Talent management is an amalgamation of the attraction, development, and retention of employees and how they work.
Ultimately, how your talents’ skills and aptitude meet current and future business needs can drive or stall the company’s growth.
It’s not just how the employees work, the leadership, or the HR professionals to offer the jobs. It’s the combination of targeted training and development, strategic alignment, and talent retention.
The question is: Do you have all your boxes checked? If the answer is no, here are some things to consider moving forward into 2015.
1. Leadership knows the team
At its core, strong leadership enables – but not like a bad habit.
Leaders are responsible for realizing the full potential of their team, individually and collectively. However, can that happen when they are completely unaware of who their employees are?
No. Company leadership has to know their team if they have any expectations of mindfully guiding their team to individual and business success. Glenn Llopis, thought leader and business strategist, said:
Every employee is different, with their own set of experiences, values, cultural backgrounds, influences, and beliefs. The best leaders are those that can identify and appreciate the differences that one brings to the table and knows how to put them to full use. These leaders are emotionally intelligent enough to connect the dots and opportunities within each dot to enable the full potential in each of their employees.”
2. Updated performance appraisal process
Periodically and methodically assessing an individual’s performance at work can present quality control issues if the process itself is inadequate.
While performance appraisals seem tedious to 57 percent of managers, what is the actual problem?
Typically, managers are not empowered to make decisions in regards to employee performance. Leadership can solve this problem through training their managers in performance appraisal best practices. In fact, 46 percent of managers want to be educated in the art of these sometimes tense conversations.
3. Hiring managers made the right choices in talent
There is an overabundance of candidates flooding corporate doors in hopes of finding that “perfect” job.
The hiring managers have to sort through all of the candidates the applicant tracking system deems best fit for the position and confidently make the best hiring decision. That may not always be the case, however. Simply getting hiring managers involved in the process is the No. 1 problem for HR professionals.
This is why it is critical to train your hiring managers so they can make the best decisions possible so it doesn’t bog the hiring process. After all, attracting, hiring, and retaining quality talent is the largest concern in driving business growth.
4. Opportunities for employees to grow this year
In order to retain and attract the best talent in the first place, organizations must realize the need for developmental opportunities for their team.
Professional stagnation has one of the biggest influences over high turnover rates. Employees (and potential employees) want to see opportunities for growth.
There is a strong motivational power behind offering chances to attend webinars, courses, or even time to work on their own ideas. Companies like 3M give employees the opportunity to work in their Innovation Center. At the Innovation Center, employees are given the resources they need to work on their own projects for 15 percent of their time in the office.
5. Leadership development is key for business growth
First-level leaders see fewer opportunities and less budget to develop their leadership skills.
Here’s the sad part: That’s true. Companies allot 34 percent less budget for development compared to their emerging counterparts and even less than half for mid-level leaders.
But here’s the good news: Organizational leadership development has seen a 14 percent growth in the last year.
There stands hope, but business leaders have a long way to go. Without developing continually key skills, leadership will find it difficult to guide and gain the trust of their employees, which is essential to business growth and talent retention.
For talent management in your organization to run smoothly, all of the boxes must be checked.
Leadership must be engaged
Leadership not only has to be given opportunities for growth, but also has to be engaged with the team. Without that relationship, there’s little chance for the organization to target development opportunities to employees.
It’s those opportunities that drive employees to stay with a company and what attracts them there in the first place. Meet your training, development, and alignment in the middle for a successful talent management plan.