Life Cycle of Talent Management

The Talent Management Life Cycle ensures that both employee and employer gain the maximum benefit from their mutual association. In order to understand exactly how each stage of the employee life cycle can drive employee engagement.

• Recruitment

A challenge for this phase of the talent life cycle is whether the company is hiring for the long term, on the assumption that people want to pursue long-term careers within it, or alternatively, whether it aims to meet people’s desire for a stepping stone to opportunities elsewhere. The tendency is for both parties to engage in a fiction that this is a long-term career move, rather than discuss intentions honestly.

A different, more productive dialogue would explore a range of possibilities, with the outcome that people’s aspirations and job roles could be much more closely aligned. So, the psychological contract (or formal contract) would be that over, say 18 months, the employee will gain specific learning and experience and will make a defined contribution to the company.

Recognising that the aspirations of the employee and the organisation will have evolved, an equally honest review towards the end of the committed time avoids the disruption of unexpected departures.

• Selection

TALENT MANAGEMENT begins with an effective recruitment and selection strategy, but continues through the entire talent lifecycle.

• On-Boarding

Onboarding is a human resources industry term referring to the process of introducing a newly hired employee into an organization. Also known as organizational socialization, onboarding is an important part of helping employees understand their new position and job requirements. It’s the process that helps them integrate seamlessly with the rest of the company. There are many activities that go into the onboarding process, from the job offer to team training. Onboarding may last anywhere from a few weeks to a year, but the most effective onboarding usually lasts at least a few months. Ideally, employees will feel confident and competent when the onboarding process is complete.

Onboarding consists of multiple individual processes; however, it has no official definition and opinions still vary as to which processes fall under the umbrella of onboarding. As listed in the BambooHR Definitive Guide to Onboarding, onboarding can include the following:

• Job offers
• Salary negotiation
• New hire paperwork
• Policy and culture training
• Job training
• Employee handbook training
• Benefits paperwork
• Benefits education
• Facility tours
• Executive introductions
• Team introductions

Training & Development

Training and development refers to educational activities within a company created to enhance the knowledge and skills of employees while providing information and instruction on how to better perform specific tasks.

Training is a short-term reactive process meant for operatives and process while development is designed continuous pro-active process meant for executives. In training employees’ aim is to develop additional skills and in development, it is to develop a total personality.

In training, the initiative is taken by the management with the objective of meeting the present need of an employee. In development, initiative is taken by the individual with the objective to meet the future need of an employee.

• Performance Management

Performance management (PM) is the process of ensuring that a set of activities and outputs meets an organization’s goals in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of an organization, a department, an employee, or the processes in place to manage particular tasks. Performance management standards are generally organized and disseminated by senior leadership at an organization and by task owners, it can include specifying tasks and outcomes of a job, providing timely feedback and coaching, comparing employee’s actual performance and behaviors with desired performance and behaviors, instituting rewards, etc. It is necessary to outline the role of each individual in the organization in terms of functions and responsibilities to ensure that performance management is successful.

Performance management principles are used most often in the workplace and can be applied wherever people interact with their environments to produce desired effects schools, churches, community meetings, sports teams, health settings, governmental agencies, social events, and even political settings.

The way performance management is applied is important in getting the most out of the group. It can have a positive impact on how employees perform on a day-to-day basis. In order to avoid a negative impact, it must be applied in a way that does not encourage internal competition, but rather teamwork, cooperation, and trust. This is done through an implementation process of clarifying the work that has to be done, setting goals and establishing a performance plan, frequently providing coaching, conducting a formal review, and recognizing and rewarding top performance.

Managers use performance management to align company goals with the goals of teams and employees in an effort to increase efficiency, productivity, and profitability. Performance management guidelines stipulate clearly the activities and outcomes by which employees and teams are evaluated during performance appraisal.

To apply performance management principles, a commitment analysis is completed first to create a mission statement for each job. The mission statement is a job definition in terms of purpose, customers, product, and scope. This analysis is used to determine the continuous key objectives and performance standards for each job position.

Following the commitment analysis is the work analysis of a particular job in terms of the reporting structure and job description. If a job description is not available, then a systems analysis is completed to create a job description. This analysis is used to determine the continuous critical objectives and performance standards for each job.

Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen, and their colleagues developed a new approach to improving performance in organizations. Their model is used to stress how the constraints imposed by one’s own worldview can impede cognitive abilities that would otherwise be available. Their work delves into the source of performance, which is not accessible by mere linear cause-and-effect analysis. They assert that the level of performance people achieve correlates with how work situations occur to them and that language (including what is said and unsaid in conversations) plays a major role in how situations occur to the performer. They assert that substantial gains in performance are more likely to be achieved by management understanding how employees perceive the world and then encouraging and implementing changes that make sense to employees’ worldview.

• Succession Planning

A succession plan is a plan that focuses on identifying potential leaders and high performers, helping them develop so they can advance within their organization. Succession planning is vital because, as an organization grows, it’s more cost-effective to develop current employees for key positions rather than hire new people. Giving employees a clear path forward in their careers via a succession plan can also boost engagement and retention.

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t prioritize succession planning, choosing to focus on business growth rather than on the growth of their people. Among organizations that do have some sort of succession plan, 54 percent take an informal or mostly informal approach, and the majority don’t believe their succession plan is effective.

Key Elements of Succession Planning

Defined goals: Your organization should define what the end goal of the succession plan is, whether that’s to help employees increase their expertise, learn managerial skills, or something else.

Tasks or requirements: This is essentially a list of requirements for what is needed in order to reach the end goal of the succession plan.

Timeline: Knowing how much time employee development may take will help your organization align the succession plan with times when you need people to step into new roles.

Budget: Define how much money or what resources you will dedicate to succession planning, as that will shape every other element of your organization’s plan.

Strategy: Finally, define how you plan to introduce, execute, and measure the results of a succession plan.