5 steps to build a Talent Management Process right for you

A talent management model is more than just a process of attracting and retaining talent. It is strategic, organized, and when done correctly, it is planned in a way to all but guarantee a result of happy, long-lasting employees within your business.  

When implemented and executed correctly, your staff will grow alongside the business and you should achieve a lower staff turnover and higher productivity, which is a benefit for your business.  If you want to learn how to build a good talent management process, read the next article that we have for you at Talent2Win.  

What is a talent management process? 

The talent management process is, in short, the process of nurturing your employees and their growth from before you have even hired them. By carefully selecting employees that you think will be able to grow within your company and eventually take on higher roles, you have already begun your process.  

While the talent management process should be ongoing, there are some clear steps to follow. These steps eventually circle back around to find where you began, as your employees are promoted, retire, or move to another job. Consider that while the latter should be minimal if the process is done correctly, there will always be employees who leave for whatever reason. We invite you to follow the below steps in order to perfect your talent management process.  

Step One: Identify and Plan  

Before beginning the inevitable adventure of your chosen talent acquisition strategy, you must first identify the role that needs filling. Observe the duties that you will expect the candidate to fill. You should do this by assessing your workforce plan. 

Your workforce plan should help you to identify existing gaps in the skills held by your staff and observe if particular members of staff are juggling too many tasks and would be benefitted from a redistribution of responsibilities.  

Once you have identified the tasks that are required of the upcoming role, you can begin to create a job description. Spend a little time crafting a description that you feel accurately captures the tone of your workplace and the type of employee that you think would thrive in your current office environment and culture. 

After all, finding employees that fit in with the office culture is proven to be one of the best indicators of success in a candidate (if you judge success in terms of job satisfaction, commitment to the office, and length of time in the role).  

Step Two: Attracting the Talent  

Once you have decided on the role and responsibilities that need to be attended to, it is time to begin searching for the perfect person to satisfy them. You should begin by first assessing if the position you are looking to fill can be done through internal promotion. If you have been working on creating a succession channel, then you may already have someone lined up and ready to take the position from inside the company. If not, then you will have to look for talent externally.  

You can tackle the task of an external search with a three-pronged approach:  

• Offer your employees a referral bonus. If they recommend someone who eventually ends up getting hired, they get a bonus. This is a great method as it suggests that the transition to your office culture may be smoother than it would be with another candidate, and it can save you money.  
• Put the listing on job networking sites such as Indeed, LinkedIn Jobs, Monster, and so on. This will give your job great visibility and attract plenty of applicants. A disadvantage will be that quantity does not always mean quality.  
• Advertise the job on your social media sites. If you have already invested time and effort into your company branding, this should be a doddle. If not, your search may not be as successful, but either way advertising the position in this way will likely land you with people who are already familiar with your brand.  

You might also like: ROI: How do we measure the effectiveness of recruitment at Talent2Win?

Step Three: The Selection Process 

Once you have a healthy pool of candidates, you can begin to sift the good from the bad through a series of interviews and tests in order to figure out the best for the role. The absolute best way to do this is to have a set of pre-established benchmarks before beginning interviews. These benchmarks will set a concrete understanding of who is qualified and who is not, and who fulfills the established requirements. 

These benchmarks will help you to have a true understanding of what you are looking for in an employee and help you to not get swept up in a person’s charm or charisma. These predefined benchmarks will also allow you to make decisions based on talent, and not any pre-existing stereotypes of age, race, or gender, and so on.   

Step Four: Investment in the Employee 

Once you have decided on who the ideal fit for your role is, you can begin the process of cultivating them into the ‘perfect’ employee. You can do this by excelling in your onboarding process, providing them with guidance, and any necessary coaching or training.  

You can also invest money in improving their existing skills to be sure that they know everything you need them to know when they begin work. By helping your employees to improve their skills, you are showing them that you care about them and their future in the company.  

Step Five: Retention and Continued Development 

Once you have your new employee trained up and ready to work, your job is not over. From here you must begin the work to retain them. This means investing time and money into further training, offering promotions where and when applicable, allowing them a hand in decision making, and recognizing their efforts in the office or workspace.  

This is the stage in the process that broadly applies to all staff, as it will help to maintain job satisfaction and in turn, improve employee retention.  

By providing your staff with a way to improve themselves, you are giving them a reason to be loyal to your business and helping to ensure a much longer employee lifecycle.  

At Talent2Win, we strive to align your company’s business objectives with the best Talent Acquisition strategies available. If you want to learn more about the services we offer, do not hesitate to contact us.