Talent management is defined as a critical process that ensures that a firm has the best quality as well as quantity of human resources at his behest and can utilize it to meet both present and future opportunities and business priorities. It includes aspects like selection, management, onboarding, engaging, motivation, retaining and development of employees.
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Meaning of Talent Management
An organization needs its employees and their best talent in order to survive in these competitive times. The global economy has made things complex and it has become important to manage the talent pool effectively to survive and flourish.
Talent management is actually a strategy that helps to realize the full potential of an employee in a business. It starts with the hiring process and leads towards improving and increasing employee performance. When done right it helps to increase and outperform competitive advantage and this is one of the major strengths that have helped it n becoming an all-time favorite with the organizations.
Components of Talent Management
The major components of a talent management process are as follows-
- Clear-cut understanding of both future and present business strategies of a business
- Locating talent
- Finding the right fit during accurate hiring
- Identifying gaps between current talent and required talent within a firm
- Making a sound plan to tackle the gaps between current and future talent
- Aligning team and individual goals
- Making accurate promotion decisions
- Offering feedbacks
- Development of talent
- Onus on talent strategy and successful implementation
- Retention management
Model of Talent Management
The main elements of a talent management model include-
1. Planning
It is vital for every company to align your company goals with a talent management model for overall success. Planning is an integral part of the talent management model as it will ensure that a company seeks to harness the talent of the right kind that fits perfectly with its needs.
2. Attracting
Sometimes employees leave the firm without any warning or at other times they are shifted to some other department. It is necessary to have back-up plans to avoid any unnecessary hassles. Prepare a talent management model that will create a pool of attractive talent so that firms can avoid distributing extra workload to the remaining employees.
A firm can attract the top talent by increasing its own visibility via referrals, social networking and job portals in the eyes of potential employees.
3. Selecting
Selecting in talent management model includes recruiting employees via interviews and written tests and later deciding on the most suitable applicant for the job profile.
4. Developing
The talent management model must put the onus on harnessing the talent in a firm. It includes identifying the positions and responsibilities that will help in the overall development of the employee by nudging them towards a position that will be beneficial for them.
The model must also help in recognizing activities like orientation, coaching, mentoring, guiding and counseling that will make the employees go the extra mile and fulfill different challenges.
5. Retaining
The model must help the firm to retain its best talent within the firm. Offering periodic training so that an employee can advance further in his professional career and providing incentives and benefits along with promotions is a great way to do so.
6. Employee Transition
The model must make space for employee transition as the company can shift or promote its existing employees to other job profiles within the organization.
Examples of Talent Management
Suppose a new restaurant by the name of RAMSAY is being built in a popular area where one with the name SHANGHAI already exists. Obviously, the one that has been in existent will be worried that it will have to face competition from a new entry.
The talent management model of Shanghai is prepared for this eventuality and decides to include special menus for discounted prices to attract customers. Moreover, it offers its employees incentives so as to keep the customers happy with their services.
Best practices of Talent Management
Some of the best practices of talent management are-
- Employer branding to attract top employees
- Enhancing employer reputation
- Perfect aligning of business and talent strategy
- Making the candidate experience smooth
- Spotting the best talent and going for it
- Encouraging referral programs
- Quick and smooth on-boarding
- Keeping the employees engaged to boost retention
- Planning a successful model
- Encouraging the development of employee via learning and training
- Tracking and boosting performances
Strategies of Talent Management
Talent management strategy should be systematic and hence must include the following-
- Identifying what an employee needs to get a promotion or raise
- Hiring only the best employees so that you get the best of the lot
- Conducting analysis about skills gap to understand their training needs
- Starting feedback sessions on a regular basis
- Recognizing employee achievements
- Place managers that are trained in offering motivation so as to engage them more effectively.
- Hire specialists that look promising and nurture their talent for future
Roles of Talent Management
The role of talent management is-
- The first step is to identify the goals of a business entity and understand what you need to achieve them. Write down the priorities and list the changes that must be undertaken to achieve them. Create job profiles based on these criteria so that you can acquire talent as per your requirement and specifications
- The next step is to attract the right talent. Everyone wants to become associated with the best and so is the case with potential applicants. A firm can take the help of employer branding process, promotional marketing and online portals like LinkedIn to search and attract the right talent
- The next step in talent management is selecting and hiring the talent via interviews
- Make way for a strong onboarding process so that the employees are made to feel comfortable in their new environment
- The role of talent management includes retaining the best talent so that the firm’s employee retention remains high by offering hikes, bonus, and incentives
- Maintain a steady promotion process so that the employees can look forward to rising a step above
- Identifying the potential talent of an employee via performance appraisal and giving him responsibilities that will suit his talent
- Offering a good working environment for healthy professional relationships
- The talent management role includes offering learning and training opportunities to the employees
- The most important part of the talent management process is providing ample time to the employees for distressing. Only work builds up the tension and the pressure starts getting to the employee. The role is to make sure there are fun activities and social entertainment programs that will help the employees in unwinding and feeling refreshed once again.
