What does talent management do?

Whatever the size or shape of your business and whatever your talent issues,
there are four fundamentals to talent management:

1. Align your business plan and talent strategy – make sure every
aspect of your talent strategy directly contributes to your overall business
plan and to creating value. Change anything that doesn’t.
2. Face the future – look at where your business is heading not where you’ve
been. Keep questioning whether your talent management pipeline will give
you what you need when you need it.

3. Pay attention to pivotal roles – get the right talent into the roles which
have a disproportionate ability to create (or destroy) business value.
4. Focus on the financials – make measurement, benchmarking and
analytics part of your plan. Look to your people ROI.

Do you need a talent management rethink?

Is your current talent management plan fit for purpose? Ask yourself
these challenging questions:

• Do I have the talent to quickly and successfully execute my
organisation’s strategy?
• Do I have people with the right skills, the right knowledge and the
right experience in the right places – now and in the next 3 to 5 years?
• What will it cost me if I get my talent pipeline wrong?
• Which roles drive most value in my business, how do I best resource
them and what is my cost of turnover?
• How am I engaging and rewarding talent in these pivotal roles? Am I
over-rewarding ‘non-talent’?
• Are my global mobility programmes truly strategic – or are they
reactive?
• How do my people metrics stack up to my competitors in this
industry? Is my people ROI good enough?
• How effectively is the HR function delivering what I need?
• Finally, does every aspect of my talent strategy directly contribute to
the business plan and to creating value?