Tag: Talent Acquisition

Today, the staffing companies in India have realised the potential to correct Talent Management Strategies. The burning issue with many companies is that they spend a lot of time developing their talent but spend very little to retain and develop them. A glowing example of a successful talent management strategy is third party payroll. Talent management is also sometimes known as HCM (Human Capital Management) and HRIS (Human Resource Information System). Contractual staffing will have a significant role to play in the talent management system of the future.

Distinctly called human capital management, employee relationship management and workforce management, among others, talent management is not a new concept, but one that in the past corporations haven’t been set to finalize. India Talent Management has become one of the most important buzzwords in Corporate HR and Training today. Right talent is the greatest asset for any enterprise and one of the essential roles of HR is to make sure that the employees with the right skills stick with the company for long enough. The issue with many companies today is that their organizations put tremendous effort into attracting employees to their company, but spend little time into retaining and developing talent.

Employees who had high performance and high qualification scores were classified as “stars” and constituted the talent pool. Employees in other segments needed performance development, qualification development, or both.

Defining Strategic priorities: For any business strategy, the starting point is always the business’s strategy. Strategic priorities are vital in selecting the focus areas of HR. They answer questions like should we value more sales or marketing. Are we focusing more on enlarging the customer base or on deepening our customer relationship? Is third party payroll a viable option? Are we working in a project-based manner, or are we an operational partner for our clients? Indeed, the answers to these questions will impact the skills you are looking for in the new employees, and the staffing companies in India realize that.

Workflows: A number of workflows can be redesigned based on talent management practices. For example, you can support the digital transformation that the organization is going through by adding digital skills to your company’s pre-selection assessment.

Software Systems: Software plays an essential role in executing a talent management strategy, and in the future, it will play a significant role, especially in third party payroll.

Training: Training will be another central focus area, especially in this digital age, where company-wide transformations are common.

Money is not enough

Money attracts but it does not retain. The job-hopping frenzy in the Indian workforce, particularly among ambitious, talented millenials is enough to prove that point. A recent Mercer survey backs it up: 54% of Indians are seriously considering leaving their current employer, and in the 16-24 year age bracket, that increases to 66%. Yes, two-thirds of your call center could potentially be gone by the end of the year. Some will no doubt be chasing a hike in salary, but as is the case elsewhere, when it comes to knowledge workers, more knowledge is also what they are after.

Talent management in India should be seen for what it is: a risk management strategy against the business impact of having inadequate or insufficient human resources to fulfill organizational objectives. If that is the case, both local Indian companies and multinationals operating in India have much work to do.

Information technology and system have changed the way business gets conducted. Every decision-making process is enhanced with utilization of an information system. Information systems have been deployed by human-resource team to enhance employee employer relationship.

Companies require great deal of contribution from employee for its success though information systems have made several processes automated.

Talent Management

Talent management and human-resource management are completely two different fields, although the human-resource team is responsible for talent management.

Talent management is organization focus towards complete management of recruitment, retention, development of brightest talent available. The focus of talent management is to attract best talent in the market and convert them into efficient and effective work force. Talent management team is responsible for hiring, maintaining and retaining the best talent.

Talent Management Evolution

Talent management finds its roots in earlier workforce management and human management concept. Earlier concept saw intervention of human resource in managing and retaining talent. However, with talent management, this responsibility is transferred to manager.

Talent management empowers manager to take upon greater responsibility. The manager is actively involved from talent acquisition, recruitment process, retaining and development of the employee. Organizations have their own approach towards talent management. Certain organizations include only their star performers as part of talent management, whereas some organizations consider all staff within talent management.

Talent Management as a Strategic Tool

The race for talent has never been more competitive, even as organizations try to load the “talent” in their workforce. The “talent” employees with specialized skills and competence who ensure the organization is able to win in today’s competitive market and sustain itself during times of uncertainties such as the one we face today.  Needless to say, organizations also feel the need and pressure to manage these key resources.

With the “Talent” becoming the most critical resource, it is imperative for CHRO (Chief Human Resource Officer) of today to have the required intelligence, real-time data and information of the talent management processes implemented within the organization and right tools and techniques to measure the effectiveness of those processes. They have realized that it is equally critical to build and maintain a talent management ecosystem, which includes seamlessly integrated digital and IT (Information Technology) empowered systems, which enable real-time information tracking, thereby enabling speedier and accurate decision making.

Talent management is actively used by organization as a strategic tool. Companies need to blend talent management with business strategy as to boost employee management activities. The onus of attracting and managing the best industry talent is on the respective managers.

Organization needs to develop a process through which employee talent can be recognized and shared. This would enable best utilization of talent across the organization.

Employees are encouraged to manage their individual development plan.

Talent Management System

A talent management system is an information technology solution to manage four corner points of human-resource management:

• Recruitment
• Performance management
• Learning-development management
• Compensation management

The existing enterprise resource planning systems are focused on employee transaction such as payroll, leave management, etc. The talent management system looks at providing human-resource solution for long-term strategic goals.

The key features and development history are as follows:

• Talent management system became a reality with the advent of client/server technology. It was now possible to electronically manage applicant base important for multi-national companies. The Internet and data analytics also helped the development of the talent management system.
• Talent management system became important to manage high-performance work environment, reduced top management attrition, increase employee satisfaction, create talent pipeline, and develop better compensation models and creation of uniform performance measure metrics.
• The two driving points of the talent management system are recruitment and retention.

