Developing Talent Management Pathways within an Organisation

Is talent management part of your strategic plan?
With all the details involved in running a successful organisation, a leader can get overwhelmed at times.  Therefore, it is good to step back regularly and remind ourselves that there are only a few key result areas that need our attention to lead to organisational success.  Regarding the human resource side of this equation, implementing a clear talent management pathway within your organisation that attracts, retains and develops top talent will always outperform like-for-like organisations by a significant difference.  Dr. Jim Asplund, one of Gallup’s chief scientists states, that the best-led organisations know the direct path to individual, team, and organisational success starts with a key investment in their employees’ greatest talents.  How are you investing in this area?

Starting a Talent Management Pathway
What is involved in a talent management pathway? Assuming you have your recruitment processes in order, where you are only getting top talent into the final interview and consistently onboarding A players (ask me how) then you need systems in place to track each employee’s current growth and developmental needs.  Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel on this.  The heavy lifting has already been done, so it is just a matter of tapping into an existing resource. Harrison Assessments offers an online organisational dashboard, listing all employees, tracking their suitability alignment with their job role, along with their engagement in their work, and numerous other key metrics to assess existing talent and how to manage it.  It is brilliant for succession planning when looking at promoting or creating new positions.  You can ensure the best suited people are placed into the best fit roles to capitalise on performance needs and employee enjoyment.

Correlation between Employee Engagement and Talent Management
Strangely enough, many do not seem to perceive the connection between “employee engagement” and “retaining and managing top talent.”  Yet, they are inseparable components.  In fact, the key to an organisation’s successful talent management pathway is to discover your employees’ strengths and then ensure they are regularly using their strengths to achieve organisational outcomes you are looking to produce.  These are simply two key areas on building a ‘Talent Management Pathway.” 

Dr. Asplund further comments, “If a leader primarily focuses on an individual’s strengths, the likelihood that the individual will be actively disengaged is 1% and people who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job.” 

How well have you mapped out a pathway to target your budding A-players to reach their potential in your organisation? If it isn’t up to scratch, or even non-existent, there is no point getting down about it; it is simply time to start developing one. 

Today, the starting point for developing or repairing this area is easier than ever, especially with new technological advances. There are tools out there now that are not only allocated for large organisations, but affordable quality tools for SMEs too, that can attract the right top talent, assist you in knowing how to manage them from day one, and ensure a pathway to optimum performance.