Tag: Talent Acquisition

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.

Talent is a rapidly increasing source of value creation. The financial value of our companies often depends upon the quality of talent. In fact, the Brookings Institution found that in 1982, 62 percent of an average company’s value was attributed to its physical assets (including equipment and facilities) and only 38 percent to intangible assets (patents, intellectual property, brand, and, most of all, people). In this century these percentages have nearly flip-flopped, with 80 percent of value attributable to intangible assets and 20 percent to tangible assets.

Workforce demographics are evolving. Organizations wage a new “war for talent” these days. Today, according to CareerBuilder, more than half of those age 60-64 are working (up from 46 percent in 1996). And that number is expected to reach 60 percent by 2026. Many hold top positions, squelching the opportunity for lower-level talent to advance and leaving younger workers feeling stuck and potentially looking for opportunities with other organizations, further fuelling the war for talent.

The context in which we do business is more complex and dynamic. Hyper-competition makes it more difficult than ever to sustain a competitive advantage long term. New products and new business models have shorter life cycles, demanding constant innovation. Technology enables greater access to information and forces us to move “At the speed of business.” Global expansion adds to these challenges a single company may, for example, have its headquarters in Japan, its R&D function in China, and its worldwide sales operations based in California.

Boards and financial markets are expecting more. Strategy + Business magazine once described CEOs as “The world’s most prominent temp workers.” This continues to be increasingly true: In the first nine months of 2019, according to Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, 1,160 U.S. CEOs in left their jobs a 13 percent jump from the same period the previous year, and the highest number of CEO departures since the company first began tracking it in 2002. Boards and investors are putting senior leaders under a microscope, expecting them to create value. This pressure, most visible at the CEO level but generally felt up and down the org chart, drives a growing emphasis on the quality of talent not just at the C-level, but at all levels.

Benefits

Strategic hiring process

Having a TMS can help you recruit those really talented candidates that everyone is after. By integrating tasks such as posting job descriptions, tracking applicants and making it easy to manage offers, a TMS streamlines your hiring process, allowing you time to focus on the candidates.

Connecting and sharing data

The right TMS can integrate and align core HR processes. While much of the data collected through a HRIS is stored in silos and can be difficult to reach and analyse, an integrated TMS shares data across the entire system allowing for easy access. This gives a clearer understanding of what that data means for your business and enables you to make informed, strategic business decisions.

Improved onboarding experience

An organised and efficient approach to onboarding is achievable with a TMS. You can create employee profiles which hold all of the information and data collected during the recruitment and hiring processes. Automating the new hire paperwork can save both you and the new hire time which you can then use to focus on the new recruit.

Employee development

A good integrated TMS should include options for employee learning and development. It enables employees to take courses, develop skills and in some cases pursue certifications relevant to their professional development. TMS solutions also collect data on what skills an employee has and allows the HR team to assign training which the employee can then access from their personal profile.

Increased employee and manager engagement

If you’re looking to increase engagement in your company, implementing a TMS can help. The employee profile empowers employees and managers to interact with the employee’s professional career progression. An integrated TMS solution encourages them to invest in the organisation and align their daily work with the business goals while also focusing on their personal goals.

Retain top talent

Once you have the best employees, you need to keep them. With all of the employee information hosted on one platform and neatly organised into an online profile, you can track performance reviews, goals, skills and career aspirations to make sure your employees are happy and on the right track. Having a TMS in place to capture all of that data makes it easy to analyse and report on which employees need developing, monitoring or even promoting.

Improved employee experience

As we know, employee turnover is something to be avoided at all costs. A TMS that integrates with payroll improves the employee experience by allowing access to payslips, holiday requests and management of sick leave. Organisational charts can also be included, letting employees know the reporting and management structure of the company.

Most organisations today understand the significance of their human capital and the value of their talent to meet business goals and objectives. Talent management focus on providing strategic assistance to organisation in the accomplishment of long-term enterprise goals with respect to human capital. The term Talent management gained popularity in the late 1990s.

