Talent management is essentially an investment that organizations make in their top talent through the various phases of the employee lifecycle.
It starts with attracting high performers, and giving them a smooth onboarding and integration process. It then focuses on managing these individuals’ growth within the company, and ultimately on retaining them through various efforts or opportunities, like giving them the platform to contribute to your organization with purpose while developing their own skills.
Without effective talent management, organizations risk higher attrition rates – a costly result. In fact, according to Gallup, US businesses are losing $1 trillion to voluntary turnover every year.
Talent management needs to be future-ready
As discussed in one of our earlier blogs, we know that talent management, just like other business processes and strategies, is shifting. Organizations need to adapt to keep their competitive edge when attracting and retaining highly talented employees.
We looked at three areas that talent management processes of the future should focus on. And, to recap, these are:
- Performance – Those with high intrinsic motivation (i.e. those who are driven by internal rewards and satisfaction) perform much better than people offered high extrinsic motivation (i.e. external rewards). By understanding intrinsic motivation, organizations are able to redesign their talent management processes around what truly motivates today’s employees.
- Innovation – This is the thing that will ensure your organization thrives in the future, and it’s vital that it’s fostered from within. A spirit of innovation is cultivated among employees when businesses understand the value of diversity and entrepreneurial thinking and encourage these ways.
- Retention – High attrition rates are detrimental to the future success of your organization as there are high costs associated with voluntary turnover. To minimize these financial knocks and retain your top talent, it’s essential to have a turnover prevention strategy in place.
Why you need technology on your side
It goes without saying that technology is the largest driving force behind change in the workplace today. But, it’s also the most powerful tool supporting organizations in their endeavors to scale, remain competitive and achieve ongoing success in our ever-evolving work environment.
Let’s look at the ways that next-generation talent management technology is able to assist companies, and why it’s worth investing in advanced solutions. They help you to:
1. Establish your organization as a frontrunner
As mentioned at the start of this article, talent management begins right at the start of the employee lifecycle, during the attraction phase. You want to draw the right candidates to your company – to save you time, costs and to successfully recruit top talent.
Part of this has to do with your company’s reputation (especially with a wealth of info available on websites like Glassdoor). So, in effect, ensuring that your current employees are happy, motivated and engaged in your organization plays a role in marketing your company to future hires.
Using the latest tools, like advanced talent management technology, also acts as a means of marketing your company to candidates. Top performing individuals, without a doubt, want to interact and work with systems that are current and that will aid them in their daily efforts, rather than slow them down, as well as support them in their career growth. Knowing that they’ll be able to do so at your organization is a drawcard – and you can set that tone right from the start by giving applicants a clean and elegant recruiting experience.
2. Integrate top talent successfully
Many organizations make the mistake of thinking that employees are set to start performing with impressive results after a brief onboarding process. But the reality is that it can take six months to a year (sometimes longer) for a new employee to get up to speed with tenured colleagues.
As we saw in one of our recent blogs, first-year turnover is at the highest point in the past eight years according to Work Institute’s 2018 Retention Report. It was noted that 40% of all turnover in 2017 was attributed to employees who left their jobs within the first 12 months of employment.
Organizations need to ensure that new employees are successfully integrated into their DNA. And, technology can help them do that. With integration software, you can create a timeline for new hires, guiding them in meeting key people (including, for example, mentors and clients) and completing integration activities, and enabling them to give feedback on their experience.
3. Manage your top talent’s performance
We know that today’s workforce is motivated by far more than just money. By understanding this, organizations have the ability to redesign their talent management processes accordingly.
Today’s employees seek the autonomy to manage their responsibilities and make their own decisions, they want to master new skills, and they want to make a positive contribution, giving them purpose in their roles. When employees have the freedom to carry out their work in these ways, they tend to perform well.
With the right technology, you’re able to engage your workforce in a meaningful way, helping employees set goals, perform self-evaluations and develop personal development plans. This type of technology also helps you identify your top performers – and with real-time feedback software, you’re also able to give employees feedback on their performance, allowing them to course correct if necessary and stay on track with their excellent performance.
4. Give employees the opportunity to innovate
Expanding on the previous point, top performers are normally inspired by opportunities that extend beyond their day-to-day responsibilities and allow them to enhance their skills further. Organizations can meet this need by fostering a culture of continuous learning or by developing an internal gig economy.
Continuous learning platforms allow employees to expand their insight and add value to your company by upgrading their skills to meet modern workplace demands or to acquire a completely new set of skills. Similarly, an internal gig economy gives employees the opportunity to work with different teams or on other projects that interest or challenge them. This also encourages employees to invest back into your company, rather than in other companies via side gigs.
Once again, with advanced technology, learning opportunities can be delivered and managed at your organization, supporting your top employees throughout their training lifecycle and bridging the gaps between goal setting, learning, skills mastery and performance achievement. When it comes to gig opportunities, an effective software solution enables you to assign short-term projects to top performers, helping them broaden their horizons and learn new skills.
5. Keep your top talent engaged
Talent management isn’t a once-off initiative or a short-term effort. It’s ongoing, and it’s essential for retention. It requires organizations to integrate new hires successfully, and then retain their top talent. We see from the above that this can be achieved through various initiatives that are underpinned by an understanding of today’s employees and what they’re after in our modern work world.
While a talent management strategy is vital, so too are the tools that underpin the successful implementation and management of such a strategy. Taking the cost of attrition into account, organizations can’t afford to keep losing their top talent – and thanks to next-generation talent management technology, companies can keep high performers engaged.
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