Talent Management

Talent management is a business strategy and must be fully integrated within all of the employee related processes of the organization. Attracting and retaining talented employees, in a talent management system, is the job of every member of the organization, but especially managers who have reporting staff (talent).

·        Key talent identification/retention

Going hand-in-hand with talent training and development, fast-growing companies need to make sure that their most valuable employees are engaged and satisfied: with work/life balance, compensation, strategic direction and a host of related variables. Once dissatisfied, it is often too late to turn things around. Companies need to make a concerted effort to proactively identify and work to satisfy the needs of their most critical talent.

·        Career-pathing

As talent processes mature, companies can begin to add elements that can lead to anything from performance improvement to breakthrough. Providing each worker – particularly their most valuable employees – with a clear job description and performance metrics is only a start. The most enlightened companies take matters a step (or two) further. That is, they engage with each employee to get a sense of personal abilities, aspirations and needs to develop a growth and development plan within the organization.

Where do they want to go in their career? What can they do for the organization? What can the organization do to improve the work/life balance? What training or work experience will they need? If employers can better align the interests of individuals with those of the broader organization, employee engagement and performance are enhanced.

·        Talent mapping

Talent mapping is a formalized process of linking the talent on hand to the talent that will be needed to support growth in order to assess shortfalls or gaps. As companies pursue greater alignment between talent management and strategic planning, they begin to see increasingly greater value in talent mapping.