Having good talent means employing one with good skills, knowledge, intellectuality, and the potential to do well. If someone has all the competency skills and are good at what they do, the company would like to retain them forever. Most employees are either satisfied with the job they have or if not, they go out and look for better opportunities. Finding capable and potential candidates is not a challenging task, but making sure that they stick, contribute and are loyalists- willing to stay in the same business for a longer term, is the real challenge.

Talent management involves development (both organisation as well as individual) in response to changing and complex operating environment. It includes the creation and maintenance of organisation culture.

Talent management brings together a number of important human resources and management initiatives. Organisations that formally decide to “manage their talent” undertake a strategic analysis of their current HR processes. This is to ensure that a co-ordinated, performance and oriented approach is adopted.

1. Competency frameworks

A competency framework is essentially the lingua franca of capability in the organisation. Competency frameworks (easy to develop with the right agile performance management tools) help drive consistency within the business when recruiting employees, managing their performance and developing them. It can perform a pivotal role in ensuring everyone understands what is expected of them in a specific role and for a given context. An effective talent management strategy should begin with competency framework development that will serve as the foundation for future talent management initiatives.

2. Culture of learning

A job should not solely be filled based on past experience and performance, but on the employee’s potential and aptitude to adapt to a new role. That’s why ensuring continuous informal and formal learning and development is key to help develop new skills and prepare for a new role. Personalised learning will also create better engagement and will likely help retain talent.

3. Performance management

The managing of talent in the organisation reaches into agile performance management. To implement a talent management strategy it is important to understand performance. Analytics and comprehensive talent management system solutions that have a performance capability will help with this as it brings the data into one place and provides managers with clear indicators on talent strategy implementation and performance issues.

4. Succession planning

Succession planning is all about knowing the needs of your organisation and developing the capacity to address these needs when and even before they arise. But how do you anticipate your future talent needs? The key to effective succession planning is to be aligned with your overall talent management strategy, which then includes your training initiatives, performance management, career development and recruitment. Collecting all these statistics will help you figure out who is competent for a role ready to be filled or who needs to improve their skills. Combining the data from all these initiatives in one place will help build one central talent pool, where you can easily spot the high potentials ready to step into a key role.

5. Career development and career pathing

While performance management is all about developing the skills and competencies of your workforce to meet the organisation’s needs, career development is about supporting your employees to develop and realise their potential. Understanding their strengths, skill gaps and interests is the first step in the career development process. While learning and training will be fundamental parts of your employees’ career development, structured coaching will give them the necessary feedback they need to grow professionally. By facilitating conversations with their manager on a regular basis, the employee will gain insight into their performance and skills to work on.

It is important for employees to understand what opportunities exist within the organisation and how they can work towards them. A robust talent management system will facilitate this and give a clear development path for employees to follow based on their aspirations. This is also a clear signal to employees that the organisation is willing to invest in them which is proven to improve employee retention and motivation.

Four Steps to making talent management a core competence

Step 1: Identify Key Roles: Analyze the key steps in the talent life cycle (identification and attraction, hiring and inculcation, motivation and development, appraisal and reward, building and sustaining relationships) and map the key players, their roles in each stage.

Step 2: Take an Inventory of Your Talent Management Skills. Identify the critical skills needed to play the key roles.

Step 3: Measure the Right Things. Assess the measures to evaluate the performance of your talent management process at each life cycle stage.

Step 4: Set Up a Process-Wide Feedback Loop. Everyone managing talent needs to understand the big picture and to connect their role and responsibilities to the overall objectives of the process.

An effective talent management process will ensure employees’ job satisfaction, safeguarding the company from high employee turnover rates.

Ongoing performance management is vital for keeping employees happy, engaged, and motivated to succeed. Because employee engagement, satisfaction and motivation are essential components of employee retention, establishing an effective performance management strategy that cultivates these components will promote a positive work environment of employees who continue growing with a company.

Importance

Attract top talent Having a strategic talent management gives organizations the opportunity to attract the most talented and skilled employees available. It creates an employer brand that could attract potential talents, and in turn, contributes to the improvement of the organizations’ business performance and results.

