Insights on Corporate Talent, Learning, and HR Technology

How do you Develop and Implement a Talent Management Strategy?

I used to observe and define , Talent Management is a natural evolution of HR. It is a series of business processes — not a “product” or “solution” you can buy. 

Talent Management” has become one of the most important keywords in Corporate HR and Training today. In this article Let me go through the history, principles, and processes of talent management and help readers understand this important area.

From Personnel to Strategic HR to Talent Management

To understand why Talent Management has become integral part of companies , we must first look at the evolution of corporate HR:

Phase 1: Personnel Department:

The role of this group was to hire people, pay them, and make sure they had the necessary benefits. The systems which grew up to support this function may be called payroll systems. In this role, the personnel department was a well-understood business function.

Phase 2: Strategic HR:

In the early stage of revolutions organizations realized that the HR function was, in fact, more important – and the concepts of “Strategic HR” emerged. During this period organizations realized that the VP of HR had a much larger role: recruiting the right people, training them, helping the business design job roles and organization structures (organization design), develop “total compensation” packages which include benefits, stock options and bonuses, and serving as a central point of communication for employee health and happiness.

The “Head of Personnel” became the “VP of HR” and had a much more important role in business strategy and execution. The systems which were built up to support this new role include recruiting and applicant tracking (ATS), portals, total compensation systems, and learning management systems. In this role, the HR department now became more than a business function: it is a business partner, reaching out to support lines of business.

Phase  3: Talent Management: 

We are now entering a new era: the emergence of “Talent Management.” While strategic HR continues to be a major focus, HR and L&D organizations are now focused on a new set of strategic issues:

1. How can we make our recruiting process more efficient and effective by using “competency-based” recruiting instead of sorting through resumes, one at a time?
2. How can we better develop managers and leaders to reinforce culture, instill values, and create a sustainable “leadership pipeline?”
3. How do we quickly identify competency gaps so we can deliver training, e-learning, or development programs to fill these gaps? How can we use these gaps to hire just the right people?
4. How do we manage people in a consistent and measurable way so that everyone is aligned, held accountable, and paid fairly?
5. How do we identify high performers and successors to key positions throughout the organization to make sure we have a highly flexible, responsive organization?
6. How do we provide learning that is relevant, flexible, convenient, and timely?

These new, more challenging problems require new processes and systems. They require tighter integration between the different HR cycles — and direct integration into line of business management processes. Today organizations are starting to buy, build, and stitch together performance management systems, succession planning systems, and competency management systems. The HR function is becoming integrated with the business in a real-time fashion.

Defining the Talent Management Process

Organizations are made up of people: people creating value through proven business processes, innovation, customer service, sales, and many other important activities. As an organization strives to meet its business goals, it must make sure that it has a continuous and integrated process for recruiting, training, managing, supporting, and compensating these people.

1. Workforce Planning: Integrated with the business plan, this process establishes workforce plans, hiring plans, compensation budgets, and hiring targets for the year.

2. Recruiting: Through an integrated process of recruiting, assessment, evaluation, and hiring the business brings people into the organization.

3. Onboarding: The organization must train and enable employees to become productive and integrated into the company more quickly.

4. Performance Management: by using the business plan, the organization establishes processes to measure and manage employees. This is a complex process in itself, which we describe in detail in our new research Performance Management 2006.

5. Training and Performance Support: of course this is a critically important function. Here we provide learning and development programs to all levels of the organization. As we describe in the Death of the Corporate University, this function itself is evolving into a continuous support function.

6. Succession Planning: as the organization evolves and changes, there is a continuous need to move people into new positions. Succession planning, a very important function, enables managers and individuals to identify the right candidates for a position. This function also must be aligned with the business plan to understand and meet requirements for key positions 3-5 years out. While this is often a process reserved for managers and executives, it is more commonly applied across the organization.

7. Compensation and Benefits: clearly this is an integral part of people management. Here organizations try to tie the compensation plan directly to performance management so that compensation, incentives, and benefits align with business goals and business execution.

Think About ????

What does this mean to your Organization?

What does this mean to your HR-IT Strategy?

Tags : Talent Management :)