The four must-have’s for effective talent management
Johns Hopkins University has defined talent management as “a set of integrated organizational HR … processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees.” But your company doesn’t want to simply be good—offering adequate training and equipment for an employee to begin and maintain their position at the organization. You want to be great—attracting high performing talent that both increases your bottom line and contributes to an established company culture.
Components of highly effective talent management
So instead of adequate talent management, let’s explore highly effective talent management, a philosophy that addresses these four critical areas:
- Recruitment
- Performance Management
- Learning and Development
- Retention
Let’s break down these four components.
Recruitment
The first thing an organization must do is recruit, and not just anyone. Organizations must recruit talented individuals. According to Fernando Sanchez Areas, HR Director for Learning and Development at The Home Depot, “We need to attract the best talent, help them to learn, help them to feel engaged, and of course, to ensure that they can perform and produce the results that the customers are expecting them to deliver.”
Examine how your business is attracting, retaining, and developing your talent. Are you offering benefits they desire? Rewards they’re proud to display? Or is everyone offered the same package and same rewards, with no chance to tailor them to their needs?
Sometimes making room for new talent comes with reboarding current talent. Keeping your current talent happy is an important part of the reboarding process.
Performance management
How does HR measure and improve talent performance? Do the measures go beyond performance reviews, one-on-one meetings, and recognition ceremonies? Does company talent feel comfortable contributing to the company culture? If the answer is ‘no’ to any of the above, then your organization may need to consider more up-to-date practices.
Learning and development
Charting a path for talent to a achieve their development goals is known as career pathing. HR needs to know what knowledge, skills, personal characteristics, and experience are needed for any given position and talent needs to examine whether they possess the qualities required for the internal position they want to pursue. Offering clear career pathing helps an organization set itself above the competition. One way to do that is to ensure that opportunities available within the company are highly visible.
In addition, companies that offer their employees changes to grow and develop have higher success rates when it comes to recruiting and retaining employees.
Retention
According to HR Exchange, the half-life of a learned skill is 5 years. Both companies and talent want to stay ahead of the competition, so modernization (of technology, culture, and processes) is critical. If a company continues to progress in offerings, skill development, and social equity, then employees will likely find it unnecessary to change companies just to stay on track with the new future of work. If talent can find what they need where they are, then retaining them is that much easier.For HR to track employee satisfaction, effective assessments of employee engagements are necessary. Engagement and retention of critical employees means having an effective talent management strategy. In addition to the four critical talent management areas listed here, HR and management must also practice strong onboarding strategies and offer avenues for talent feedback.
Employee experience
The employee experience is critical for employee engagement and retention, which means effective assessment tools for employee engagement are equally important. Current employees have valuable feedback—including their perception of the onboarding process—to offer HR and management.
Onboarding refers to the process of educating new talent about the culture and processes of an organization. A positive onboarding process is a critical part of the talent experience, because if that experience is difficult or negative, talent retention may be affected.
Offering employees opportunities to give feedback about their experiences helps them feel they’re being heard and appreciated by management, both during onboarding and throughout their tenure with the company. These opportunities inform management about high performers’ perspective and offer a chance to amend any elements that might introduce friction.
Avoiding costs and losses
The costs related to the attrition of current talent, plus those costs that come from hiring and training new talent, can be considerable. Losses to performance, effects on the employee experience, and missed opportunities for growth and development add to the drain on an organization. Conversely, developing a talent management strategy focused on employee experience, growth, and development can lead to increased success in recruitment and retention of talent, which can lead to those positive business results you really need.
Interested in getting your organization up to speed with current and new talent? Give Point C a call today at 612-355-8910 or visit our Contact Us page.