Talent Management process
The talent management process includes
1. Workplace planning
It includes strategic planning to gain access to talent in terms of behavior, knowledge, and skill of potential and current employee to reach the goals and objectives of a business entity
2. Career planning
Includes identifying good job opportunities within the firm and subsequent training so that the employee becomes equipped to handle the change effectively.
3. Organization branding
An employee must take pride in being associated with the organization. His career must include professional pride and development for overall growth
4. Talent aligning
The talent management process includes aligning the existing talent with the required talent and thus decreasing the shortfalls and gaps.
5. Hiring process
The talent management process includes the successful hiring of key talent via interviews and advertising.
6. Smooth onboarding
New employees are a bit nervous during the first few days and the process must include a smooth process of onboarding via orientation so that the employees feel welcomed.
7. Professional development
The process of talent management aligns plans and training goals with career planning and goal attainment
8. Getting feedback
An important part of the talent management process is getting feedbacks about employees through steps like 360-degree assessment or surveys
9. Strategic planning
This step in the talent management process includes implementing strategic planning to reach its target in the future
10. Performance expectation and management
The process of talent management includes maintaining clear communication channels so that priorities, responsibilities, roles, expectations and ultimately performance is aligned with expectation.
11. Enhancing leadership qualities
The process includes introducing activities that will enhance leadership qualities so that it can serve as a bridge between employee and leadership
12. Recognition and compensation
The talent management process emphasizes on offering a reward to recognize the contribution of its employees via raise, benefits, and promotions. The firm must also maintain a good compensation policy that is a balance between both employee and employer results.
13. Retention
Talent management is about retaining its top talent by understanding their personality and behavioral traits. Make sure proper steps are taken to understand the issues and solve any problems so that the company can maintain good retention rates.
Importance of Talent Management
The importance of talent management is as follows-
- Attracting the best of talents
- Help’s with the formation of teams that are more productive
- Being prepared to fulfill specialized and critical roles
- Helps to harness new tools by coming up with ideas to solve problems
- A continuous flow of talented employees
- Boosting the performance of employees
- Retaining top talent within the firm
- Keeping employees motivated and engaged
- Decreases turnover
- Increasing business performance
- Increasing client satisfaction
- Allows the business entities to remain competitive
Advantages of Talent Management
The advantages of the talent management system are-
- Sharing data becomes easier
- Build a strong presence in the market
- Promotes effective communication
- Retains the best talent
- It is easy to make informed business decisions
- Saves time
- Is easy to analyze
- Helps in shaping the future of employees
- Hiring and recruiting becomes easier
- Boosts employee engagement
- Improves employee experience
- Includes smooth on-boarding
Disadvantages of Talent Management
The disadvantages of talent management are as follows-
- The implementation is considered expensive in terms of costs, effort and time
- If implemented it results in additional overall costs for the company
- Every firm is not equipped to implement the talent management model
- It is not suitable for forms that have a good number of contract-based or part-time employees
- It is a challenge to get support from every department
- It can lead to conflict between management and HR
- If there is a lack of deeper understanding it can lead to loss of trust
Why we should invest in Talent Management
It is important for a company to invest in talent management because of the following reasons –
- One of the most important reasons for investing in talent management is to attract the top available talent in the industry. When you have the right people as part of the talent management team it becomes quite easier to create and increase employer branding as well as company brand image. The potential employees automatically gravitate towards the firms with a high reputation in the market and choose them over the mediocre ones.
- A talent management team identifies the talent that will prove a good fit for the business and thus helps to solve several grievances related to performance management issues.
- Every company has job profiles that are special in nature and prove critical for the success of its company. A talent management team helps to find the employees that will fill such roles and creates a pool of several people to address these needs at the drop of a hat.
- A pool of talented people helps in the smooth operations of the business entity. This prevents any unnecessary break in the routine because of the reason that there are not enough employees to complete the work in the given time period. Employees do not have to undertake extra workloads and are saved from one of the most common problems of burnout.
- A firm should invest in the talent management process as it will ensure that the top-most talent remains within the firm for a maximum time period.
- Engaged employees are the satisfied ones and these are the people who lead the company to show the best and effective results. The reason to invest in a talent management process is to keep the employees of the firm engaged.
- This helps the firm in making consistent and systematic decisions about the growth and development process of the employees as they are now more aware of the skills they have and the training they want to enhance them further.
- A company needs to invest in talent management to ensure that it is able to comply with its operational requirements.
- Investing in talent management will surely help a firm in boosting its retention rate. Hiring new staff is an effort that also results in wastage of time and money hence it is better to focus on keeping the existing employees than on hiring new ones thus saving on recruitment and performance management of the future process.
- The employees who are engaged align themselves with the mission, vision, and goal of the business. They become motivated and this results in an improvement in business performances.
- Clients are an integral part of a business structure as growth and development of a firm is fully dependent on happy clientele. A firm needs to invest in a systematic talent management process to boost client satisfaction.
- When you have a talent management team in place it realizes the importance of a sound onboarding and it takes a step in that direction.
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