Our take on Talent Management
Talent Management is a broad term. It is not always that clearly defined, and therefore not always used correctly. On a high level, Talent Management spans mainly three areas: Acquisition, Retention, and Development of talent. It aims to improve business value and reach organizational goals.
Exactly as the term suggests, it’s about how you manage talent in the best possible way. But what exactly does this mean and how do you do it right? There isn’t one perfect answer. As with many complex things, and especially when it comes to people and organizations, being contextually sensitive is key.
Let’s look at it differently then. What is it that most organizations do wrong, regardless of context or goals? What cornerstones and mindset do you need to get right in order to even start caring about being contextually sensitive and start customizing talent management in your organization?
It’s still far too common that Acquisition, Retention, and Development is divided into completely different silos.
It’s still far too common that organizations divide the main areas of Talent Management (Acquisition, Retention, and Development) into completely different silos. Especially Talent Acquisition tends to get separated from the other two. Sometimes it’s even a separate function to all of HR. What happens when you separate three areas supposed to work in sync with a common objective? Most likely, they will all fail to maximize business value. That regardless of how well they deliver on their own.
If you are interested in getting help or advice in executing on your talent management strategy, feel free to reach out.
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How to get it right
The solution might be obvious by now… Don’t organize your team into silos with little partnership between them. Instead, get those teams close to each other!
Make sure you have a common view of the data points. By streamlining and analyzing hiring, development, and retention data accurately you tie these processes together. That’s how you get your overall Talent Management strategy right.
Of course, some things can and should remain separate but if…
- …your Talent Acquisition team doesn’t understand the needs of the organization they are hiring for, they will never be able to be true partners
- …there is no alignment between the hiring criteria and the employee development framework, then it’s not optimized for predicting nor developing performance.
- …you don’t know who you are hiring and who you are developing. Then you don’t know who you are retaining (or how to do it).
All of these processes bring value to your business on their own. That might be good enough, even if not perfectly executed in alignment with each other. In a highly competitive market, however, you won’t get far by doing things good enough. There, it’s all about optimizing what can be optimized. That’s how you win. And from a Talent Management perspective, that’s how you will have a true business impact that really makes a difference. Together that’s how we make HR count.
Do you want to talk more about talent management?
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We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
If you found this post interesting, read all about people science!
