What do you do when you don’t like the name of what you do?
Talent Management
According to the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) “Talent refers to individuals who can make a significant difference to organisational performance, either through their immediate contribution or by reaching their highest levels of potential”
Talent management is a strategic approach to attracting, identifying, developing, engaging, deploying and retaining the best employees. It is about identifying and developing the skills and knowledge that organisations need to succeed.
I don’t like the term ‘talent’ when it relates to people at work. I find it a bit cold and not very inclusive. I believe that every employee in an organisation should be treated in the same way when it comes to being selected, welcomed, developed, managed and engaged at work.
That said, in recent years ‘talent management’ has become the term for what I love to do.
Despite not liking the name, I love the process!
So, what is talent management?
There are many different aspects to talent management, including:
- Recruitment: Finding and attracting the best people into your organisation.
- Selection: Making sure that the people you hire are the right fit for your organisation.
- Onboarding: Helping new employees get up to speed, feel welcome and settle into your organisation.
- Development: Providing employees with the training and development they need to succeed in their roles and their careers
- Succession Planning: The proactive process of identifying, developing, and positioning employees to fill key roles within an organisation
- Performance management: Setting goals, providing feedback, and rewarding employees for their performance.
- Deployment: Using the workforce in the most efficient and effective way, understanding and plugging skills gaps using secondments, job shadowing, project work, job rotations.
- Retention: Keeping your employees happy and engaged so they don’t leave for your competitors.
Talent management is a key investment for any organisation. Organisations that invest in talent management are more likely to recruit effectively, nurture and develop their people, maintain a happy, engaged workforce and are therefore more profitable with a better reputation. The consequences of not managing your talent:
Poor recruitment, selection and onboarding results in:
- Costly recruitment mistakes through hiring the wrong people.
- Wasted time and poor productivity in bringing the wrong people in.
- Potential damage to your brand/customer service/product quality.
- Disruption to team dynamics, effecting engagement of the current team.
Ineffective development, performance management and deployment of your people results in:
- Employees leaving due to lack of development and career progression.
- Customer service, sales and operational standards lacking due to poor training.
- Teams unmotivated by poor performance being ignored.
- Teams overstretched by additional work with gaps not being plugged.
All this leads to teams which are unmotivated, suffering low engagement and employees leaving, resulting in poor retention which equals BIG COSTS to an organisation.
Hopefully we have moved on from the days where the first teams to be cut when businesses were struggling is the learning and development teams.
Finally, employers are beginning to see the importance to the success of the business in having a well trained, motivated team that are engaged with the organisation.
Talent management is only going to get more important. A study by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills found that the UK is facing a skills shortage of 2.4 million people by 2024. This means that organisations will need to be more strategic about how they attract, develop, engage and retain talent.
If you want your organisation to be successful, you need to invest in your greatest asset – your people. By attracting, developing, and retaining the best talent, you can give your organisation a competitive advantage. With so many more jobs currently being advertised than strong candidates to fill
them, that competitive advantage is what keeps organisations in the top spot with the pick of the limited candidate pool.
Small and medium sized businesses don’t have the luxury of large training budgets and big L&D/recruitment teams, but having a plan in place to manage talent, specifically recruitment, engagement and learning and development is key to the organisations success and longevity.
Here are some tips for improving your talent management strategy:
- Start by understanding your organisation’s goals/needs.
Once you know the organisations goals, you can start to identify the skills and knowledge that your employees will need to achieve them. What are the goals of the organisation and how well are they being met by your current workforce? What learning and development is required to achieve these goals? - Identify your talent pool / target audience
Who are the people/what are the job roles of the people who have the skills and knowledge you need? Are they currently in your organisation or do you need to bring them in? - Develop a talent management strategy
What steps will you take to attract, develop, and retain talent? Are you getting your employer brand across? (do you even have one?) - Assess your employee’s skills and knowledge
Carry out a skills gap analysis. This is a process of identifying the skills that your employees have and the skills that they need. - Put a learning and development plan in place
Consider all different ways that people learn. It could be 121 sessions, group training, on the job training, mentoring, coaching, online learning. - Measure your results and make changes where necessary.
Plan how you will measure the success of your strategy. Consider employee satisfaction, employee engagement and employee performance metrics. Adjust the strategy as needed.
Talent management is an important strategic tool for organisations of all sizes. By investing in talent management, organisations can attract, develop, and retain the best employees, which leads to increased business success.
By following these tips, you can improve your organisation’s talent management strategy and give your organisation a competitive advantage, crucial during these tough economic times.
If you need help with any aspect of your talent management strategy, or would like help implementing one – get in touch!
