Talented employees who understand your business and contribute to its growth are worth their weight in gold. Businesses in the small to medium space thoroughly understand the need to find and retain talent. Enter, talent management.
Talent management is a section of human resources that specifically focuses on identifying and hiring candidates who meet a set of highly desirable skill sets. These individuals are supplied with learning opportunities to help them grow within the business and are rewarded according to growth.
The process of talent management entails an organised and strategic process that identifies talent gaps, creates positions, sources and onboards suitable candidates and develops them to be the motivated and effective team member that helps to achieve the business goals. It emphasises that with the right team, anything is possible.
Benefits to Talent Management
Taking a strategic approach to acquiring talent and developing their skills has many objectives. It can:
- Create meaningful work and growth opportunities for staff.
- Build a high-performance workplace.
- Contribute to inclusion and diversity.
- Encourage continuous learning.
- Strengthen the ‘employee value proposition.
- Access people analytics for better business decision-making.
- Increase productivity.
- Improve customer service.
Talent Management Process
The talent management process is the steps that the human resource officers take to complete the cycle of talent management. It is outlined in the following steps, although it can rather be described as a loop.
Attracting (Also Called Recruiting) Talent
Talent managers must consider the public image of the organisation, especially as a place to work and the values it communicates to the public. Candidates sourced from outside the business will consider this. Furthermore, you can start sourcing them on social networking sites, job boards and even other employee referrals.
Identifying and Hiring Talent
Individuals from either within or outside the business can be identified as suitable candidates.
Depending on the size of your business, how lig it has been operating and the position you are looking to fill, consider succession planning as it helps organisations prepare potential leaders to fill key positions.
Analysis tools, prescreening questionnaires, skills tests and interviews are used further to narrow down the list of potential candidates. After this, an offer is made to the successful candidate.
Develop Talent
Talent development is continuous and happens from onboarding throughout the employee’s employment. The latter is usually in learning and development (L&D) initiatives that include coaching, mentoring, and networking.
As a leader in your business, you can make learning and development resources accessible and relevant to employees in line with what will help them do their jobs more effectively.
Engaging Talent
The team can remain connected and focused with the help of engagement tools. Furthermore, staff who have good quality jobs, autonomy, clarity of expectations, and are well-managed, are usually happier, healthier and more fulfilled.
Retaining Talent
Retaining talent is so much deeper than ensuring you reduce employee turnover. That is why the previous steps of engaging and developing workers are also important – You don’t want to keep employees that are not growing. Investigate what exactly will help retain your employees in your business. It might be as simple as acknowledging their contributions to your overall brand success.
Deploying Talent
This step refers to using your staff in the most effective and efficient way. It also helps close the loop of finding the right person for the right job. As workers complete tasks, you need to keep an eye on how effectively they are able to complete assignments as this will indicate skills gaps within the business. Next, tehse can be filled with training, more support for resources or even formal education.
However, it is not enough to move through these motions to complete the talent management process. You have to have a strategy or framework to work withing.
What Is a Talent Management Framework?
A talent management framework is the map that a business follows to execute its talent strategy. It lists the steps in the management process and often uses a talent management system.
A talent management system is software that helps to streamline the talent processes. It has features such as creating job posts, onboarding new hires, and tracking employee performance.
Elements of a Strategy
A thorough strategy is carefully implemented and updated to reflect the aims of the business. The five primary pillars are:
1. Detailed Job Descriptions
2. Person-Business Fit
3. Collaborate-Coach-Evolve
4. Reward and Recognise Right
5. Opportunities for Continuous Improvement
Understanding how to not only employ workers and make sure they complete their work, but also to help them grow within your business is both a strategy and a process. By managing your talent’s talents, you wisely use your most valuable resources to your advantage: Your people.
To find out more about Human Resources for Small Business Owners, read our guide.
Discussion about this post