The ultimate guide to talent management for your business

If you want the best people working at your company, then you absolutely need a properly thought-out talent management strategy. With this in place, you’ll have everything you need to ensure you attract the best talent in your industry, while also ensuring you can keep them happy and engaged.

You’ll also get a better understanding of how to make the most out of the talent you have. 

This guide contains everything you need to start considering why talent management is an important business strategy, how your best managers can identify and develop talent, as well as giving you the tools you need to get started.

Talent is a useful catch-all term for the individuals who make up your work force. Talent adds value to your organisation, bringing skills to the table that are either critical to how your organisation runs, or offer an additional edge over your competitors.

Talent management is a HR process where talent is identified, engaged, developed, retained, and deployed effectively. It’s not just about finding and recruiting the best talent; it’s also ensuring that your talent is being used in the best possible way.

In the past, a recruitment team would take charge of talent management, meaning only a small section of your organisation would take responsibility for it. Now our understanding of the concept has broadened significantly, to the point where it should now be seen as an essential management practice.

To use talent management most effectively, you’ll want to gather data and evidence. A strategic approach informed by that evidence will work much better than a scattershot approach. This will ensure you can focus your resources on the exact right areas to get the effects you’re looking for.

There are many benefits of talent management. Some of these will seem more obvious than others, and different talent management strategies will emphasise different benefits. These are the key benefits you can expect from any approach:

Why is talent management important?

Attracting top talent

If you have a smoother onboarding journey, candidates will have a much more positive experience as they move through the process. There is significant competition for the most qualified candidates, and a sluggish recruitment process will harm your ability to attract these candidates.

You’ll start every hire off on the right foot, with a personalised experience that helps them feel part of the team from before day one. This will also ensure that the process reflects the present and future recruitment needs of the business. 

Driving high performance and productivity

Talent management strategies will give you a significant boost to your employee engagement. Workforces with higher employee engagement do significantly better than those without. To get specific, engaged workforces are 23% more profitable. 

Encouraging learning and innovation

A strong culture of training and development will help attract, retain and progress  the best candidates. Many Gen Z and Millennial candidates cite training opportunities as a key factor when considering a new job. Talent management helps you to bake this into your company culture, ensuring employees stick around for years to come.

Reducing recruitment costs 

Recruitment is expensive, often costing up to 30% of your new hire’s salary. You want to make sure you’re not doing it unnecessarily. Talent management spot risk areas for causes of attrition reducing employee turnover and saving you a fortune. 

It also reduces the administrative burden of each new hire, so you can make the whole process cost less too.

Improving agility 

Talent management software can automate a lot of cumbersome and tedious manual processes.  That frees up your HR team to focus on more strategic areas. This in turn makes them far more agile, letting them adjust their approach and the approach of the broader company based on changing factors.

Building a strong culture

Talent management makes it a lot easier to find quality candidates who are inspired by your company’s culture and values. You can also more easily bake opportunities for development into your processes, leading to a culture where growing with the company is actively encouraged.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to talent management that will work for every company. However, there are some key concepts that can be referred to as a model or framework.

Talent Planning

Before you start any part of your talent management process, you’ll need to come up with a plan that falls in line with the overall goals of your organisation. This ensures that you will find the right talent with the right skills for any role, and that you won’t start hiring unnecessarily. 

Proper talent planning will also boost your agility, as it ensures you will always have the right number of staff to continue operating without overburdening employees with heavy workloads.

Attracting Talent

Talent management will ensure you cultivate a brand as an employer. As a result, you’ll have consistent pipelines of talent that will always be a source of the kinds of employees you need to drive growth at your company.

This stage of the process will cover increasing your organisation’s visibility, but it also covers creating a positive experience even for failed candidates.

Selecting Talent

With a diverse range of talented candidates competing for a job, you need to know how to choose which one is the best fit, both in terms of their ability to do the tasks required of them as well as to find their feet within your wider company culture. 

Talent management will give you the tools you need to evaluate each candidate on their own merits and choose the perfect fit for each role, without alienating other candidates so they can continue to be options for other roles going forward.

Developing Talent

This part of the process revolves around giving talent the opportunity to develop and thrive within your organisation, without having to look elsewhere for those opportunities. They’ll feel like they’re getting value out of working for you, which makes them willing to go the extra mile.

Expanding your employee’s skills also ensures you can fill key talent gaps without having to always look for new employees.

Retaining Talent

With your employees recruited and developed, how do you make sure they stick around? The retention stage of your talent management plan will take care of that. This stage focuses on ensuring employees like working for your company and find meaning in their work.

Training and development is one key area that will boost your retention strategy, but monetary compensation and flexible working packages are popular alternatives. Rewards and benefits can also support this if you can’t match the top salaries in your sector, as they often sweeten the deal more than a higher net salary can. 

Transitioning

With all these plans for development, you also need to prepare for when employee’s transition, whether that’s a horizontal move to a new department, a vertical move to a more senior position, or even if your retention strategy fails and they end up leaving the company. 

Having a plan for this stage will ensure that all these moves can occur quickly with minimal disruption to company operations.

To start your talent management journey, you’ll need to make sure you’re following best practice. This will keep your approach consistent no matter what. 

Align with overarching business goals

There’s no point having a talent management strategy in place if it doesn’t align with the goals of the business as a whole.

Do you want to reduce turnover, or improve succession management? Or are you looking for a boost to employee engagement? Your strategy will look slightly different based on your goals, and knowing the answers to these questions will make it easier to allocate resources effectively.

Set clear expectations

Employees are 3.6x more likely to be engaged if their managers involve them in goal setting. When you take the time to make it clear what you expect of each employee, and get their input on those expectations, they’ll be far more engaged and easier to manage.

Prioritise culture fit

According to Deloitte, 88% of employees believe a distinctive workplace culture leads to more business success. If you don’t account for culture fit, you’ll end up hiring employees who don’t care about or are even opposed to your company’s values, which will lead to headaches in the long run.

Provide continuous development opportunities 

If you want your employees to feel valued, and like they have a lot to gain by continuing to work for you, offering the chance to develop their skillsets and take part in training programs are a great option. Employees will be more likely to stick around, and you’ll be able to overcome skill gaps without having to look for external talent.

Recognise and reward talent 

People come to work to get paid, but everyone appreciates extra recognition. If you don’t acknowledge when employees go above and beyond, or even if they’ve just done a great job, they’re less likely to perform that well again. Taking the time to reward employees, and encouraging other employees to do so will pay dividends.

Use technology to track progress

Tracking metrics is the best way to see if your talent management strategy is working as you’d expect. Talent management software can help your HR team track and visualise the most important metrics, making quicker decisions if alternations are needed.

Rebecca Carter, Product Owner for Talent and Engagement from MHR says   ‘Technology investment makes it much easier to streamline cumbersome processes, and talent management systems are no exception. They make it effortless to reassess and adjust your approach as needed.’

MHR offers a range of talent management software and tools for you to choose from, ensuring you find a system that will perfectly suit your organisation from day one while offering the scope to grow and develop with you.