Talent management: The art of aligning business strategy with career development

talent management

In 2022, talent management will be one of the most important aspects of a company’s success. How the company hires and retains talent will reflect directly on just how successful it is.

The term ‘talent management’ was coined by McKinsey & Company in 1997. It generally refers to the aspects of human resources that are most likely to affect business success.

What is talent management?

Development Dimensions International define it as “the science of using strategic human resource planning to improve business value and to make it possible for companies and organizations to reach their goals. Everything done to recruit, retain, develop, reward and make people perform forms a part of talent management as well as strategic workforce planning.”

Capterra defines it as “an organization-wide, holistic strategy for hiring, training, and retaining top-performing employees.” It explains that “HR is more focused on administration… dealing with pay, personal time off, benefits, and complaints, while talent management is almost singularly focused on helping and improving the top talent in the organization”. And that “talent management is strategic, often manifesting as a company-wide, long-term plan closely associated with overall business goals, while HR is more tactical, dealing with the day-to-day management of people”.

This makes talent management a vital element of any organization’s business strategy.

But what’s really interesting about talent management is that it needs to orchestrate win-win situations between an organization and its top performers.

Why career development is key to talent management

Effective talent management begins before your company advertises its next new post. It’s about writing job descriptions for and recruiting people who not only have what it takes to meet the requirements of the current job but who have what it takes to help the company meet future strategic goals. This may be a particular leadership style, experience that isn’t relevant just yet but will be in a couple of years’ time, or a technical interest or ability that can lead to new revenue streams.

And it’s not just recruiting – you need a talent management strategy for all current employees. A blueprint for ensuring they’re developing the skills and experience they’ll need in the next 5 to 10 years.

It’s the only way to future-proof your human resources and your business.

5 elements of talent management

1. Strategic employee planning

This is about working to your organization’s long-term strategic plan. What are the goals, and what skills, personalities and experience do you need to achieve those goals?

Processes involved:

  • Business strategy mapping
  • Human resource planning
  • Company and departmental goal and KPI setting

2. Recruiting

This is about ensuring that you hire the best people – for present and future requirements. And that you onboard and integrate them effectively.

Processes involved:

3. Retaining

This is about keeping high-performing employees challenged, motivated and happy. Retention is a very difficult process for many companies, but once you understand what truly motivates people, you’ll be in a much better position to retain them.

Processes involved:

4. Learning and development

This is about upskilling your current employees. It involves careful thought about the skills you need to develop in the workforce, and which employees would be interested in learning them. It also involves developing the soft skills required of future leaders.

Processes involved:

5. Compensation

There’s no getting around it, people need to be recognized and rewarded for their successes. It’s important to review your compensation strategy, to ensure that people are rewarded for the right behavior – for long-term thinking and goal achievement, rather than just short-term sales.

Processes involved:

  • Goal setting and KPI
  • Salary and bonus structures

Use smart technology to implement your talent management strategies

Our suite of talent management solutions is designed to help organizations deploy, automate and measure the effectiveness of their talent management strategies. Each of our modules plugs into your existing HR platform, giving you instant access to intuitive, visual tools that’ll help you ensure that no-one gets left behind.

To learn more, watch the following video, or follow the link below it to get started with a quick demo.

Talk to Us