A talent management system (TMS) is an integrated software suite that addresses the “four pillars” of talent management: recruitment; performance management; learning and development; and compensation management.
Talent Management System is designed to keep track of talent within an organization. Talent is classified as valuable members of personnel and prospective employment candidates who have applied for open positions. If you plan on working the expanding field of TMS, you will need to learn how to navigate through a TMS system and how to utilize the system as you scope out, qualify and hire talent. The best TMS used today by mid-sized and large corporations will keep track of data at many different points in the employee life cycle. The data that the system compiles can then be used for strategic professionals for several different purposes that benefit the organization.
Purpose
Whereas traditional HRMS and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems focus primarily on transaction processing and the administration of basic human resources processes such as personnel administration, payroll, time management, etc., talent management systems focus on providing strategic assistance to organizations in the accomplishment of long-term enterprise goals with respect to talent, or human capital. Talent management systems may also be referred to as or paired with an applicant tracking system (ATS) in either standalone application or as a suite of products. According to Bersin, talent management may be defined as the implementation of integrated strategies or systems designed to improve processes for recruiting, developing, and retaining people with the required skills and aptitude to meet current and future organizational needs.
- Planning: Like in any process with a set outcome, planning is the first step in the process of talent management. It involves the following identifying where the gaps lie; the human capital requirement, formulating job descriptions for the necessary key roles to help guide sourcing and selection and developing a workforce plan for recruitment initiatives. Learn more: What is Talent Sourcing? Definition, Process, Strategy with Examples 2. Attracting: Based on the plan, the natural next step is to decide whether the talent requirements should be filled in from within the organization or from external sources. Either way, the process would involve attracting a healthy flow of applicants. The usual external sources include job portals, social network, and referrals. The talent pools that need to be tapped into must be identified in advance to keep the process as smooth and efficient as possible. This is where the kind of employer brand that the organization has built for itself, comes into play because that decides the quality of applications that come in.
- Selecting: This involves using a string of tests and checks to find the right match for the job; the ideal person-organization fit. Written tests, interviews, group discussions and psychometric testing along with an in-depth analysis of all available information on the candidate on public access platforms help in gauging an all-rounded picture of the person. Today there are software and AI-enabled solutions that recruiters can use to skim through a vast population of CVs to focus on the most suitable options and to find the ideal match.
- Developing: Quite a few organizations today operate on the idea of hiring for attitude and training for skills. This makes sense because while you would want a predisposition to certain skill-sets, it is the person that you are hiring and not the CV. Developing employees to help them grow with the organization and training them for the expertise needed to contribute to business success also builds loyalty and improves employee engagement. This begins with an effective onboarding program to help the employee settle into the new role, followed by providing ample opportunities for enhancing the skills, aptitude and proficiency while also enabling growth through counseling, coaching, mentoring and job-rotation schemes.
- Retaining: For any organization to be truly successful, sustainably, talent needs to be retained effectively. Most organizations try to retain their best talent through promotions and increments, offering opportunities for growth, encouraging involvement in special projects and decision-making, training for more evolved roles and rewards and recognition programs.
- Transitioning: Effective talent management focuses on a collective transformation and evolution of the organization through the growth of individual employees. This involves making each employee feel that they are a part of a bigger whole. Providing retirement benefits, conducting exit interviews and effective succession planning might seem like unrelated career points but they are all transition tools that enable the shared journey.
Step By Step Talent Management Process
Identify Organization Goals and Understand the Requirement
What are your organizations high level priorities or goals? List down the goals and upcoming changes you need to initiate in the organization.
Develop the job descriptions and specifications for the role you want to acquire the talent for. Since it the first step towards the process, it plays a crucial role in the success of the whole process.
Sourcing and Attracting the Talent
First thing one must understand in talent acquisition is why would somebody with high-level skills come to work for you? Employment branding is the concept that comes into play at this moment. Best thing to do for employment branding is to be honest.
Searching for the people according to the requirement is the main activity in this step. Look out for the platforms like Linkedin where you can search highly talented people.
Despite the explosion of social networking sites like Linkedin and twitter, there are still lot of different ways people find new positions. Significant amount of them comes from internal candidates and through referrals.
Recruiting and Selecting The Talent
This is the stage where you actually conduct interview tests and recruit the top talent. Conduct relevant interview tests to identify the best person and scoop them in.
Employee Retention
Now that you have recruited the best employees, you need to make strategies to retain those employees. how do you retain them?
Almost 51% of the employers have problem with employee retention. High salary hikes and incentives are not the only things you should do to retain your employees. You have to create opportunities for growth and give them the room for creativity. You can implement these 5 employee retention strategies to retain your best employees.
Promotion
Promote the people gradually to the new role. Nobody wants to work at the same designation for a long period of time. This way you are helping your employees grow in their professional career.
Performance Appraisal
Measuring the performance of an employee is imperative to identify his or her true potential. You can check whether the person can be loaded with extra responsibilities or not.
Succession Planning
Succession planning is different from replacement planning. It is a conscious decision by an organization to nurture and develop the continuous development of employees. I have written earlier about the importance of succession planning process in an organization. It is all about who will replace whom in the near future.
Talent Management Strategy Talent management is not a mere checklist of requirements that need to be sufficed – it is a strategy that needs careful implementation, regular checks, and continual improvement. The following are the six primary talent management strategies that serve as the pillars of people functions.
Detailed job descriptions:
A well-informed, detailed job description helps the sourcer, the sourcing software, and the candidate understand the job-role better. Generic job descriptions only serve to confuse all parties involved in the talent acquisition process and lead to a wave of irrelevant applications. Information that must be a part of the job description includes the following:
- Job title and location
- Overall duties
- Skills required
- Reporting lines
- Tools and equipment used
- Salary and benefits
Person-organization fit
An employee that does not fit into the organizational culture can neither be the happiest employee nor the most sustainably productive one. While the culture can be difficult to define in words, it is prevalent in actions and quite easy to understand whether a candidate would be a good fit or not. Personal and organizational values need to have a certain degree of overlap for any employee to feel at home within the organization. Without a comfortable person-organization fit, the most amount of time, effort and energy would go into attempts at adjustment. Hiring candidate with the right P-O fit (or PE fit) thus greatly improves the chances of better employee engagement, higher employee satisfaction, and usually better performance.
Collaborate-coach-evolve
An important strategy to make talent management more effective involves creating a culture of coaching, mentoring (even reverse mentoring) and collaboration. Constructive feedback goes a long way when it comes to helping employees evolve and develop their skills and expertise. Managing talent is thus also about preparing them for the future of the organization to be ready for changes down the path and to be able to rely on each other.
Reward and recognize right
The process of rewards and recognition forms an important part of the strategy to motivate, engage and manage employees better. This goes beyond financial rewards and bonus packages. Studies point towards the fact that employees often want R&R schemes that motivate them with “prizes” that are most relevant to them as individuals. This is a great opportunity for organizations to show their employees how much they care for them as persons and as integral aspects of the organizational machinery. 5. Opportunities for continuous improvement Managing talent needs to be put in the context of the future that the organization has envisioned for itself. Thus, employees need to be equipped with the right tools to be able to maximize their own potential. For the continuous improvement of the organization, there needs to be the scope and opportunities for the continuous development of its employees. Moreover, this ensures that the cumulative skills within the organization is updated, upgraded and upscaled.