An organization needs to align its business strategy with human-resource strategy to develop and manage effective talent management system. A development of the talent management system requires the following:

• Finalization of various competencies around which future development of an employee is to take place.
• Creating of a human-resource model to rank and stack the existing workforce.
• Examine the current human-resource process to identify the developmental areas.
• Develop tools to increase existing talent pool.
• Pro-actively identifies future skill set requirements and manages the talent pool accordingly.

Adoption of technology focuses on below key areas in an integrated talent management ecosystem:

• Digitize HR processes across talent management areas
• Align talent with business strategic needs
• Precise decision making in real-time
• Improved talent pipeline management
• Wider and targeted global talents reach
• Reduce hiring cycles and recruitment costs
• Effective talent mobilization and deployment
• Improve networking and collaboration among talents, employee engagement
• Align compensation and rewards with employee performance and business objectives
• Predict future situations and realign strategies by taking evidence based actions
• Measure impact of the HR value chain

A talent management solution can bring a variety of benefits to an organization. For one, implementing an integrated Talent Management Suite (TMS) can smooth the flow of information across HR, payroll, and benefits administration. This sharing of data can enable your business to better innovate and your employees to better perform. It doesn’t only help HR administrative needs however, talent management is a business strategy, so the software simplifies business processes and allows room for improvement in the top talent in the company.

Involve Employees Right off the Bat

When you’re determining your businesses requirements with respect to features and functionality, it is important to consult your employees, managers, recruiters, learning and development specialists and/or HR specialists to find out what they think they need in order to improve business strategies. Although HR specialists will be the ones using the software the most, it’s critical to get input from your employees and managers because they will be the ones most committed to its adoption. So it’s helpful getting them involved with the requirement settings and identifying any challenges/ day-to-day work the new talent management software will need to address.

Involve a Cross-Section of Users in the Software Selection Process

Once you’ve got your basic requirements down and are ready to look for a product/vendor, involving a cross-section of users from across the organization to participate in the process can help a lot. This approach will help you ensure the selected product or vendor will in fact meet the needs of the various departments and users in the organization, and that no group or department is overlooked. This also helps ensure a better understanding in terms of what is available in TMS and, if any, what compromises may need to be made and why.

Cultivate Top Talent

Another key step to ensuring employees across an organization get on board with a new TMS is to cultivate top talent in all areas of the organization. These employees are considered top talent because they are more than ready to embrace the change and help the organization move forward. If you engage these people in the implementation processes, you build on their knowledge and engagement with the software so they may become social influencers for others. By leveraging their enthusiasm and early adopter mentality, it will help to encourage other employees to be just as enthusiastic of the new software.

Test the Software Before Launching It

Testing your new talent management software, processes and forms is another important step to a successful user adoption. The last thing you want to do is discourage new users with small issues or glitches; it is easy to make a bad first impression and hard to recover from it. By conducting thorough user testing, for every area, avoids this challenge and reassures a smooth launch. Involving users from each department, especially the top talent employees, may be helpful as well. Having multiple sets of eyes to pay attention to the details will bring different perspectives, making it more likely to catch any problems before making the software available to the entire organization as a whole.

Provide Training and Support

Last, but certainly not least, providing extensive training and support to all your employees is extremely important. Regardless of how easy the user interface, it’s vital for users/employees to be given an introduction to the new software. Don’t overlook the importance of refresher training or more in-depth training down the road as well, this encourages ongoing engagement and use of the new software and avoids information overload in the initial training. Making it simple for users to get help or support, both in the early days and going forward is important as well.

No cookie-cutter approach

These five steps need to be carefully and individually designed for each enterprise. They cannot be deployed with a checklist mentality. 50% of executives who rate their talent programs as excellent stated that they apply design thinking well, and self-identified high-performing companies are three to four times more likely than their competitors to be applying design thinking to their people practices

It is possible to see why such a rigorous approach is necessary. A recent survey found that 63% of all respondents are concerned about the scarcity of critical talent available in the external market. And hand-in-hand with identifying internal talent comes the need to match it to the right roles. According to Aberdeen Group, best-in-class organizations are 81.2% more likely to have a process which identifies the job roles are critical to organizational success.

Identify success measures and milestones

Reaping the full value of an integrated and business-based talent management initiative can require up to two to three years of effort. Therefore, it is critical to articulate before the work begins how you’ll know if you are making the appropriate progress. Set milestones that will help the team assess progress, pace and direction, and agree on the results metrics that will define the ultimate value and impact of this work.

Human resources managers strive to hire employees who fit in with a company’s culture. They must also keep an eye on diversity and equal opportunity as well as both ethical and legal hiring practices. In other words, a company’s culture can be at odds with what’s the right thing to do for HR managers. As issues arise, the HR manager must be adept at resolving conflicts between the demands of company culture and those of ethical behavior.

Harming Some While Benefitting Others

HR managers do much of the screening during the hiring process. By its very nature, screening leaves some people out and allows others to move forward. In short, the ones left out will be harmed by not getting the job no matter how much they need it. HR managers can avoid the emotionalism of such situations by adhering strictly to the skill sets and other requirements of the position, but there will always be a gray area where HR managers may weigh how much each applicant wants and needs the job. If the company culture values skill sets more than desire, the HR manager may have to go against her own urge to reward applicants who have more drive than technical skill.