Employee motivation. Having a strategic talent management helps organizations keep their employees motivated which creates more reasons for them to stay in the company and do their tasks. In fact, 91 percent of employees shared that they wanted more than just money to feel engaged and motivated, as revealed by Chandler and Macleod’s survey.

Continuous coverage of critical roles. Talent management equips companies with the tasks that require critical skills to plan and address the important and highly specialized roles in the workforce to its employees. This means that the company will have a continuous flow of employees to fill critical roles to help companies run their operations smoothly and avoid extra workload for others, which could lead to exhaustion.

Increase employee performance. The use of talent management will make it easier for the companies to identify which employees will be best suited for the job that can lead to less performance management issues and grievances. It will also guarantee that the top talent within the company stays longer.

Engaged employees. Talent management allows companies to make systematic and consistent decisions about the development of staff, which guarantees the employees’ skills and development. Furthermore, employees will feel more engaged when there is a fair procedure for the development, which helps in increasing the retention rates that helps companies in meeting their operational requirements.

Retain top talent. Well-structured on-boarding practices create higher levels of retention which saves the company on its recruitment and performance management cost in the long run.

Improve business performance. Talent management helps employees feel engaged, skilled, and motivated, allowing them to work in the direction of the company’s business goals, which in turn, increases client satisfaction and business performance.

Higher client satisfaction. A systematic approach to talent management means that there is an organizational integration and a consistent approach to management. When systems are more integrated, client satisfaction rates are usually higher, since they are dealing with fewer people and their needs are met more rapidly.

A requisite pool of qualified and talented employees can simplify the process of achieving the organizational goal and help focus on issues that really matters in the interest of the organization. Therefore, the overall purpose of talent management is to maintain a skilled and efficient workforce for the organization.

In modern-day organizations, the importance of talent management is second to none. Unless an organization has the required talented workforce, it cannot succeed in attaining its goal even if it possesses other factors such as natural resources, infrastructure, and technology. In fact, it is people who take an organization to its next levels of success.

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.

Talent mapping is a technique that charts individuals’ skills and abilities, assesses their performance and potential, and matches them with workforce planning strategies to balance an organization’s talent and needs. Talent mapping enables an organization to determine strategies for future hiring, including internal promotions, likely short- and long-term hiring needs, and development of existing talent to meet future staffing needs.

Talent mapping is a strategic service that is used by businesses to plan for short-, medium- and long-term talent acquisition. It is used by the most perceptive companies to ensure that a recruitment process doesn’t just result in a quick hire, but rather, that it focuses on the short, medium and long term needs and leads to a number of strategic talent acquisitions over a prolonged period of time. It enables business leaders to proactively build the capabilities of the workforce using an in-depth and analytical process. It involves identifying the capabilities, experience and potential of current employees and aligning those with the growth strategy to reveal talent gaps and development needs.

The Performance-Potential Matrix

When companies engage in talent mapping, they often use a nine-box grid called the performance-potential matrix to assess their current employees. This matrix measures aspects of performance and potential such as leadership, effectiveness at the current position, impact, and trust.

Utilizing the matrix gives HR professionals a good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of current employees, as well as their potential to grow or be promoted into other positions in the future. This information can then be used to find out what talent gaps exist in the organization, which can help with hiring both now and in the future.

Making Talent Mapping Easier

The process of talent mapping takes a great deal of time and effort. Thrive TRM can assist with the talent mapping process by facilitating the record-keeping it entails. Thrive tracks notes, makes it easy to automatically incorporate those notes into employee profiles, and creates reports based on data users’ input into the system.

With Thrive TRM, you can compile a profile of your company’s current staffing situation and better determine your future hiring needs. This information can then be shared with your entire hiring team and any members of management that want to be in the loop.

Another capability offered with Thrive TRM is feedback and assessment. Your hiring and management teams can use Thrive TRM to have an ongoing dialogue about the company’s talent management strategy without the difficulties of scheduling meetings and trying to get everyone together at the same time.

The information that is gleaned from the talent mapping process can then be used in recruiting and hiring efforts to make sure your organization’s ongoing needs are being met in the candidates you hire. Thrive TRM streamlines recruiting and hiring and contributes to a comprehensive talent management strategy.

