Game Changing Talent Management Strategies
Building a Talent Management Strategy is key for creating a competitive brand and winning the war on talent over the competition. Creating a game changing strategy requires an innovative talent management plan, the commitment and support of leaders at all levels, and the ability to execute the plan.
Organizations must become more effective, productive, competitive, and profitable in an increasingly challenging economy. Many of the world’s best organizations have implemented talent management strategies to achieve their strategic business goals. Senior Leaders in the HR and TM arena recognize the importance of developing an innovative talent management model that is built on the organization’s values and culture, agility to change, innovation practices and internal operational effectiveness.
Creating an Innovative Talent Management Business Model is key. An innovative business model requires that the very best talent be sourced, engaged, developed, and retained. Organizations must champion a strong performance culture that drives the talent management process through developing employees, employee job and career satisfaction, talent review and succession planning.
Research on Talent Management indicates that organizations in different degrees believe that:
- Integrated talent management is mission critical.
- Integrated talent management strategies and processes have better financial performance than those that have not integrated their talent functions.
- Linking learning management to other core talent functions yields stronger revenue growth.
- Succession Planning, when extended to the entire workforce, positively impacts sales growth.
- Performance Management is a retention tool where goals, feedback and coaching are integrative when identifying, developing, and retaining high performers.
- Current workforces are still not adequately prepared to meet their company’s future plans.
Talent Management Practices that really pay off:
- Workforce planning that is tied to the business plan- identify the trends and needs; create and use meaningful metrics that tie to the strategic goals and business drivers.
- Creating, communicating, and re-enforcing an employer brand to attract potential talent. (This includes a process to continuously attract potential candidates as well as keep the promise for current employees.)
- Developing a seamless process for recruiting, acquisition, orientation, and on boarding. This process should be user friendly and expedient for applicants, interviewees, and hiring managers and most importantly should communicate your company’s brand.
- For On-boarding – ensure that new hires have a positive experience once they are on board using approaches such as peer mentoring, buddy systems, frequent performance and coaching discussions with supervisor during that first year, individual development plan—many of these are particularly attractive to the Millennials, given their desire for feedback, understanding how they fit into the culture, being on teams, and having peer buddies to work with.
- Retention Strategies to retain top talent; Measure retention – identify why employees leave and why they stay, conduct a risk assessment.
- Employee engagement for employee satisfaction- Conduct an annual survey to determine employee engagement and satisfaction around organization culture, management/leadership and job. Train managers to discuss engagement factors with employees.
- Employee performance goals and development plans- Performance goals without a development plan will fail. Managers need to learn to be coaches. We all need coaches but Millennials particularly benefit from effective coaching and feedback to help them grow.
- Identify metrics to analyze and measure the results of your talent management initiatives. Base your evaluation on the goals of the program. Define the challenges or issues associated with Talent Management to determine the success of the outcomes or goals. Use measurable criteria for tracking. Monitor and track the effectiveness of your Talent Management programs.
Establishing better talent management practices will result in a more efficient use of existing staff, reduce turnover, improve employee dissatisfaction, increase retention, and provide a steady pool of internal talent! Excellent outcomes for any organization!
Where to Start:
Identify the trends that your organization is currently facing and determine the risk associated with that trend (such as extremely likely, somewhat likely, not likely) and assess the following:
- Shortage of talent and leadership capabilities due to baby boomer retirement?
- Hiring and retaining talent will be an increasing competitive advantage
- Leaders will be held accountable for identifying and developing future talent
- Managing Multigenerational Challenges and Expectations
- Technology challenges to re-skill employees
Consider these Innovative Talent Management Strategies to minimize your risks:
- Tie talent management strategies to business goals and measurable
- Integrate workforce planning with recruiting strategies, to provide a more complete picture of your organization’s staffing situation through workforce analytics.
- Offer a more robust on-boarding process than an orientation program.
- Identify a talent pool to fill internal positions and specify career paths to define a course of action for development, improvement or reassignment.
- Link with performance management to provide a clear view of goals and what is working at both the organizational and individual
- Build employee career development by identifying future career paths, skill sets, development plans and training needed to advance.
- Offer a succession planning process to identify potential successors for critical positions and development opportunities to advance into leadership roles.
- Create an ongoing career development process for employee development and
- Develop supervisors’ and managers’ talent management skills so that they are better at motivating, coaching and developing the talent that reports to them.
- Improve retention – Leadership role models, meaningful work experience, development opportunities, mentoring.
- Improve employee engagement – Create career opportunities, improve culture and workforce environment.
- Identify successors for critical positions – Determine readiness and potential, provide development and support.
- Identify a talent pool to develop critical employees for future positions.
Steps to Building a Talent Management Strategy
- Build and maintain a strong employer brand to attract and retain top talent.
- Practice strategic and ongoing workforce planning.
- Create strategic recruitment plans and use all the tools at their disposal to attract talent.
- Build effective on-boarding processes.
- Create “great places to work”, so that talent will remain with the organization.
- Identify and develop leaders at all levels; choose and develop leaders for their talent management skills.
- Communicate the plan of action to employees.
- Reward talent with strategic employee recognition.
Impact of a Game Changing Talent Management Strategy
- Integrated talent management strategies and processes bring better financial performance.
- Focusing on competency development, on-the-job training and project-based learning leads to effective individual and team performance.
- Promoting mentoring, coaching, social networking and collaboration brings about knowledge sharing and high morale.
- Implementing succession planning and career development improves brand loyalty and quality of services.
- Measuring workforce performance outcomes increases retention of high performers.
Talent Management Strategies Return on Investment
- Reduces staffing costs – advertising, recruitment, interviewing, selection processes
- Reduces staffing cycle times – time to hire, and time to onboard
- Reduces vacancy rates – increases selection pool, reduces risk of departure
- Reduces first-year turnover and overall turnover rate
- Improves productivity, performance, engagement, and job satisfaction
In a fast changing business environment, the ability to manage talent effectively determines the success of organizations. Institute OD’s Talent Management Certification Program (TMCP) provides professionals with the opportunity to learn and practice the disciplines of Talent Management in a convenient, online format.
The Talent Management Certification Program (TMCP) is offered over 8 months. Each session is delivered through Gototraining. Using an Organization Development approach, our expert faculty provide indispensable knowledge of relevant tools, frameworks, and models needed to be successful in the field of Talent Management.
Many organizations are realizing that their employees’ talents and skills drive business performance and success. Take control of your talent management strategy and register for Institute OD’s successful Talent Management Certification Program!