Equal Opportunity

The Commission regularly monitors company’s hiring practices to make sure there is no discrimination in the hiring process based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, race, religion and disability. However, simply complying with EEOC guidelines does not guarantee ethical behavior. For example, if an HR manager recommends an applicant in order to fill a quota, that decision is unethical, because it will eliminate other applicants that may be more qualified. If the culture of the company emphasizes minimum adherence to the law, the HR manager may face an ethical dilemma when recommending a highly qualified applicant who does not fit the background needed for a company quota.

Privacy

Privacy is always a delicate matter for an HR manager. Though a company culture may be friendly and open and encourage employees to freely discuss personal details and lifestyles, the HR manager has an ethical obligation to keep such matters confidential. This particularly comes into play when the competing company calls for a reference on an employee. To remain ethical, HR managers must stick to the job-related details and leave out knowledge of an employee’s personal life.

Compensation and Skills

HR managers can recommend compensation. While these recommendations may be based on a salary range for each position, ethical dilemmas arise when it comes to compensating employees differently for the same skills. For example, a highly sought-after executive may be able to negotiate a higher salary than someone who has been with the company for several years. This can become an ethical problem when the lower-paid employee learns of the discrepancy and questions whether it is based on characteristics such as gender and race.

Some of the major issues an organization deals with is handling ethical challenges in workforce diversity.

Harming Some While Benefitting Others

HR managers do much of the screening while the hiring process is still on. By its very nature, screening leaves some people out and permits others to move forward. In short, the ones left out will be affected by not getting the job, no matter how much they need it.

HR managers can neglect the emotionalism of such situations by adhering strictly to the skill sets and other needs of the position, but there will always be a gray area where HR managers may scale how much each applicant wants and needs the job.

Labor Costs

HR must cope with conflicting needs to keep labor costs as low as possible and to invite fair wages. Ethics come into action when HR must select between outsourcing labor to countries with lower wages and harsh living conditions and paying competitive wages.

While there is nothing illegal about outsourcing labor, this issue has the potential to build a public relations problem if consumers object to using underpaid workers to save money.

Opportunity for New Skills

If the HR department selects who gets training, it can run into ethical issues. As training is a chance for development and broadened opportunities, employees who are left out of training may debate that they are not being given equal opportunities in the workplace.

Fair Hiring and Justified Termination

Hiring and termination decisions must be made without regard to ethnicity, race, gender, sexual preference or religious beliefs. HR must take precautions to eliminate any bias from the hiring and firing process by making sure such actions adhere to strict business criteria.

Fair Working Conditions

Companies are basically expected to provide fair working conditions for their employees in the business environment, but being answerable for employee treatment typically means higher labor costs and resource utilization.

Fair pay and benefits for work are more obvious factors of a fair workplace. Another important factor is provision of a non-discriminatory work environment, which again may have costs engaged for diversity management and training.

By now it’s pretty clear that while working in an organization, we come across people with different backgrounds, cultural beliefs and we need to respect their beliefs. In case an employee feels left out due to some problem, it may not work in the favor of the organization.

The prime focus of talent management is enabling and developing people, since the quality of an organization is determined by the people it employs and has onboard. After hiring and deploying we may say that retaining and nurturing talent is quintessential.

Talent management also known as human capital management is evolving as a discipline that encompasses process right from hiring people to retaining and developing the same. So, it includes recruitment, selection, learning, training and development, competency management, succession planning etc. These are all critical processes that enable an organization to compete and stand out in the market place when managed well!

Talent management is now looked upon as a critical HR activity; the discipline is evolving every day.

• Technology and Talent Management: Technology is increasingly getting introduced into people development. Online employee portals have become common place in organizations to offer easy access to employees to various benefits and schemes. In addition, employees can also manage their careers through these portals and it also helps organizations understand their employees better.
• Talent War: Finding and retaining the best talent is the most difficult aspect of HR management. HR survey consultancies are one in their view that organizations globally are facing a dearth of talented employees and it’s often more difficult to retain them. Further research has also shown that there is clear link between talent issues and overall productivity.
• Promoting Talent Internally: An individual is hired, when there is a fit between his abilities or skills and the requirements of the organization. The next step is enabling learning and development of the same so that he/she stays with the organization. This is employee retention. An enabled or empowered means an empowered organization.

It is also of interest to organizations to know their skills inventories and then develop the right individual for succession planning internally.

• Talent Management to rescue HR: HR has been compelled to focus on qualitative aspects equally and even more than quantitative aspects like the head count etc. Through talent management more effort is now being laid on designing and maintaining employee scorecards and employee surveys for ensuring that talent is nurtured and grown perpetually.
• Population Worries Globally: World populations are either young or aging. For example, stats have it that by 2050 60% of Europe’s working population will be over 60! On the other hand, a country like India can boast of a young population in the coming and present times. Population demographics are thus a disturbing factor for people managers. Still more researches have predicted that demographic changes in United States will lead to shortage of 10 million workers in the near future.
• Increase in Employer of Choice Initiatives: An organization’s perceived value as an employer as helps improve its brand value in the eyes of its consumer. Most importantly it helps it attract the right talent.

