Talent management is such an important concept, but sometimes businesses don’t focus the time, energy, and resources to ensure that the entire cycle is easy on both the business and the talent (aka employees). A holistic approach to hiring, retaining, and growing talent can help businesses grow and gain a leg up on their competition. 

But before you can develop a successful talent management strategy, you may be asking: just what is talent management?

Talent management is the recruitment and retainment of employees by investing in their growth and performance. When employees stay engaged in their work, businesses tend to be more innovative and profitable. 

Talent management starts with strategic workforce planning, recruiting (whether in-house or through a recruiting partner), and hiring the right people for your business and continues with providing employees with learning and development opportunities, performance management and rewards, and promoting internally.

Workplace Planning

To recruit and retain top talent, employers must align recruiting goals with the company’s business objectives, deliver on hiring promises, and make workforce decisions based on data. What job roles are essential? What job roles are nice to have? What is the budget for each role? What skills and experiences are necessary for a new hire to succeed in the role they are hired for? What is the timeline?

Recruiting

Recruiting the right employees for your business is not just about finding people with the right technical skillset. The right person should have a combination of technical skills, potential, and emotional skills that fit within the company culture that the company is attempting to cultivate or have cultivated. Each person you hire into your company will change your company culture in some way. The question is: will that person change the company culture for better or worse?

 

Growth Opportunities

Most employees are not simply looking for a job, they are looking for a career and opportunities to grow and move up within the company. Those opportunities entice an employee to stay with the company rather than jump ship and help to reduce costly turnover rates. Learning and development opportunities could be scholarships or employer reimbursement for tuition for classes or degrees related to one’s profession, company paid conferences, or even attending networking events. Performance-based rewards can include raises, bonuses, gift cards, or a paid vacation trip. When an employee feels valued and cared for by their employer, they are more likely to stay at the company.

Employees enter a job with the skills that allow them to perform the job they were hired for. But retaining an employee is not just about what skills they enter a job with – but are they teachable to learning new skills and taking on new job responsibilities that align with their interests and the company’s business objectives to help a business succeed? 

Flexibility and adaptability in an employee give the business an advantage in case the business needs to pivot to remain innovative and profitable. Providing training for employees with the potential but not the necessary skills will help to shrink the skills gap.

Talent Pipeline

Employee turnover is costly for businesses and causes disruptions to the workflow of the business, but employers should expect some regular turnover as data has shown that employees no longer spend decades at one employer. When an employee leaves, the employer must start the recruiting process all over again, costing more time and money. All the training provided to the former employee are now lost. Without a knowledge management system in place, all the knowledge the former employee gained during their job left with said employee.

Leaving a position open for long will bring added pressure to current employees who are left to shoulder the additional work, even though they may not be knowledgeable in that area and thus taking them much longer to complete the work. However, taking the time to develop a talent pipeline will allow employers to fill open positions quickly and keep the business operating smoothly in the event of an unexpected employee departure.

Compensation & Benefits

Compensation and benefits are critical ways for employers to recruit and retain top talent. Compensation and benefits include but not limited to fair and equitable salaries, bonuses, regular raises, reimbursements, medical, dental, and vision insurance, life insurance, retirements, and paid time off. Employers should use real-time data specific to industry, experience, skill, and geographic location to determine a fair salary for each employee. Businesses can incentivize their current employees to refer top talent by providing the referrer with a reward or providing both the referrer and the referral with a reward if the referral gets hired.

Let someone help.

When employees thrive, businesses thrive. Partner with a staffing agency. Don’t do all the work alone. GTR is ready to help you with talent management. We really become an extension of your hiring department to help you do all things recruiting and hiring so you can Create a Winning Formula to Retain Top Talent. Contact us today.