The process of finding the right people is one of the most important things you’ll do as an HR leader, but making it easy for them to thrive in your environment is critical to ensure business growth over the long term. In fact, 86% of professionals said that they would change jobs if they were offered more opportunities for professional development (Execu|Search Hiring Outlook). This is why many businesses are embracing talent management.
Conceptually, talent management is a way to balance the strengths of your people against the needs of the business. Incorporating talent management into your culture can also help you integrate your organization’s values into your employees’ career path, from hire to promotion. But, doing talent management the old-fashioned way will quickly drain time, waste resources and put you behind the competition.
For example:
- If you are not tracking training and development, it could lead to employees who are inefficient or lack the skills to get the work done. This leads to lower revenue per employee.
- If you are not using a performance management system, you could waste up to a month each year trying to manage underperforming employees.
- Good employees who do not feel they are on a growth path will likely leave, which means your company will spend up to one-half of that person’s yearly salary to backfill the open position.
Employees are essential to your company’s success or failure. Technology now makes managing your talent efficient, in many cases automating tasks and saving time. With a competitive labor market, you need a contemporary approach to talent management that gives you the agility to move at the speed the market demands. Read on to learn more about talent management systems and why having one can propel ongoing growth for your people – and your business.
What is a talent management system?
A talent management system simplifies the work you do to hire, retain and grow your employees. Using technology, you can track and analyze compensation, performance, goals or OKRs and training for each employee. Here are some examples:
- Place relevant metrics around employee success.
- Analyze all roles at the company to understand talent gaps.
- Monitor fairness of pay grades, annual raises and career advancement
- Improve managers’ ability to track an employee’s career path.
- Offer training and development as self-directed learning, enabling employees to grow on their terms.
Is talent management software for you?
From the HR department’s perspective, a talent management system frees leaders to look at the bigger picture, helping drive strategy instead of managing tasks. The data captured by the software can help you do a better job recruiting and reduce employee turnover. Your team is freed from administrative tasks and paper-based record-keeping, allowing them to make bigger contributions to the organization. You also can use the data from talent management systems to make better decisions around recruiting, promotions and training programs.
Think of the investment in talent management from your employee’s (or future employee’s) perspective — having an accessible system for ongoing growth, development and training tells that future employee they will have the chance to grow while working at your company. This can be a powerful differentiator when recruiting top talent. Having a talent management system also means your employees will have easy access to their compensation, performance reviews, goals and training. Having this information in one place makes it more efficient and empowers employees as they move along their career path.
Considerations when picking software
Managers and line-level employees will need to interact with the system regularly, get buy-in across the company before making a decision. It’s also important to find what level of support your vendor offers and consider a trial period before implementing the solution
Regardless of the size of your company or your specific needs, there’s a talent management solution that will help you streamline your work and help you attract and retain the best talent in your industry. If you’d like to get more information about how to select the talent management system that’s right for you, check out our Talent Management Buyer’s Guide.