Emergence of Digital HR

The number of people using smartphones and accessing the internet is growing at an exponential rate. This increase in digitization has an impact not only on the individuals but on organizations as well.

An increasing number of companies will have to build and design mobile apps for critical HR functions (e.g. recruiting, onboarding, learning, performance, feedback, attendance, payroll etc.) that are easy to use. Digital HR is not just about a mobile App, but how they can leverage technology to connect with their people.

Talent management through focused coaching & mentoring

Companies and their employees both need to keep up with the technology. Companies have the responsibility to invest and to explore coaching programs for that. For instance, peer-to-peer training is a cost-effective, integrated and culture driven model. HR should encourage employees for mentoring others by introducing a rewards program for that.

Recruitment backed by data analysis

Technological advancement has revolutionized the recruitment process. Talent acquisition leaders no longer use the old ways to connect with prospects. Rather, they interact on professional networking platforms such as LinkedIn. These platforms have made accessing candidates’ information easy and affordable. Networking platforms also have analytics tools that help HR leaders in making strategic & informed recruiting decision. HR teams now have a better understanding of the job market which makes them more effective in hiring quality people.

Transparent & advanced performance reviews

The old-fashioned, once-a-year performance review system which is both opaque and complicated will be phased out. Today websites like Glassdoor, give employees a forum to rate their company & their managers in a transparent manner. In the years to come, this trend will gain traction in which employees can not only review but also give feedback on a real-time basis.

Impetus on employee engagement, Culture & Brand building

In this global market, top skills are rare to find, and the competition to attract them is fierce. Talent acquisition leaders realize this, and they are focusing more on brand building to attract top talent. The new trend of employee engagement & culture will have a higher value in the years to come.

Talent management can be defined as a constant process that involves attracting and retaining high-quality employees, developing their skills, and continuously motivating them to improve their performance.

There is no dearth of professionals but there is an acute shortage of talented professionals globally. Every year b-schools globally churn out management professionals in huge numbers but how many of are actually employable remains questionable! This is true for other professions also.

The scenario is worse even in developing economies of south East Asia. Countries like U.S and many European countries have their own set of problems. The problem is of aging populations resulting in talent gaps at the top. The developing countries of south East Asia are a young population but quality of education system as a whole breeds a lot of talent problems. They possess plenty of laborers skilled and unskilled and a huge man force of educated unemployable professionals. These are the opportunities and challenges that the talent management in organizations has to face today dealing with demographic talent problems.

Now if we discuss the problem in the global context, it’s the demographics that needs to be taken care of primarily and when we discuss the same in a local context the problem becomes a bit simpler and easier to tackle. Nonetheless global or local at the grass roots level talent management has to address similar concerns more or less. It faces the following opportunities and challenges:

• Recruiting talent
• Training and Developing talent
• Retaining talent
• Developing Leadership talent
• Creating talented ethical culture

Recruiting Talent

The recent economic downturn saw job cuts globally. Those who were most important to organizations in their understanding were retained, other were sacked. Similarly huge shuffles happened at the top leadership positions. They were seen as crisis managers unlike those who were deemed responsible for throwing organizations into troubled waters. It is the jurisdiction of talent management to get such people on onboard, who are enterprising but ensure that an organization does not suffer for the same.

Training and Developing Talent

The downturn also opened the eyes of organizations to newer models of employment part time or temporary workers. This is a new challenge to talent management, training and developing people who work on a contractual or project basis. What’s bigger a challenge is increasing the stake of these people in their work.

Retaining Talent

While organizations focus on reducing employee overheads and sacking those who are unessential in the shorter run, it also spreads a wave of de motivation among those who are retained. An uncertainty about the firing axe looms in their mind. It is essential to maintain a psychological contract with employees those who have been fired as well as those who have been retained. Investing on people development in crisis is the best thing an organization can do to retain its top talent.

Developing Leadership Talent

Leadership in action means an ability to take out of crisis situation, extract certainty out of uncertainty, set goals and driving change to ensure that the momentum is not lost. Identifying people from within the organization who should be invested upon is a critical talent management challenge.

Creating Talented Ethical Culture

Setting standards for ethical behavior, increasing transparency, reducing complexities and developing a culture of reward and appreciation are still more challenges and opportunities for talent management.

The key challenges faced by an organization is retention of such high quality talent, and the key questions to grapple with include:

• How to recruit effectively
• How to identify them from within
• How to cultivate and nurture them
• How to motivate and retain them
• How can they be best leveraged

The best Talent Management strategies would include:

• Setting Clear Expectations and Aligning Organizational Goals
• Going Beyond Regular Performance Appraisals
• Providing Professional Development Opportunities
• Measuring and Improving Talent Management with Analytics

Talent Management is an organization-wide, all-inclusive strategy for hiring, training, and retaining top-performing employees. In today’s competitive world, having a talent management system in place is indispensable. When the organization faces an economic downturn, an effective Talent Management system is what will help you weather through it.

The workplace processes and systems that must effectively work together to produce a talent management strategy that will provide results for an organization have been highlighted. Further, an ASTD/i4cp study identified factors that are present more of the time in organizations that have a successful talent management strategy operating.

The most intriguing idea that emerged in the review of talent management was the success of implementing talent management review meetings. By talking about talented employees and making their knowledge, skills, and potential known to other managers in different parts of the organization, the potential use and development of internal talent are magnified for both the organization and the talented employees.

