Talent Management

Talent management is defined as the methodically organized, strategic process of getting the right talent onboard and helping them grow to their optimal capabilities keeping organizational objectives in mind.

The process thus involves identifying talent gaps and vacant positions, sourcing for and onboarding the suitable candidates, growing them within the system and developing needed skills, training for expertise with a future-focus and effectively engaging, retaining and motivating them to achieve long-term business goals. The definition brings to light the overarching nature of talent management – how it permeates all aspects pertaining to the human resources at work while ensuring that the organization attains its objectives. It is thus the process of getting the right people onboard and enabling them to enable the business at large.

Under the umbrella of talent management, there are a string of elements and sub-processes that need to work in unison to ensure the success of the organization. For example, analyzing the right talent gaps for the present and the future, identifying the right talent pools and best-fit candidates, getting them to join and then optimizing their existing skills and strengths while helping them grow are touch-points that are all equally important.

Talent Management Process

While often cyclical rather than a generic linear progression of events, the process of talent management could be considered, to begin with acknowledging the need for talent and leads to filling that gap and ultimately growing and optimizing the skills, traits, and expertise of employees, new and old.

The process of managing talent effectively in the below steps:

1.?Planning: Like in any process with a set outcome, planning is the first step in the process of talent management. It involves the following identifying where the gaps lie – the human capital requirement, formulating job descriptions for the necessary key roles to help guide sourcing and selection and developing a workforce plan for recruitment initiatives.

2.?Attracting: Based on the plan, the natural next step is to decide whether the talent requirements should be filled in from within the organization or from external sources. Either way, the process would involve attracting a healthy flow of applicants. The usual external sources include job portals, social network, and referrals. The talent pools that need to be tapped into must be identified in advance to keep the process as smooth and efficient as possible. This is where the kind of employer brand that the organization has built for itself, comes into play because that decides the quality of applications that come in.

3.?Selecting: This involves using a string of tests and checks to find the right match for the job – the ideal person-organization fit. Written tests, interviews, group discussions and psychometric testing along with an in-depth analysis of all available information on the candidate on public access platforms help in gauging an all-rounded picture of the person. Today there are software and AI-enabled solutions that recruiters can use to skim through a vast population of CVs to focus on the most suitable options and to find the ideal match.

4.?Developing: Quite a few organizations today operate on the idea of hiring for attitude and training for skills. This makes sense because while you would want a predisposition to certain skill-sets, it is the person that you are hiring and not the CV. Developing employees to help them grow with the organization and training them for the expertise needed to contribute to business success also builds loyalty and improves employee engagement. This begins with an effective onboarding program to help the employee settle into the new role, followed by providing ample opportunities for enhancing the skills, aptitude and proficiency while also enabling growth through counseling, coaching, mentoring and job-rotation schemes.

5.?Retaining: For any organization to be truly successful, sustainably, talent needs to be retained effectively. Most organizations try to retain their best talent through promotions and increments, offering opportunities for growth, encouraging involvement in special projects and decision-making, training for more evolved roles and rewards and recognition programs.

6.?Transitioning: Effective talent management focuses on a collective transformation and evolution of the organization through the growth of individual employees. This involves making each employee feel that they are a part of a bigger whole. Providing retirement benefits, conducting exit interviews and effective succession planning might seem like unrelated career points but they are all transition tools that enable the shared journey.