What A Practical Approach to Talent Management Should Look Like

By Kimisha King kingkimisha@gmail.com

There are people leaders and Human Resource professionals who struggle to formulate a strong talent management strategy that maps out a plan and goal for the organisation. Very seldom talent management activities are given the organisational importance they deserve. Talent Management can be affected by globalisation, many organisations have seen the benefits of the interconnected world. The phenomenon of “Globalisation” is not new. In fact, it has been creeping up on us since the dawn of time; it simply has not been visibly impactful until recent years.

Globalisation can seem far removed from our work and lives, but it is highly relevant to our future. Talent management is an integral part of human resources development in both industrialised and developing countries. At a time of accelerating globalisation and the advent of the knowledge economy, talent management (including recruiting, nurturing, retaining talent and assessing of talents) becomes a defining characteristic of a nation’s competitiveness.

Organisations know that they must have the best talent in order to succeed in the overly-competitive and increasingly complex global economy. Organisations are aware that they must manage talent as a critical resource to achieve the best possible results. The impact of globalisation on the talent management strategies of governments both domestic and international is shown perhaps most clearly in both the “war for talent” and the “brain drain”. Therefore, the best approach to talent management is to follow a process.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY ORGANISATIONAL GOALS/PRIORITIES

What are your organisation's strategic high-level goals or priorities? Are there any upcoming changes or new directions/initiatives for the organisation? Start by listing each one of them.

STEP 2: IDENTIFY ORGANISATIONAL DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES

Identify and consider the key drivers and challenges that could impact your organisation's ability to achieve its goals. Consider both internal and external challenges. These could include things like a highly competitive job market, new or changed legislation/regulations, results from an employee satisfaction survey or new technology; a SWOT Analysis can be applied.

STEP 3: CONDUCT A GAP ANALYSIS

Compare where your organisation is today with where it wants to be, and identify any gaps that needs to be addressed in order to achieve its goals. In identifying each gap, consider also the risk of not addressing the gap.

STEP 4: DEFINE YOUR HR PRIORITIES AND GOALS

Based on the goals, challenges and gaps you identified in steps 1-3, identify HR goals for the coming year to support the organisation in achieving its goals. You should typically identify 3-5 goals. Don't forget to make them SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic/relevant, time-bound) and link them to the applicable corporate goals.

STEP 5: INVENTORY YOUR TALENT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES/FUNCTIONS

Conduct an inventory of your current HR talent management processes to determine if you need to make any changes to existing process or add new processes to support your goals. Where gaps or needed changes are identified, put plans in place to address them.

STEP 6: MEASURE THE RESULTS AND COMMUNICATE SUCCESSES/CONTRIBUTIONS

With your HR goals and priorities in place, it's important to assess and measure their effectiveness and communicate the results to the organisation. As you work on achieving each goal, make sure you track relevant metrics so you can report on progress and success, or take corrective action as needed. This is important to help you determine if the goal or associated initiative was effective and is worth retaining.

It's no secret there is an economic turmoil experienced within the last few years, which many believe has ushered in a new era where organisations must aggressively control costs and make prudent decisions about where to invest resources. This new “business normal” has added an additional dimension of complexity to the talent management needs of organisations. Nevertheless, organisations who follow the process of strategic planning can incur a cost based on the company’s needs however, employers must be prepared to invest in their staff’s continual development should they wish to have their company remain competitive within their various markets.