Talent management includes the following activities and work processes:

• Develop clear job descriptions, so you know the skills, abilities, and experience needed from a new employee.
• Select appropriate employees who have superior potential and fit your organization’s culture, with an appropriate selection process.
• Negotiate requirements and accomplishment-based performance standards, outcomes, and measures within a performance development planning system.
• Provide effective employee onboarding and ongoing training and development opportunities that reflect both the employee’s and the organization’s needs.
• Provide on-going coaching, mentoring, and feedback, so the employee feels valued and important.
• Conduct quarterly performance development planning discussions that focus on the employee’s interests for career development.
• Design effective compensation and recognition systems that reward people for their contributions. Even if all of the rest of your employment processes are employee-oriented, people still work for money. Employers of choice aim to pay above market for talented employees.
• Provide promotional and career development opportunities for employees within a system that includes career paths, succession planning, and on-the-job training opportunities.
• Hold exit interviews to understand why a valued employee decided to leave the organization. If the reasons provide information about company systems that you can improve, make the changes that will better retain talented employees.

Conduct regular employee reviews to keep employee performance on the track

The value of a well-defined performance management process is three-fold.

First, a performance appraisal is an important opportunity for employees & managers to discuss goals & competencies, challenges and development needs if any. Getting regular feedback helps employees perform at their best.

Second, appraisals help managers and HR identify those who are not performing well and take corrective action for the same.

Finally, documenting the history of an employee’s performance helps managers and HR make critical decisions such as workforce restructuring and rightsizing, as and when needed.

Align individual and organizational goals and effectively track their progress

Aligning the goals of an individual with those of the organization is an important talent management best-practice. It is the responsibility of the companies to make sure that their employees are all focused on contributing to their success. You need to ensure that everyone is working on the right things such that the organization is pushed further ahead in the direction of its goals.  Leaders need to step in and take corrective measures as and when sufficient progress is not being made.

Quickly and effectively communicating any change in priorities or strategies is equally important. Changes that impact the goals of an organization need to be communicated to everyone whose individual goals are linked to those of the organization.

Provide ongoing feedback to maximize performance

Regular feedback helps everyone maximize their performance. Managers and employees can quickly take corrective actions when things start to go off track. Ongoing feedback makes performance appraisal faster and easier for everyone to complete. Having quarterly or semi-annual reviews is more effective than the formal, annual ones.

Identify and reward high performing employees

Know who your high potential and well-performing employees are. You may not always be able to reward them with salary hikes or bonuses but demonstrating the commitment of the organization towards such individuals will help in the long run. You could reward them with initiatives that will help them move up in their career, perhaps even prepare for a promotion. Acknowledging their performance and potential will help retain such employees.

Invest in performance-based development

Use your employees’ appraisals to identify gaps in their skills and offer the right kind of training that they need. The Learning and Development department should spot areas where employees individually have scored low and offer training to each accordingly. Similarly, they need to look at the overall scores and identify the critical competencies lacking in the employees. It is important that you also extract value from such training by measuring the change in employee performance as against the appraisal process.

With any talent management approach, it is critical to be aligned with the broader organisational strategy. The environment surrounding the organisation is also taken into account when assessing the organisational strategy. Prior to developing the workforce plan, an evaluation of previous initiatives, an assessment of the workforce profile and talent performance and the behaviours to date, are carried out. 

A workforce plan is then developed based on the current workforce situation and the future desired state. The workforce plan ensures that the right people, at the right time and with the right skills are employed and working towards the strategy. In other words, the workforce plan translates business strategy into organisational talent needs. Some of the areas, which are assessed in order to develop a workforce plan include:

1. Developing Job Descriptions

For each job opportunity that you post for your company, whether it be internally posted or external, the descriptions that you choose are very important. Making sure to be as clear about what duties go into the performance of a job will ensure that the people who apply know exactly what is expected of them. You won’t have a high turnover rate because people were misled regarding what was going to be part of their job. Also, make sure that you list all of the necessary requirements for applying. This will help minimize the number of applications you have to discard because people who were not qualified applied anyway.

2. Provide Development Opportunities

For existing employees, make sure to offer ongoing opportunities for people to develop in their profession. This can be something as simple as a two-day training class on something new that would aid in everyday duties, or it can be management training programs that allow entry level professionals to gain valuable knowledge, experience, and opportunities.

3. Performance Assessments

A great way for employees to find out how they are doing and how they can improve is to do regular assessments. These can be done quarterly or twice per year in order to be effective. These assessments are usually done by management and give a brief overview of what was done by an employee, how their performance was, and how they can improve moving forward. This eliminates any surprises come bonus time or time for raises and talent on staff is always working towards new goals.

4. Selection Process

Sometimes a candidate will stand out as being the right person for the job, however, there might be a big pool of people to choose from. A tried and true selection process will make your decisions easier and faster. You will want to make sure requirements are met, references check out, a resume is impressive and so on.

5. Effective Compensation

In order to hire good talent, your compensation rates need to be impressive. They don’t have to be thousands higher than your competition, but there should be a distinct reputation present for being a good company with good compensation packages. Good health care benefits and additional perks always help to obtain talent and keep them on board. For example, something as simple as having on site, free parking can sway a person’s decision if they would otherwise have to pay hundreds of dollars each month to park somewhere else in the area at another company. Ongoing raises and bonuses are a great incentive and a reward for a job well done.

