What Is Talent Management?

Every business wants to attract the best and the brightest, so how can you bring the most qualified candidates onboard? A strong team starts with an effective talent management strategy that not only finds top employees but helps you keep them.

What is talent management?

Talent management is a term used in HR to describe the carefully planned process of attracting talent and helping team members thrive. There are multiple components contained in an organised talent management system, from first identifying vacant positions to motivating existing talent to achieve future goals. It looks at all the ways you can grow and manage your team, containing several sub-processes under this wider umbrella.

Here are just a few of these processes that go into talent management:

• Employee hiring and onboarding

• Performance management

• Employee retention

• Employee management

• Employee motivation and engagement

• Continuing education opportunities

As you can see, talent management includes HR processes but takes them even further, with a greater emphasis on increasing performance. The idea is that it’s not enough to attract high-performing talent – you also need to work on retaining and inspiring them.

Why is talent management important?

Taking the time to craft a detailed talent management strategy now can pay off in the future for your organisation. Investing in the right people creates a stronger company culture. Here are a few of the main benefits of talent management:

• Increased productivity

• Growth opportunities

• Continuous learning opportunities

• Improved staff retention rates

• High-performance workplace

• Targeted outreach to new talent

• People analytics access

• Future decision making

Components of the talent management process

To get started with formulating the best talent management system for your organisation, it helps to understand what goes into the process.

Step 1: Plan your strategy

The first step is to sit down and think about your long and short-term goals. Make a list of talent management metrics you plan to use to track the success of your system, such as turnover rate. Identify any gaps in your current human resources process, thinking about the areas you need to highlight. Are you looking for candidates from a particular background or for a specific new project? What qualities does your ideal talent need to possess? How will you track success using quantifiable metrics?

Step 2: Attract the right talent

The next step is to find the right type of applicants, both internally and externally. One of the best ways to do this is with detailed job descriptions designed to weed out unqualified applicants. Be sure to include factors like skills required, typical duties, job title, location, salary, and benefits.

Step 3: Select the best fit for the job

After attracting a pool of talent to choose from, you’ll need to find the right organisational fit. You should not only think in terms of skills and background, but also personality and culture. To assess applicants, the talent management process might include written tests, group discussions, interviews, and other checks at this stage. A good employee-culture fit helps boost the chances of satisfaction and performance.

Step 4: Offer ongoing development opportunities

A successful talent management strategy goes beyond the hiring process to look at training and development. In fact, some businesses use the strategy of hiring candidates based primarily on their attitude and cultural fit within the organisation, because skills can be learned on the job. Successful talent management gives team members the chance to continue upskilling throughout their time with the organisation. Apprenticeships, on-the-job-training, workshops, coaching, and mentoring all fall under this category.

Step 5: Retain talent over the long term

Finally, you must retain your talent over time to be successful. You can achieve this through a mix of financial incentives, such as promotions and bonuses, as well as offering increased responsibility. Involve your employees in new projects and encourage decision-making over time, mapping out a career ladder that allows for long-term goals. A strong recognition and rewards program can also help your talent feel valued.

All of these components must fit together to create a strategic, overarching talent management system.

We can help

GoCardless helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of admin your team needs to deal with when chasing invoices. Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.