.
Much of the talent management strategy is down to HR, but other people at your company will also need to be involved. For instance, C-level executives are responsible for succession planning.
Make sure your employees are clear about where they stand and know what is expected of them. Talk to them about their career goals to ensure that your company is creating the right opportunities.
Now you have an understanding of why you need talent management and what it involves. Next, you need to take a look at the talent management process itself and learn how to apply it to your company.
The following steps cover what you need to do to develop a continuous talent management process for your organization.
It covers how to find the most talented people available and then help them stay in your company.
What is the first step in the talent management process?
Before you can go any further, you must determine what kinds of hires you need and what requirements they should fill.
Consider if it would be possible to teach existing employees to avoid the need to hire anyone new.
There are several stages to attracting talent:
Help new employees feel orientated by being ready for them as soon as they enter the company.
Know what tasks you will set them, have training sessions scheduled, and assign current employees to support new workers settle in.
Remember, it is often easier to develop the skills of your current employees than to hire new talent.
Plus, even if you do hire top talent, they will likely want to learn something in their new role.
Plan ways for your workers to learn and grow, such as through conferences, courses, and a learning management system to create a learning environment.
Checking employee performance regularly allows you to see if workers could manage additional responsibilities.
This could save you hiring new talent and it may help an employee prepare for a promotion.
Keep employees satisfied at work through promotions, benefits, motivating tactics, ensuring job satisfaction, and improving company culture.
Nurture employees for successions, such as for when a senior member of staff retires.
Enable employees to perform to their best through continuous learning opportunities, including knowledge management.
If an employee decides to leave the company, conduct an exit interview to find out what went wrong — this will help you prevent the same issue occurring again in the future.
You need to stop assuming that you already have talent management covered just because you have HR at your company. Talent management rarely happens naturally.
You need a strategy that is tailored to your business alone. Only like this will you obtain and retain top talent and gain a competitive advantage over other businesses in your industry.