Talent Management: Attract and Keep Superior Employees

Discover the trick to developing effective talent management and recruitment strategies, in order to identify superior employees, and develop their skills as part of a highly-skilled, highly-motivated workforce.

Build a Better Workforce with Superior HR Strategies

The success of any business relies heavily on a few core aspects, and while most businesses have realized the importance of intelligent marketing and product development, it is all too easy to forget that it is the talent of your team that makes it all possible. Developing effective recruitment strategies, coupled with ongoing talent management is essential for the long-term prospects of your brand.

After all, if your business is to grow and develop, it is helpful to have a staff made up of experienced and talented individuals who understand the best interests of the company, and with whom you have built trust throughout the course of their employment. Effective talent management aims to create just such a team, by identifying, hiring, and developing the skills of highly capable employees.

Recruiting Your Dream Team

Of course, the first hurdle is to attract sufficiently talented individuals to your business in the first place, but this can be easier than it sounds. In general, a highly motivated individual, with the ability and inclination to get the most out of their employment, is more likely to be attracted by a prospective employer who offers the potential for growth and progression.

When searching for employees, you should have a clear picture of your overall business strategy, and how that ties into your staffing requirements. This will enable you to present prospective employees with an outline of your company goals and principles, and discuss how their particular skill-set, qualities, and professional aspirations will mesh with the long-term aims of your business.

What Is Talent Management?

A good talent management system is the bridge between your organisational development plan and the creation of an attractive Employee Value Proposition, which not only draws talent to your organisation but improves your overall professional image by strengthening your employer brand.

As the name suggests, this is a managerial role, being focused on the supervision, direction, and motivation of your workforce. While some aspects of the role also come under the banner of HR management, having a dedicated talent management division can be highly beneficial, as this allows them to focus solely on the administration and development of your staff.

At the same time, talent managers should work closely with HR managers in order to ensure that they are pursuing complementary objectives for the benefit of your workforce, and your business as a whole. Some of the key objectives your talent management process should aspire to include:

• Integration of recruitment practices, employer branding and the development of an employee value proposition.
• Cultivating a strong link between employee development and the long-term plan for your business.
• Clarification of company goals and principles, with a view to aligning performance management targets with overarching objectives.
• Coordination of managers and executives to ensure coherent interaction across your entire workforce. This includes providing constructive feedback and actively encouraging employee development.
• Promotion of adaptive management and leadership styles, to encourage positive collaboration between employees of all backgrounds and personalities.
• Encouragement of executive staff to take an active part in recruitment efforts, and to provide mentoring for highly-skilled individuals with potential for significant advancement.

Recognize the Importance of Employee Development

Ultimately, the core reasons for offering a strong employee development policy are twofold. On one hand, facilitating the growth of an employee’s skill-base, and helping them to achieve their potential, means you have increased their value to you.

The other side to this is that the sense of achievement and advancement afforded by an employee development strategy helps to reinforce staff members’ individual roles, and re-evaluate their goals. Without this gradual progression, business practices can begin to stagnate, and talented employees may feel that they are underappreciated, or that they could find more fulfilling employment elsewhere.

However, by working with your staff to identify new targets, and assign individuals to roles that both challenge them, and enable them to excel, you cultivate engagement and motivate your team to demonstrate their capabilities within the roles entrusted to them.

In addition, ongoing communication allows you to develop your business ideals and objectives according to the challenges and opportunities identified by your team. This not only benefits you by refining your organisational development strategy, but also demonstrates to employees that their feedback is heard and that it helps to shape the business.

Optimize Management Decisions Via Tech Integration

Depending on the size of your business, it can be difficult to keep track of specific goals and talents of each and every employee. Yet employee engagement is integral to the success of your business. This includes the implementation of a feedback system that enables employees to communicate their ideas, and seek clarification on objectives and executive decisions.

The incorporation of a talent management database means you can log all these interactions, along with detailed information on each individual’s accomplishments, aspirations, and other relevant skills. This could include qualifications and certifications, languages spoken and technological expertise.

With this information, you can also greatly increase the value of performance reviews, by focusing on individual employee growth in line with their aspirations, without losing sight of your business goals. The key to this is that your business strategy can evolve more confidently and dynamically when you are aware of the specific talent available within your existing workforce.

This, in turn, enables you to highlight any areas where training or recruitment may be necessary, and may even illuminate opportunities you had not previously considered. Moreover, analysis of this database can also help you recruit more effectively, by offering a more accurate estimation of the qualities and abilities that would work best within a given team.

In addition, the introduction of technology for the purpose of automating simple or repetitive functions also adds value to your workforce. The removal of monotonous and potentially less rewarding tasks frees up your employees to focus on other aspects of the business. Not only does this improve productivity and affords more freedom to you when assigning roles, but it also increases each individual’s sense of value within the company.

Creating a Happier Workforce

This sense of value is central to the entire philosophy behind talent management. As Aristotle said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” and this is true of your workforce. It is not simply the individual skills of each team member that matters, but their combined experience and cooperation which enables them to work effectively together, to achieve both personal and professional goals.

This is evident to any employer who has seen the dynamic of an entire team change following the addition or departure of a single staff member. As such, the integration of new employees is another critical aspect of recruitment. However, if your team has a clear picture of the company’s direction and values, it will be far easier to ensure that new employees are on the same page when they join.

Talent Management to Futureproof your Business

By instilling in your employees a sense of the company’s overall objectives, and of their part in achieving those objectives, you reinforce the idea that you are working as a team and that their contribution is both recognized and appreciated. This sense of unity can also increase employee retention, as people are less likely to wish to abandon something that they feel they have helped to build.

In the long-term, this means you can develop a highly-skilled team of superior employees who have an in-depth understanding of the core principles and key objectives of your business. The insight and efficiency of such a team is invaluable and will enable you to build your brand on a foundation of talented and reliable individuals, whose dedication to the business will help to inspire and integrate future employees through an ongoing process of conscientious management, and bilateral communication.