Talent management is often underplayed as a critical factor in steering an organization’s performance. But without a strategy in place, you risk true potential walking out the door.
If the recent COVID-19 outbreak has taught us anything, it is that a slump in demand worldwide freezes hiring and enforces layoffs. But what do you do when lockdowns are lifted, services resume and offices return to normalcy?
Falling short of talent not only widens any existing skills gap but also eats into the lead time to find, interview and hire the right fit. Then there are the productivity and opportunity costs until the said resource gains mastery over work. To quote Warren Buffet;
“Hiring people is a form of investing. You have to do your research and make sure you’re spending your resources on the right pick.” – Warren Buffet
Organizations are going agile to persist and prosper in a dynamic technologically-driven world. Agile is not limited to technology anymore and has forayed into other arenas right from development to marketing, and has also transformed the way organizations are hiring, managing and retaining their best talent. In a Deloitte study, 79% of senior executives have voted agile performance management as a top priority that has helped pro-align business strategies while keeping the employee’s well being in mind. Studies have shown that effective talent management strategy has helped pro-align business strategies while keeping the employee’s well being in mind
Let us go through some effective strategies that can help businesses deploy talent management
1. Cogent vision and a clearly defined strategy:
The first step towards effective talent management is to align your resources with a well-defined strategy. Long term goals are fueled by the clear visibility of an organization’s resources. So, implementing a resource management software will help you tap into a pool of skilled resources to make intelligent utilization of limited resources on billable and strategic projects, that too at a lower cost. Resource planning tools help identify potential shortfalls or excesses of resources for you to take corrective actions ahead of time. Resource managers can also review the current skill sets and prepare them for future and pipeline projects well in advance. Equipped with a strategic hiring plan, your business can minimize excess or shortage of staff while allocating them to the right tasks based on their skill set.
2. Sentiment analysis to address employee needs:
When your team is not physically present together, sentiment analysis comes in handy. It helps to detect weak spots where team members share negative opinions and likewise make proactive commitments towards them. Sentiment analysis is a process that helps in estimating the emotional tone of a person by analyzing opinions, attitudes, and emotions on general platforms, especially social media. HR and recruiting firms have started adopting sentiment analysis to collect feedback from employees in their natural habitat instead of traditional feedback forms for improved employee engagement.
3. Strategic and agile talent allocation:
To survive in this agile digital era, you need to untether your structure, your strategy, and of course your people. Organizations are left with no choice but to adopt radical and experimental approaches to stay afloat against the tides of digitization. Forward-thinking organizations are responding swiftly to new challenges or opportunities while pushing the intelligent decision making to the front lines. According to Mc Kinsey, when organizations quickly earmark talents across strategic priorities, it contributes to effective talent management and organizational performance. When skill-based deployment, cross-functional teams, and executive involvement are aligned, rapid allocation of talent can improve the overall performance of the organization.
4. Contemplate career development Benefactions:
Businesses must ensure that they are providing ample opportunities to their employees to enrich their skills and knowledge database. This will retain talent and lead to a highly skilled and satisfied workforce within the organization. Employees who feel stagnant within their role and in despair for growth and promotion always end up leaving their jobs for a lucrative position elsewhere. So, organizations must cater to their employee’s ambitions to leverage job satisfaction. Also, hiring a new employee proves to be a lot more expensive than training an existing one. To combat the looming skill gap and employee turnover employers should provide training and education programs to retain and develop present employees.
5. Optimum balance of talent and perseverance:
Interviews can be nerve-wracking for recruiters and applicants alike. Along with talent and skills, perseverance and commitment towards constant improvement also need to be taken into account. According to a LinkedIn survey of 2,000 business leaders, 57% voted soft skills over hard skills for employee development. The major soft skills most leaders focused on were leadership, collaboration, time management, and communication. While for some, these skills may be innate, but, there is still some room for improvement. When you invest in building soft skills for your employees, they perceive that you are genuinely interested in their growth and overall development and not just gauge their swiftness in completing a task.
6. CIO-CHRO mutually driven management:
When the CIO and CHRO step up to play a crucial role in adapting to talent and cultural changes, the enterprise’s talent management efforts are paid off. While CIO can lead and direct the workforce based on a deeper understanding of digital prospects, the CHRO can bring experience in traditional talent management. Together they can assist in evaluating, investing, and investigating workforce analytics competencies. This harmonious association built on their strengths will facilitate strategy execution contextual to the digital era that will continuously question traditional talent norms.
7. Always prioritize Employee results:
Employee results should precede the process of achieving them. Flexibility and autonomy make them feel valued while boosting their job satisfaction. Micromanaging impacts your team’s morale by instilling a sense of mistrust and it limits your workforce’s capacity to grow. Managers should train and delegate employees and see how well they fare when you’re not around. That’s the acid test of leadership. An organization’s productivity is proportional to its employee gratification. Current performance reviews should accommodate the new dynamic workforce and also analyze present culture to support frequent performance feedback, customized developments, and individual and team accomplishments.
The Takeaway:
Effective talent management and practices that reinforce it collectively pitch in to leverage your company’s performance. One glove fits all approach doesn’t work for every enterprise, but surveys and research have confirmed that the above-mentioned trends have boosted employee experience, engagement, and retention while making them future-ready for the agile, digitized and volatile workplace.
Author bio:
Mahendra Gupta is PMP certified in the smart workforce planning and resource management domain. He is the subject matter expert in resource management and workforce planning at Saviom Software. His experience has enabled multinational businesses around the globe to diversify their project portfolio. Follow his work here.
