Articles 
Talent management is the series of business processes used to attract, develop, motivate and retain your workforce.
From recognized talent analysts to the CHROs of the world’s leading companies, any executive or HCM thought leader is aware of the impact of effective talent management in these trying times and its ability to foster sustained success. However, if they were to define what is talent management, it’s highly unlikely they would provide the same answer.
Like many topics in the minds of HCM practitioners over the last 30 years, talent management has seen its fair share of iterations and evolutions. Which has become more complex with each organization’s implementation of its own unique talent management framework – one heavily influenced by culture, industry and organizational history.
So, how can talent management be accurately defined and what are the pillars of a successful strategy?
In this post, we dive into some of the key principles of talent management, as well as how Avature’s approach is poised to help organizations meet the demands of a rapidly evolving labor force.
Let’s dive in.
What is Talent Management? The Definition
There are many different talent management models and much debate regarding their makeup and character. Usually, it is defined as the strategic process of leveraging and developing the right people to stimulate organizational growth and goal attainment. There are at least three generally accepted components of a basic talent management strategy: learning and development, employee engagement/retention and talent mobility.
Pillar 1: Employee Development
According to Harvard Business Review, 87 percent of employees would change jobs if a new company offered them more professional development opportunities. This is why HCM leaders interested in optimizing their talent management strategies have come to understand that employee development is no longer optional.
A pivotal part of it is performance management. While there are several debated frameworks, most experts agree that an effective approach is key to aligning employee development with long-term strategic objectives. It does so by setting expectations, creating opportunities and standardizing action plans with a clear HCM vision.
Pillar 2: Employee Engagement and Retention
With today’s labor force moving away from the outdated “cog-in-the-machine” concept, employee engagement strategies within the talent management model tend to focus heavily on effective communication. And yet, this wasn’t always the case. For many years, organizations failed to fully establish the connection between engagement, culture, retention and successful business development.
This all changed a few years ago when an enlightening study by Deloitte revealed that most employees were not adequately engaged and that more than half of the global workforce would not recommend their employer to their peers. This is an alarming statistic for talent management professionals to swallow.
Since then, HCM leaders and business executives have turned to technology to aid them in their quest to improve employee retention through the creation of meaningful engagement and culture.
Pillar 3: Talent Mobility
Talent mobility represents the movement of employees from one position to another within an organization, as well as their participation in initiatives outside of their typical role. As companies move away from career models based on functional hierarchies, talent management leaders have come to recognize that organizational success is driven by the overall workforce experience.
Experienced employees prove highly effective in bridging the gap between development and retention, as upskilled employees are more likely to move both horizontally and vertically within an organization.
In an ideal scenario, a robust internal mobility program will be paired with a flexible SaaS solution to bring an effective modern talent management strategy to life. With it in place, organizations are well placed to lower their hiring costs and develop a broader understanding of who they actually have in-house – from skills to experience to professional development goals – and, in turn, to do more with less.
Avature’s Approach to Talent Management: A Seamless SaaS Ecosystem
One of our main goals has always been to help our customers leverage technology to develop frictionless and uninterrupted talent activities. Although our origins in human capital management are rooted in talent acquisition and our groundbreaking CRM Solution, relationship management has always been a driving force behind what we do and how we do it.
Working with industry-leading companies, we’ve come to understand that an effective talent management model doesn’t work in isolation. In a world where ever-evolving technology and shifting candidate preferences are more present than ever, silo thinking fails. And, given the natural bond between the basic elements of talent management, a talent management solution ecosystem engineered to adapt and evolve with our clients is essential.
If you’re a manager tasked with evaluating the performance of a large and geographically dispersed team, you are likely to have a large number of objectives and key results that need to be quantified and evaluated for each employee (something easily accomplished with Avature Performance Management). Our talent management solutions are uniquely positioned to measure parameters of modern employee performance, such as peer recognition.
With Avature DNA, managers are empowered to develop a more holistic picture of employee performance by weighing “praises” and other indicators of positive peer recognition. In addition, with the help of Avature’s best-in-class data modeling, they can provide direct reports and deliver a tailored employee experience.
Upon completing performance reviews, for example, all employees can subsequently be delivered personalized development “ads” and other targeted training content through their DNA employee profile.
Later, when a new position is created to meet a business need or becomes available due to an anticipated retirement, Avature Succession Planning and Internal Mobility can provide hiring managers with access to prior employee assessments and enable them to determine if an internal candidate is an ideal fit. If an employee has high potential but is not ready for the position, they can be provided with an expanded development pathway through their employee hub.
Such is the power of a unified talent management model built on the back of multi-point data and integrated tools.
To Conclude…
A clear answer to “What is talent management?” needs to be defined within your organization so you can visualize your objective and what you will need to navigate today’s talent landscape. With a comprehensive talent management strategy and the right technology to support it, you can develop strong employee engagement and retention strategies as well as improve overall organizational output.
If you’re looking to move beyond the outdated silo thinking of yesteryear’s legacy suites and implement a dynamic talent management ecosystem that will grow with you, then Avature is your solution of choice. Contact our talent experts and begin designing your organization’s ideal talent experience.
