We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic.
We also share information about your use of our site with our social media,
advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services.
Human Resources
19 July 2021 - 4 min read
Talent management is a branch of HR that aims to identify, develop, and retain talented employees within organisations. It’s also an area of HR that needs the right people on hand who can effectively maximise the potential of those employees with the greatest value.
If you’re an aspiring or experienced people professional looking for an area of Human Resources to specialise in, as a talent manager, you’ll have the chance to contribute to a workforce plan and business strategy that will enable employees to develop and thrive in their roles.
If that’s not enough to motivate you, below we elaborate and review 5 reasons to specialise in talent management that might just change your mind.
The key to organisations attracting top talent is, first and foremost, getting the word out there about how incredible their company is. Often those companies who already have well-known products and working practices have no trouble with this, attracting the best candidates by marketing and reputation alone.
For a people professional focused on the talent management process, however, attracting the best employees means investing your time and effort in creating a stand-out recruitment process that reflects your company’s reputation.
As a talent manager, this means having your hand in everything from well-crafted and detailed job descriptions to the process in which each successful candidate is offered their position and brought on board - all of which will ideally reflect your company in a positive light.
To add, with the right talent management strategy, you’ll not only attract the best employees, but you’ll keep them engaged as well, ultimately improving retention rates and showcasing your own value to the company.
With the right approach to talent management, it’s been proven that HR professionals can positively impact and increase workplace productivity.
While there are many areas you can hone in on, we recommend focusing most of your energy on the following three:
Creating the right workplace conditions for engaged employees to put their best foot forward each day (while remaining committed to the organisations goals and values) not only contributes to organisational success but to the wellbeing of every member of staff.
When you take the time to check in on who appears the most driven and engaged and why, it will help you understand where additional attention, training, and meaningful work is needed among teams.
Working in HR means you typically have the benefit of working with a wide variety of groups within your businesses, meaning you have the opportunity to identify what factors set them apart and make them more or less successful than one another.
For example, you may find that one team is using specific practices to support productivity that should be implemented across the organisation, including:
Working in talent acquisition and management means identifying workplace stressors (i.e. low salaries, long hours, and unrealisitc job expectations) and providing positive solutions to these challenges that support productivity, such as:
By using your knowledge and skills to assess how your organisation is currently supporting these factors, you’ll help bring focus to any glaring skills gaps, outdated company strategies and support overall business performance.
These days there’s been a shift within the talent management sector of HR, where many people professionals are trying out a more holistic approach to retain top talent in the face of skills shortages and job role mismatches. This means incorporating inclusion at each stage of the employee lifecycle, including:
To be fully effective, however, talent managers need to develop and align strategic talent acquisition plans with their business needs at each stage - and now more than ever, diversity and inclusion are taking the limelight as a focal element of these strategies.
So, if you’re aspiring to make a difference and improve company culture, specialising in talent management is a great place to start as you’ll have a hand in ensuring your organisation’s employees (regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity, and so on) feel that they’re recognised equally among their peers right from recruitment to in-house progression, up to their eventual exit interviews.
While many organisations have put Learning and Development and other forms of training on the back burner throughout the pandemic, what businesses need now are forward-thinking people professionals who will help close the glaring skills gap that it helped create - that’s where CPD comes in.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is used to describe the learning activities that employees engage in to develop and enhance their existing skills and knowledge.
As a talent management professional, you can help implement workplace practices that encourage employee’s to work on their own CPD both in and out of work (with an online professional qualification, for example!), helping bring many benefits to individuals and organisations, such as:
This brings us to yet another reason you should specialist in talent management…
Perhaps one of the most fulfilling things about specialising in talent management is that you’ll have the opportunity to create genuine growth opportunities for your organisation and its employees.
Along with the tactics mentioned above, when you incorporate the following practices, you can create additional opportunities for growth that can help employees advance and excel in their careers. These include:
When a company takes the time to properly attract and retain the right employees and keep them engaged, employees feel that they aren’t just another cog in the machine and that their organisation truly cares about their place and progression in the company. This contributes to their own sense of accomplishment and wellbeing (and yours as well) - keeping everyone happy, loyal, and driven members of staff.
Without a doubt, talent management is one of the most rewarding specialisms and career routes for HR professionals, so if you’re looking to make a true impact in the world of work, then it might just be a good fit for you!
Share this post
Free your potential and advance your HR career today with one of our 100% online professional CIPD qualifications.