Approach A (Indoctrinate, Assimilate & Obligate)

1. Focused on creating and grooming loyal disciples based upon the desired norms of corporate etiquette
2. Inculcates shared values as a robust and binding foundation for a cohesive corporate culture that borders on fanaticism
3. Encourages adherence to well-established and standardised work practices designed around functional optimisation and harmonisation
4. Prefers corporate hierarchy for incentivising improvement initiatives
5. Designs compensation packages as ‘golden handcuffs’ for maximising talent retention, especially, those who are considered ‘flight risks’ due to their particular skill sets and perceived lack of capable replacements
6. Talent treated as an asset prone to depreciation.
7. Training, learning and development is discretionary and generally based upon supervisory assessment/prerogative in accordance with the functional requirements.

Approach B (Accommodate, Motivate & Facilitate)

1. Geared towards creating an empowering work environment that galvanises the utilisation of a wide bandwidth of apparent/hidden talents
2. Uses shared values as guiding principles for self-discovery of work excellence and strengthening of organisational integration
3. Encourages progressive experiments and ‘timely’ improves work practices for enhancing well-being, mindfulness and productivity of a multi-generational workforce
4. Prefers thought hierarchy for incentivising innovation initiatives
5. Designs compensation packages to enhance the employee experience during employment association for creating ‘alumni ambassadors’ as an astute employer branding measure to attract future talent
6. Talent treated as an investment prone to rich dividends

7. Training, learning and development is mandatory to ensure congruence between individual ambitions and corporate imperatives
8. An astute talent management professional can effectively customise the most appropriate approach for optimising the benefits accrued from the available human capital by adhering to the following principle in congruence with the unique dynamics of an organisation.

Talent management (ITM) refers to the management of traditional HR sub-functions:

• Recruitment and selection
• Workforce planning
• Performance management
• Learning and development
• Reward and recognition
• Succession planning

1. Talent Management Philosophy

Talent Management Philosophy refers to a collective understanding of what is “talent management” and also the school of thought (on talent management) the management team has adopted. We learn from organisational psychology that for any organisational change effort to be successful, it must be supported by the top management of the organization. It is therefore important that an acknowledgement of the challenges faced by the organisation from a talent perspective, and how the organization intends to respond to the challenges are expressed in a policy statement of the organisation. The leadership of the organisation must agree on the guiding principles that will be applied to manage talent in the organisation.

2. Talent Management Processes

Processes are used as vehicles to transform something from one form to another form. HR Practitioners should shift their mindsets from a silo-based mentality of managing HR sub-functions to a mindset of using these functions as a vehicle to build an organisational capability to attract, engage, and retain competent and committed employees. Each process functions as a means to an end and not an end in itself. Owners of each process must understand the outputs of these collective processes, otherwise, the benefits of an integrated system will not be realised. The following is a brief discussion of how each process contributes to building this organisational capability (strategically leveraging talent).

Talent acquisition

The Talent Acquisition Process serves as a lever to pull talent from the external and the internal talent pool, but it does not lose sight of the over-arching objectives of the collective processes (talent acquisition, talent engagement, talent development and talent retention). First and foremost, the Talent Acquisition Specialist (TAS) must understand the business strategy and translate it into talent outcomes (the quality and quantity of talent) for the short term (1 year) and the long term (3-5 years). The next step will entail establishing if the required talent will be available (internally or externally) when it is needed. Decisions will be made as to which talent to buy (attract and source externally) and which one to build (develop). The TAS will not be able to make these decisions (buy or build) if he/she does not understand the depth and breadth of internal talent and also what talent is available in the labour market.

If the organisation has the luxury of time and has identified potential talent to be developed, the Training and Development Lever will be engaged to start the process of preparing the identified talent for future roles. In a case where a decision is made to buy talent for current and future roles, the TAS will embark on a recruitment drive to fill currently vacant positions and identify talent earmarked for future roles in the organisation. A talent bank will be established where potential external candidates’ names to fill these future roles are recorded.

The TAS will not be able to discharge their duties if they don’t have a “Workforce Plan” and don’t know what the organisation’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is. These two documents will guide the Talent Acquisition Strategy and the tactics to implement the strategy. The outputs from this process (Talent Acquisition) will flow into the On-boarding, learning and development, and talent engagement processes. The EVP commits the organisation on what value employees will gain from working for the organisation, hence it is incumbent on the TAS and other role players like HR Business Partners, HR administrators, Line Management, Learning and Development Practitioners, and Compensation and Benefits Practitioners to make this proposition a reality.

Talent engagement

Talent engagement is the extent to which employees commit to something or someone in their organisation and how hard they work and how long they stay as a result of that commitment (Corporate Executive Board, 2005). Employee engagement comes into effect from the point when an employee is on-boarded. The purpose of an onboarding process is not just about an employee understanding the policies of the organisation and preparing their workstations before they join. The purpose of the onboarding process is to enable the recruit to add value to the company in a short space of time by coaching and providing them with all the resources they need to feel engaged and valued in the organisation.