Reasons why talent mapping is essential for strategic growth.

Inclusive employee engagement

Talent mapping is principally an internal process used to assess current and future effectiveness, involving the entire organisation across every level and function. While much of the ‘assessment’ is passive and metrics driven e.g. clarifying the technical knowledge, qualifications and performance of individual employees it also presents a perfect opportunity for employee engagement. It’s another touch point, where career conversations take place and qualitative data of employee goals and interests are gathered and compared with growth strategy and future investment. Building trust and raising morale are two likely outcomes of any employee engagement initiative, especially when the focus is on understanding and potentially fulfilling career aspirations.

Opportunities for internal moves

The most effective talent mapping approach mobilises the whole organisation to record the capabilities, experience and potential of each employee. Only a non-silo mentality will ensure consistent data collection, as well as the detail required to inform talent decisions. According to accountancy firm PwC, compiling a skills and attributes database is a great way to ensure the right people are assigned to the right roles and for selecting which talent can be moved internally to meet short-term business demands. This, on the one hand, is a proactive way to bolster teams so they can deal with sudden changes in priorities and market conditions or pre-empt vacancies and manage talent shortage risks. It can also create new opportunities for internal moves, by revealing skill shortages not previously identified. Training needs, too, are highlighted and training solutions delivered to ensure positions are filled, where gaps emerge.

Identify potential leavers

Reviewing employee performance and potential isn’t just about identifying talent gaps and training needs within the workforce. Talent mapping can also uncover signs someone may soon leave an organisation, or that it’s time for them to move on to a new opportunity. First of all, taking the time to investigate the tangible impact of employees is always a good idea. Once you’re clear about this, you can then assess the potential each person has to progress or evolve within the organisation, over time. The 9 box grid is a popular talent mapping tool, as it helps leaders visualise where employees sit on a matrix and clarify whether a degree of motivation, reward or training will help them develop their careers.

Succession Planning

Succession planning is, of course, a primary objective for any talent mapping exercise. Traditionally, talent mapping processes would only seek to highlight people with leadership potential and ensure only those people were given access to development opportunities. As discussed earlier, though, the focus of development programmes has shifted from engaging with ‘high potential’ leaders to recognising that every employee should have access to career growth trajectories. Talent mapping, in this context, is about broadening your perception of the ‘critical roles’ within the organisation and understanding how those roles could be filled if vacancies emerged. It also encourages the establishment of clear development pathways, whether the function is a ‘specialist’ or leadership position, thereby challenging ‘invested in’ employees to step into and/or create new opportunities for themselves.

Reducing the time to hire

The previous sections each considered the benefits of talent mapping from an internal perspective. Of course, in an ideal world, all talent needs could be solved internally, but that’s rarely the case for most organisations. Rather than being caught out when a vacancy arises, external talent mapping is another valuable method to ensure organisations gain a competitive people advantage.

Long view of talent development

Underpinning any internal mobility or succession planning process is the need to develop talent over a long time. Whether that’s broadening or narrowing someone’s experience, talent mapping is a great way to identify specific needs or speculate about unknown future ones and how they may be met through training and development. Leaders often start by reviewing current and future workforce potential. Though, during the last decade, more organisations are using talent mapping to identify critical jobs of the future and determining what skills they will require in five- or ten-years’ time, to fulfil these roles.

External Brand building

In the same way that internal talent mapping can lead to better employee engagement, regularly engaging with external talent either directly or through a talent mapping service provider can improve employer brand and generally raise the reputation of an organisation.

To attract talent today, companies must ensure that all potential candidates enjoy positive experiences of the brand. Many companies, for example, now participate in talent community building, utilising ongoing networking and other marketing touch points to ensure their brand remains ‘top-of-mind’ for prospective candidates. When the company is ready to launch a recruitment campaign, it’s already one step ahead of its competition, in a tight talent market.

