Talent management is a significant issue for the company. What are the objectives of such an approach? What are the methods and tools to identify, develop, and retain talent?
In a continually evolving world where professions are reinventing and creating at high speed, optimal management of its talents is a major strategic asset for a company.
Indeed, if they wish to remain competitive and efficient, organizations must take care to anticipate transformations. Involve employees in the dynamics of the company, identity, bring out and cultivate the potential of all, allow them to evolve, develop their skills, and enrich their knowledge … As many levers as the HR function and managers have at their disposal to allow everyone to develop fully. Because it is by cultivating the pleasure of work by giving meaning to all levels of the organization that the company can hope to attract new talent, and above all, keep its own!
What is talent?
Talent could be defined as the judicious use of one’s particular skills and knowledge in the service of one’s potential. It can, therefore, be found at all levels of the company and in various disciplines. Talent management is, therefore, not limited to the High Potentials, who, in turn, aspire to high-level positions, especially those of senior executives — even management.
The purpose of such an approach is to make the processes more flexible, efficient, and productive by taking into account the skills and knowledge of each and using them optimally. It is thus an objective of global excellence and not focused solely on elements of top management.
Why and how to identify talented individuals?
Talent, if it is not stimulated and used, ends up flying away: either it merely dies out, which represents a real waste both for the individual and for the organization as a whole, or it flies to more favorable horizons. For a business, talent management is therefore carried out at several levels:
- identify/detect: externally find talented individuals for the positions to be filled and/or identify internal employees likely to have broader skills than those for which they were previously hired.
- Attract/retain: make an identified individual want to join the company and/or keep an already existing employee (at least for a certain period).
- Conjugate/develop: place new talent in the right place and push collective intelligence and/or recognize and highlight those already present in the company and encourage collaboration.
“TALENT NEEDS SUCCESS; WITHOUT STIMULUS, IT GOES OUT AND FALLS ASLEEP.” HENRI-FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL
1. Advantages of optimal talent management
If talent is neither definitive nor fixed — it fluctuates and is strongly linked to motivation and challenges, then it is clear that the company should not be content to identify talents, but properly implement a global approach over the medium to long term. It, for the following reasons, among others:
- limit the costs associated with repetitive recruitments and sterile training of employees who will not do the job in the position in question (high turnover).
- Optimize the flexibility of the company: by decompartmentalizing everyone’s roles and missions and by allowing everyone to explore and develop all their different skills, by thinking differently about the organization and functioning of services/teams, by combining several rare skills of various collaborators, e.g.
- Strengthen collective intelligence and collaboration: by allowing the transversality of knowledge and skills.
- Gain a definite advantage over the competition: by combining individual and collective advantages and advantages for the company itself; by allowing a supply of resources usable in disruptive situations, in periods of transformation, e.g.; by promoting collective intelligence and innovation, by maintaining a high degree of motivation.
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2. Locate talents
Each talent is unique. There are as many as there are people on this Earth. Among the specificities that characterize a talented individual, we can notably cite:
- ability to adapt, interpersonal skills, flexibility,
- performance in its missions, intellectual capacities, and flexibility,
- commitment and sense of responsibility,
- sense of the collective,
- ability to inspire.
If specific tools make it possible to identify these talents (assessment center, evaluation interviews, e.g.), whether, in a recruitment interview or an internal company process, intuition is the best way to act. The main question to ask is: will the individual identified be able to flourish within the team/company and fully express his talent? The difficulty of keeping absolute objectivity.
How to attract, develop, and retain talent?
Talent management policy will have to flow from the three areas of identifying, developing loyalty, and enhancing. Here are some tips for a successful approach:
- an authentic and attractive image: take care of its communication, especially its employer brand.
- optimal communication within the teams: by serenely and regularly exchanging with their collaborators, managers are more inclined to detect potential skills and competencies not yet recognized or valued ( feedbacks, training plans, coaching, e.g.)
- an adapted management mode with inspiring and robust leadership: involve, train, adapt to individuals and situations to give more meaning.
- An engaging motivation policy: recognizing and valuing talents to enable them to express themselves in the service of the collective and the company and to evolve, suitable compensation, a personalized career plan, e.g.
So … Are you ready to find new talents and let yours express themselves?