Talent Acquisition Specialists have a responsibility to ensure that they recruit the right person for the right job. If the recruit does not fit the job profile and the culture of the organisation, the talent engagement efforts will not positively influence the recruit’s engagement level. Learning and Development as a function must also understand the competency gaps identified from the recruits during the selection process so that opportunities for competency development are immediately created and actioned. Other levers that are used to engage employees include Performance Management, Succession Planning, Recognition and Reward and Leadership Quality.

Talent development

The talent development strategy must be aligned with the business strategy. The Training and Development Practitioner (TDP) must translate the business strategy into Talent Development outcomes. The TDP should understand what organisational capabilities related to competencies (knowledge, skills, behavioural) must be developed to enable the organisation to execute its strategy. This does not mean that employees who have competency gaps related to their current positions are ignored, they too must be developed. Another source that feeds into the talent development space is the career development needs of employees, which must also be factored into the training and development strategy. The career aspirations of employees must be aligned with the long term plans of the organisation which are reflected in the career paths and the organisational structures of the organisation. You would not want to spend resources developing employees in a particular direction knowing that in the medium/long term, such skills will not be needed in the organisation.

Inputs and outputs

There are three inputs (HR functions) that feed into the Talent Development Process, i.e. performance management, succession planning and workforce planning. At the end of the performance appraisal period, the competency gaps of the relevant employees are collated and fed into the Learning and Development platform. The potential successors’ development needs are also transferred to the Learning and Development platform. The LDP is a critical role player in ensuring that talent is developed for future positions. It is needless to say that the LDP should understand the organisation’s workforce plan so that he/she, in conjunction with line management sets a strategy in place to develop future talent.

Talent retention

The employee engagement index (a measure of employee engagement levels) serves as a leading indicator for retention. There seems to be an inverse relationship between employee engagement and labour turn over. A decrease in employee engagement scores increases the labour turnover rate if no action is taken to improve employee engagement scores. Your employee engagement initiatives must be targeting what is most important for the employees you want to retain. Retention risk assessments must be conducted with all employees (those you want to keep) in critical positions and the High Potential Employees (HIPO). If you know what risk you have of losing them, you will develop a strategy to keep them and those that you can’t keep, a backup plan must be put in place so that you have cover when they leave. Talent retention is not a once-off intervention; it is an ongoing process that aims to influence how employees feel about their jobs, managers, colleagues, and the organisation. The quality of leadership has the most influence on the commitment level of employees in the organisation, hence, organisations must invest resources to constantly improve the quality of their leaders.

To retain talent, an employer must understand what employees value, and align its practices with the EVP. A culture of “Employee Value ” where everyone in the organisation, from an employee on the shop floor (quality of team members) to the Chief Executive Officer understands and contributes to an environment where the organisation’s EVP becomes a reality.

3. Integrated Talent Management Information System

Different HR sub-functions (recruitment and selection, performance management, succession planning, training and development, reward and recognition) are applied in various processes of talent management and each HR sub-function generates data that is used for managing talent. An integrated Talent Management System enables users to pull all this information (from different HR sub-functions) together to assist decision-makers to understand the depth and breadth of talent at their disposal and talent risks that they should mitigate. There are various talent management information systems available in the market. Some are offered as part of the Enterprise Resource Planning, and some are standalone systems.

4. Talent Review Committees

Talent management is the responsibility of line management and HR supports line by making the tools available and also giving them training and guidance on how to apply the tools. Talent management should be a standard agenda item in the Board and Executive Committee (EXCO) meetings. Talent Review Committee’s (TRC) function is to keep the focus on talent management alive and to understand the talent risks the organisation is facing and develop and implement a risk mitigation strategy. Governance structures take different forms depending on the size and complexity of the organisation. For an example, a global organisation will have a TRC at a corporate level focusing on the senior executive bench strength, several TRCs per division, another TRC which comprises divisional representatives that focuses across divisions and functional TRCs. These committees will focus on different levels and different types of critical positions talent pools.

5. Talent Management Metrics

The old management adage popularised by Professor Deming that says “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” also applies to managing talent in organisations. There is a myriad of measures that one can use to measure the impact of talent management initiatives, but before deciding on measures to use, you need to establish from your clients (line management) which measures matter most for them. Internally, you will also want to measure the outputs per process so that you can determine if all the processes are adding value to the outcome (business performance). Two types of indicators must be used when measuring the outcomes of talent management initiatives, i.e. lagging and leading indicators. Leading indicators (e.g. Employee engagement scores) predict the outcome while lagging indicators are historical in nature (e.g. labour turnover rate). As far as talent management is concerned, the measures must help you answer the following questions:

• What is the breadth of our talent ( Bench strength/succession cover for critical positions)?
• What is the depth of our talent ( Readiness levels/ percentage of employees who are ready now, ready in the next year, ready between 1 and 3 years)?
• What are the retention risks (Percentage of employees in critical positions who may leave in the next year, 2 years, or 3 years; Labour turnover rate of critical talent; employee engagement scores; leadership quality)?
• Do we attract the right talent (Number of potential candidates per critical vacancy)?
• Are we developing our own talent (Number of employees with development plans, cross-functional moves)?

There are different role players in the whole process of managing talent (from talent acquisition to talent retention) and to make sure that they all function as one team with the same objectives, they must all be measured against the same set of measures.

