Would you consider your organization to be a competitive player when it comes to talent? Research reveals a less than stellar reality for many organizations. In fact, a recent Bersin by Deloitte study indicates that 70 to 80 percent of organizations lack a talent strategy, and if you want to be a champion in the market, you have to have a great strategy.
Visions of gold aren’t unattainable, but until now, many organizations haven’t had the proper tools to really excel when it comes to managing and retaining talent. That’s all about to change as businesses begin to put greater emphasis on building talent by exploring, creating and leveraging a strategy.
The Challenges
Many organizations face two main challenges when it comes to their talent strategy. While most organizations are engaged in some form of talent management, they lack a clear talent strategy. Considering a good talent strategy provides direction and helps organizations align with overall business goals, why aren’t more companies invested?
But development isn’t where organizations struggle the most. In many cases, the significant problem is a lack of sufficient leaders to follow through with the talent strategy. Somewhere along the line, someone drops the ball and, unfortunately, business outcomes are affected.
Overcoming these challenges and taking control of your talent strategy is really quite easy. If you’re doing it right, it’s a simple four-step approach.
Step One: Identify Your Business Strategy
Are all your leaders on the same page when it comes to business strategy? The first step involves unifying leaders across the organization. Leaders are responsible for creating the talent strategy, so they need to know the businesses strategy and goals.
Step Two: Identify Talent Needs
Now that you know what your business strategy and goals are, the next step is conducting a workforce assessment to find out which talent needs are the most crucial. By the end of this discussion, leaders should have a clear understanding how to attract, develop, engage and retain individuals. This information will become the talent plan foundation, outlining how the organization can achieve its strategy.
Step Three: Align the Strategy
With a talent strategy in place, leaders are now responsible for aligning the strategy with expectations and fully supporting the system. In order to be successful, you need complete buy-in from the rest of the workforce. It is up to the leaders of the organization to ensure employees are willing and able to act out the process and then maintain a proactive role in encouraging usage. Consistency only will breed better results.
Step Four: Redesign the System
Finally, a system redesign completes the process. Remember, technology should align with the activity strategies you have set forth in your plan. Choose a talent management system robust enough to support all your business goals. And note that technology should work for your people, not the other way around.
Implement a tool that can build a reward and talent program to drive your business forward. Don’t be a victim of talent shortage; rather, find and foster super talent by linking performance and compensation. With an all-in-one system, you can implement fair and consistent compensation plans where performance directly impacts reward.
Each of these steps involves a great deal of collaboration and thoughtful planning, but together, they provide you a winning strategy capable of producing amazing results. Prepare for success and take the gold when it comes to talent.
What’s your strategy for developing the talent needed to grow your business? Is it gold medal-worthy?