September 2007

Recipe for Talent Management Success

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Labor Day, the first Monday in September, constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers - which today number more than 150 million, or 50% of the overall population - have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. For most of us, however, Labor Day weekend represents the last long weekend before school starts, the official end of summer. No more beach vacations, no more golf lunches, and definitely no more half-day Friday. For most of us, Labor Day heralds the start of school for students and return to work for employees. September, for many organizations, marks the beginning of planning cycles when business priorities are determined and budgets are drafted.

With talent management continuing to gain momentum as a strategic corporate initiative within organizations, you and your HR peers have likely been tasked with identifying talent management priorities that drive business results. The following recipe for success is designed to help you develop a comprehensive talent management strategy that streamlines your talent lifecycle while delivering real delivers business value.

Prioritize talent management as a strategic initiative within your organization. With the impending labor shortage and the escalating battle for talent, organizations need to focus on managing, developing, rewarding, retaining and optimizing their existing talent.

Leverage integrated, best-in-class software and solutions that can streamline the talent lifecycle within your organization - from training and development to performance management to succession planning to compensation management. Ensure that your solution is flexible and extensible to accommodate future talent management requirements.

Accelerate content management and administration within your organization; explore how solutions and managed services like iContent can save your organization time and money by making it faster and easier to purchase, manage, deploy, test and validate your custom and third party content.

Tie talent management initiatives to strategic corporate objectives; align employee development plans and performance goals with priorities that drive business value and results, i.e. those that impact the bottom line.

Evaluate deployment options and determine which best meets your organizational requirements. Today's most popular deployment can be classified as: On Premise, or behind the firewall; Software-as-a Service (SaaS), which is leased rather than purchased; and Hosted, in which the software is managed a third party. There are pros and cons to each deployment option, depending on an organization's size, number of users, scalability requirements, budget, and so forth.

Assess and categorize the behaviors, skills, and knowledge that are critical to your business and ensure that the talent management solution you select supports competency management across all talent management applications. As the foundation of effective talent management solutions, competency management gives an entire organization—not just the HR department—a model of its human talent objectives, and a measurable, actionable plan for reaching those objectives.

Understand employees' professional goals and work with them to develop actionable plans that will ensure their success. According to statistics, organizations that empower employees by proactively involving them in career planning have higher employee satisfaction, greater employee productivity, and are more likely to retain strong talent.

When developing a comprehensive talent management strategy, there are several factors that must be weighed and evaluated. Be sure to consider and include the above ingredients as you create and execute a talent management strategy that fits your organization. Learn how
Plateau's integrated talent management solution is supporting Idaho Power's critical learning and performance initiatives


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