The essential building blocks of a strong talent management strategy include:

• Talent sourcing
• Talent assessments
• Quality offers
• Development opportunities
• Positive work environment
• Purposeful work

Talent sourcing is the foundation of recruiting and makes a huge difference between getting the talent you need and watching your competition leave you in the dust with open positions unfilled. Being able to find ready sources of qualified candidates can help you prevent a talent drought and give you an advantage in your industry.

Talent assessments are a crucial part of the recruitment process if you want to hire the right people for the positions you need to fill. Offering objective data about which candidates are best suited for a particular position, talent assessments can make all the difference between guessing which candidate would make the best hire and having the facts to back up your assertions.

A quality offer will attract more workers to your open positions and motivate new employees to give their maximum effort as they learn and make needed adjustments in a new position. Competitive salaries are just the beginning of a quality offer. The right perks can help you snag the best talent regardless of salary; many employees have indicated that they are willing to sacrifice the highest possible salary for particular benefits that are important to them.

Development opportunities are crucial to retention and succession planning efforts. Having a plan for how to encourage and even help to fund continuing education as well as providing in-house training opportunities can prepare employees for a long tenure with your company by giving them chances to advance as they increase their skills.

A positive work environment is key to employee retention. Treating employees like people rather than machines, having an effective conflict resolution process, and fostering open communication so that problems are addressed rather than hidden or ignored can go a long way toward making sure employees remain engaged in their work and want to stay with your company rather than moving on in search of something better.

Purposeful work will help employees find meaning in their jobs, which is another major reason people want to stay with a particular company. Cognitive and behavioral assessments can help to determine how to structure work so that each employee finds meaning and purpose, and so that the work is well-suited to their personalities.

Use the right tools to manage the employee journey

SuccessFactors Talent Management has a suite of applications to help manage the entire employee journey. HR can use the Recruiting tool to match external and internal talent to job openings. The tool can also provide employees with opportunities to find jobs internally.

HR and managers can use the Onboarding tool to help new employees prepare for their first day, which can help lower new job anxieties, acclimate them to the company culture and, in turn, help improve retention.

HR and managers can use the Succession & Development tool to create career paths and employee development plans. Coupled with the Learning tool, these development objectives can help employees get the skills they need for career growth within the organization. As part of monitoring that progress, the Performance & Goals tool measures performance and identifies new areas of personal development.

Use People Profile to track workforce attributes

People Profile lists an employee and the constellation of information that helps managers and HR manage talent, such as skills, interest and experience. It also lists information such as where that person fits within the interactive organizational chart using self-services, although basic details are populated automatically and managers can also use self-services to update information on their team. Managers can use People Profile to review potential successors, identify skills and competencies, and measure performance against potential.

Manage processes with homepage tiles

IT administrators can set up both standard and custom tiles, which provide employees with notifications, reminders, information, links and other resources to assist with talent processes.

The To-Do tiles give visual reminders and statuses on talent processes. For example, the Review Performance tile gives an overview of performance management forms for a manager’s team.

Set Clear and Attainable organization goals

Managers can use the Performance & Goals application to assign annual goals to employees. Assigning goals to employees gives them a focus to grow personally and also helps support the organization in reaching its goals.

Capitalize on analytics

With the new People Analytics tool, creating and viewing various charts, key performance indicators and analytics is even easier. Administrators can create custom reports and templates, and managers and HR can use in-page analytics that exist across the suite of modules.

Go mobile

The SuccessFactors mobile app gives real-time, on-the-go access to talent processes. Whether it’s onboarding new employees, managing employee learning and training, or managing a continuous performance management process, the mobile app offers a way to perform these activities on the go. Admins can set up urgent notifications, and users can take actions through the app.

Check out overlooked cross-module features

The SAP SuccessFactors platform contains features that HR leaders and others might overlook when IT implements the system one module at a time. Presentations, Talent Search and Job Profile Builder are among some of the features that are not tied to any particular module but can add value across many of the talent modules.

Specific user-based:

Recruiters: Better manage end-to-end, using career websites, job postings, applications, candidate screening, and employment offers. Applicants can access and explore career Web sites, apply for roles of interest, and engage within a dedicated candidate portal for interviews and employment offers.

Human resources: Seamlessly coordinate all talent management tasks. Use powerful data analytics to inform business decisions. Generate detailed reports to share statuses and results. Create compensation plans and easily prove compliance with government and industry regulations.

Applicants: Easily find postings through career Web sites, apply for roles of interest, and engage within a dedicated candidate portal for interviews and employment offers.

Employees: Easily access information and tasks, including goals, rewards, performance reviews, compensation and benefits information, and learning paths tied to individual career goals. Recognize peers and redeem rewards and other benefits related to exceptional performance and results.

Managers: Work collaboratively with recruiters for greater efficiency. Welcome new hires and help them ramp quickly. Manage compensation across entire teams. Use streamlined processes to help track activities, performance, and ongoing feedback for all assigned employees. Align individual performance goals with business objectives. Use reward and recognition tools to optimize employee engagement.

Capabilities of a talent management system

A TMS allows an organization to implement an end-to-end talent strategy that aligns with the objectives and goals of the business. For example:

• Development: Build skills and adaptable teams to help drive business performance. Identify and cultivate strong leaders for continuous growth.
• Recruitment: Attract and hire the best candidates who, in turn, become high-performing employees, boosting productivity and improving organizational strength.
• Retention: Help employees grow in their careers, increasing engagement and retention.