Streamlining your talent management strategy

Employees are your biggest investment. Whilst it is not solely down to Human Resources departments, HR professionals are responsible for a large part of talent management. The primary benefit of a streamlined talent strategy is to reduce staff attrition, ensuring your top performers want to stay on. Beyond keeping your best talent, low attrition rates mean less money is spent replacing employees – on average it costs more than £30k to replace a single member of staff.

For this reason, it is unsurprising that organisations invest significant amounts of time and money in talent management processes and training. There are a few aspects to pay further attention to in order to consolidate talent management.

Succinct onboarding training

It can take some time to get new starters up to speed and feeling comfortable in their role – new recruits are often responsible for inflated turnover rates. If you don’t have the right processes available, employees are more likely to look for a new position early in their career with you.

With a seamless and well thought out onboarding process, they are exposed to company culture and processes as soon as they start. The first few weeks are a critical period in which new starters must get used to both the professional and social environment of the workplace.

Offering the opportunity for development

Everybody wants to further their career and improve their prospects. Development in the workplace reduces the risk of individuals feeling stifled in their role. Further to this, companies should prioritise internal promotions over hiring externally – this is a crucial aspect of retention as it not only displays to other employees what they can achieve, it ensures your best talent have the opportunity to grow and increases the likelihood that they will stay within the organisation.

• Innovative learning experiences – engaging, different training methods are more attractive for employees
• Take an active interest in each employee’s development – when employees feel supported and empowered they perform better and are likely to be retained
• Promote a culture of learning – make it evident that continuous learning is the norm
• Establish a mentor system – mentors can help facilitate development

Availability of diverse compensation and benefits

A key part of any talent management strategy is the recognition of strong performance. Implementing clear incentives and goals motivate individuals to stay in their position. These can be a wide range of things, from strong remuneration to the availability of a diverse benefits package.

This is especially important to the younger generations who are renowned for wanting increased flexibility to improve their work life balance.

Look after your employees and they’ll take care of the business

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that your workforce is responsible for success – it is common sense that it is worthwhile keeping your teams content in their daily work lives.

A happy and well incentivised office, in many cases, is a successful one.

By Natalie Limerick, Director, Morgan McKinley