Gather Market intelligence

Gathering market intelligence and insight into competitor capabilities is a key objective of an external talent mapping process. Once an internal talent map identifies gaps and potential future gaps that could emerge, it becomes a foundation to analyse organisations, industries and people on an on-going basis. This can involve comparing, for example, the make-up of competitor teams and organisational structures, investigating compensation and benefits trends, as well as training and development plans. Stock-piling this intelligence can give businesses a detailed and holistic view of the market for talent, increasing the chances of hiring the absolute best candidates. It enables decisive hiring, while building a clear foundation for succession planning.

Trend analysts suggest Artificial Intelligence (AI) and big data is fuelling innovation in recruitment technology, creating more sophisticated optimisation and data analytics tools that can be leveraged for talent mapping exercises. And companies that invest wisely in the best tools and consultants, will position themselves at the forefront of the industry.

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.

Sourcing the best people from the industry has become the top most priority of the organizations today. In such a competitive scenario, talent management has become the key strategy to identify and filling the skill gap in a company by recruiting the high-worth individuals from the industry. It is a never-ending process that starts from targeting people. The process regulates the entry and exit of talented people in an organization.

To sustain and stay ahead in business, talent management cannot be ignored. In order to understand the concept better, The stages included in talent management process:

• Understanding the Requirement: It is the preparatory stage and plays a crucial role in success of the whole process. The main objective is to determine the requirement of talent. The main activities of this stage are developing job description and job specifications.
• Sourcing the Talent: This is the second stage of talent management process that involves targeting the best talent of the industry. Searching for people according to the requirement is the main activity.
• Attracting the Talent: it is important to attract the talented people to work with you as the whole process revolves around this only. After all the main aim of talent management process is to hire the best people from the industry.
• Recruiting the Talent: The actual process of hiring starts from here. This is the stage when people are invited to join the organization.
• Selecting the Talent: This involves meeting with different people having same or different qualifications and skill sets as mentioned in job description. Candidates who qualify this round are invited to join the organization.
• Training and Development: After recruiting the best people, they are trained and developed to get the desired output.
• Retention: Certainly, it is the sole purpose of talent management process. Hiring them does not serve the purpose completely. Retention depends on various factors such as pay package, job specification, challenges involved in a job, designation, personal development of an employee, recognition, culture and the fit between job and talent.
• Promotion: No one can work in an organization at the same designation with same job responsibilities. Job enrichment plays an important role.
• Competency Mapping: Assessing employees’ skills, development, ability and competency is the next step. If required, also focus on behaviour, attitude, knowledge and future possibilities of improvement. It gives you a brief idea if the person is fir for promoting further.
• Performance Appraisal: Measuring the actual performance of an employee is necessary to identify his or her true potential. It is to check whether the person can be loaded with extra responsibilities or not.
• Career Planning: If the individual can handle the work pressure and extra responsibilities well, the management needs to plan his or her career so that he or she feels rewarded. It is good to recognize their efforts to retain them for a longer period of time.
• Succession Planning: Succession planning is all about who will replace whom in near future. The employee who has given his best to the organization and has been serving it for a very long time definitely deserves to hold the top position. Management needs to plan about when and how succession will take place.
• Exit: The process ends when an individual gets retired or is no more a part of the organization.

The best way to approach talent management

1. Support when an employee is effective in the right role

You need to support employees that are performing effectively in their current roles. The idea is to retain talent by helping them grow and making sure they are happy with their job role and responsibilities.

2. Invest in employees underperforming in the right roles

While it is easier to write off employees that are underperforming in the right role, it is important for organizations to consider all factors like poor training, lack of resources, poor role definition, and poor supervision before blaming it all on the employee.

Otherwise, you might end up hiring the replacement with the exact same issue.

That is why you need to do what it takes to give your employees the right training programs and define their role more accurately.

3. Promote employees performing outstandingly in the wrong role

There will always be a time when employees will outgrow their job roles. Organizations need to get the timing right and promote the employees before they get hired by a competitor. Employees often think they are ready for a promotion before you think they are ready. In cases like these, it is always better to move them before you are comfortable in order to retain talent.

4. Move out employees underperforming in the wrong role

When you see an employee underperforming, you need to analyse whether they are in the wrong role or the right role. If they are in the right role, then you need to invest in the employees. But if they are in the wrong roles, then you need to move them into a role that is more suited to them.