Talent Management Strategy

In simple terms Talent Management is getting the right people with the right skills into the right jobs. CIPD defines talent management as “the systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement/ retention and deployment of those individuals who are of particular value to an organisation, either in view of their ‘high potential’ for the future or because they are fulfilling business/operation-critical roles”. It is also told that talent management should begin with the identification of key positions that delivers sustainable competitive advantage to the organisation. This way there has to be more differentiation in the roles within an organisation which would create an exceptional impact by those individuals who would deliver sustainable competitive advantage to an organisation against the average backups. These people are important for the successful continuity of the organisation. A highly efficient HR structure has to be in place to fill in the key positions with these highly talented key people. Once these steps are taken, appropriate HR policies should be deployed to ensure that the individuals who hold the key positions in an organisation are supported with key HR policies for them to deliver results successfully.

Talent Management Strategy: Definition and Features

If an organisation has a strong talent management plan, which is aligned parallel to their business strategy, then there are higher chances that they would achieve their business success. Talent management and business strategies of an organisation can further be strengthened together through several small but regular events that happen in an organisation, laying attention on talent enhancement and through constant interaction of senior leaders with the employees. This way, management could keep the employees informed of where they are heading towards as an organisation, how they want the organisation to stage their performance and finally what the organisation expects from the employees, to take their firm to success.

Talent reviews are conducted in depth while organisations use strategic workforce planning. They also re-position talent to different levels to achieve future needs, try to come up with a mix of the available internal talent pool along with the new hires from the external talent pool. They always make a deliberate attempt to retain the critical talent the organisation possesses and at the same they ensure that business strategy is on same page with the human capital strategy. Talent management strategies should be aligned to the strategic business objectives with the support from the management, co-ordination between departments, through the resources made available to the employees, performance review mechanisms and a common platform to share. Different departments have to adopt different strategies which suit their functioning within an organisation.

According to CIPD, following are the key features of talent management strategy.

  1. Aligned to Corporate Strategy: Talent management strategy should always be closely aligned to corporate strategy. It is necessary to take into consideration both internal and external factors while a talent strategy is designed. As mentioned earlier talent management strategy varies from industry to industry. Hence, the HR management team should have a clear picture of the strategic analysis from the business perspective to create a talent management strategy that suits its industry.
  2. Narrow and Broad Approaches: Some organisations decide to focus on developing talent according to the current situation and need. In such cases it can be noticed that the attention is laid only on certain departments or specific positions or some particular processes and projects. On the other hand there are certain organisations which prefer to take a holistic approach to talent management where in they try to spread the focus on the entire workforce in an organisation. There is nothing right or wrong about either of these approaches. It just matters on which approach suits their organisation the best for the time being. However, it is imperative to ensure that fairness and consistency are the key ingredients of all talent management processes. To enable the organisation to draw talent from all the possible sources, talent management processes should be highly diverse.
  3. Involving the right people
    • Human Resources Team: HR team provides the basic structure and design to develop the pathway to talent management strategy that would encompass the requirements of an organisation. An HR team can play an active role in this process only by directly coordinating with all the other groups involved in this design.
    • Senior Management Team: The key senior managers and directors in an organisation have a major role in this process, as they represent all the functions, departments and aspects of an organisation. They work closely with the HR team to set the direction to the talent management strategy.
    • Line Managers: Line managers also play crucial roles in almost every phase of this process, as they are immediately responsible for the management of performance and identification, development and retention of talents within their teams. Emphasis has to be laid to convince the line managers to view talent as a corporate resource and not just as a local resource limited only to a particular frame.
    • Employees: They are the participants and they play a major role in this process. It is their talent which is managed through this process. Hence, it is vital to seek for their feedback in designing the developmental process. Their feedback’s are of great value for the talent managers and organisation to continue, improve or if required re-design the organisation’s talent management strategy.

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