Managing in-house, remote, and contract workers is becoming increasingly difficult for HR departments to navigate.

Establishing a talent management system can simplify onboarding, development, and compensation for every kind of employee. 

In today’s blog, we’ll lay the foundations for a stellar talent management system to streamline the employee experience and motivate your talent.

What exactly does “talent management” mean?

Let’s start off by clearly laying out the definition of the term:

Talent management is the practice of attracting, obtaining, and retaining highly skilled workers. 

The modern workforce is more globalized than ever. Your teams are likely filled with highly skilled workers in remote and hybrid systems. The structure and setup of modern organizations do not look the same today as they did 50 or even 10 years ago. 

As such, it can be hard to keep expert workers engaged and motivated to perform at their best. HR teams need new ways to keep track of all employees simultaneously. Talent management uses continuous development programs to ensure that your staff's skills are always at their sharpest.

How does it differ from “talent acquisition”?

You may have heard of the term “talent acquisition” and wondered how it differs from talent management. Talent acquisition is mainly focused on attracting and recruiting the most skilled workers into your organization.

Talent acquisition is mainly focused on optimizing the initial hiring process, whereas talent management looks at the bigger picture. Effective talent management sets the stage for a broader view of the entire employee lifecycle, including the development, engagement and retention of talented workers.

How can my company optimize talent management?

Establishing effective talent management is not as simple as flicking a switch. It is, by its nature, made up of varying factors that all contribute to the larger system. Broad principles should be carefully weighed up and put into practice over time.

That being said, here’s our list of principles to nail your talent management system and elevate talent engagement:

Attract talent and advertise vacancies the right way

Starting things off, we need to understand that effective talent management is proactive. It needs a holistic outlook that doesn’t just respond to changes but can effectively create them.

To enable highly skilled workers to enter your organization, are you sure that they see your company in the right way? Everything that happens before a person enters your workforce should shine in a glowing light.

In large part, this has to do with your company branding. Top talent is drawn to attractive and clear employer branding. We don’t mean the brand logo you place on your products, but company branding that sells the experience of working for you. You’re trying to attract standout talent, so you need to make your company stand out like a neon light against a midnight sky.

Ensure your vacancies are advertised as clearly as crystal. Open up as many channels as possible to tap into the talent market.  Optimize your talent acquisition process, using referral programs, conventional advertising and more modern approaches like podcasts to cast your recruiting net far and wide.

Get the first step right, and you’re setting the stage for a talent management system to write home about!

Align your business strategy

Next up, take a deep dive into aligning your new recruits with your corporate strategy. Reflect on exactly what you need based on your core business strategy, as this provides building blocks for talent management. Hiring the right people is only the first step. You need to make the stars align.

Let’s say for example you aim to develop your technological innovation over the next 5 years. Are your onboarding principles designed to resonate with the technical talents you are hiring? 

For your tech leaders who have been with the company for years, are there enough opportunities for further development? If your new recruits and seasoned talents aren’t challenged, their engagement and motivation will just plummet over time.

Moving forward, implement iterative changes to your onboarding and talent management practices in manageable installments. While your core business goals might remain consistent, the steps you take to reach them will likely need to evolve as the business landscape shifts. The short to mid-term steps you need to take to achieve them often change with the business landscape and economic pressures. 

Ultimately, making these continuous improvements to how you manage and align your talent will pay off big. Revamp and revitalize your approach to managing and aligning talent and watch your teams soar!

Be consistent and reflect internally

Leading on from strategy alignment, create a team management plan that is consistent internally, as well as how it operates externally. Your organization needs to be able to take an internal deep dive into exactly how your highly skilled workers are managed.

The thing with really talented workers is that even if their praises go unsung, they are fully aware of how a manager is missing out on their skills, knowledge, and expertise. In today’s age, an endless world of information lies at their fingertips, and can immediately research the most in-demand skill sets in the market. If their thoughts and insights go unheard, their productivity and engagement will take a massive nosedive. 

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Here are some ways to meet skilled employees’ expectations:

• 360-degree feedback: Objective feedback is a powerful tool that massively benefits highly skilled workers. A 360-degree feedback system is an employee review that includes comprehensive sources. This could include peers, superiors, international colleagues, and even customers. Properly implemented, this feedback system can objectively remove biases and identify critical training needs. Make sure yours is very well-regimented, as rushing into one can become chaotic. 

• Performance appraisals: Leading on from 360-degree feedback, performance appraisals have the same motivational potential, but provide the opportunity of a personal touch. Your highly skilled workers need to see that you recognize the depths of their expertise. Generally, most experts aim for appraisal either annually or bi-annually. This gives you enough time to thoroughly measure their performance and contextualize their value. Make the most of one-on-one performance appraisals to motivate your teams and ensure talent doesn’t go unnoticed.

• Equalizing promotional opportunities: A final reflection could be done with an assessment of the systems and criteria that enable promotion. Managing highly skilled workers often moves at a fast pace. They are keen on learning opportunities and professional development. A leveling of the promotional playing field means they’ll never feel unfairly treated. Outdated promotional systems create an immediate brick-wall that skilled workers may not even mention to you. Thoroughly and honestly assess your promotional criteria to ensure it’s equitable for all.

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Invest in attractive benefits, perks, and team-building retreats

Heading further into appraisals and recognition through feedback, maximize the perks and benefits you offer for standout work. It’s all well and good being able to recognize incredible work, but if it goes unrewarded, how long do you expect it to last? 

Start by assessing the extrinsic rewards and benefits in the company. These are essentially the incentives the company offers, like bonuses, promotions or public recognition. To make the most of them, tie them directly to clear, measurable outcomes. 

But don’t just stop by assessing the physical things you give out as incentives. Research into what motivates employees continues to evolve, and highly skilled workers are motivated by more than just extrinsic rewards.

A keen move is keeping an eye on the way intrinsic rewards are used by competitors in the market. If your talent doesn’t feel rewarded, they could simply start to look elsewhere. Incentives have a direct correlation with company turnover rates, so bear this in mind.

One of the most attractive perks for highly skilled workers is the ability to travel around the world as part of their work. Remote workers in particular recognize how team-building retreats are the best way to bring them closer together with colleagues. Almost 3 quarters of surveyed remote workers said they missed group activities with their colleagues, like on team building retreats.

Which is where we come in! Here at Surf Office, organizing team retreats is what we do best.  

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Here’s what we offer:

• Stress-free transfers? We got you! ✅
• Quality-assured accommodations? Check! ✅
• Engaging team-building activities? Our speciality ✅
• Restaurant reservations? That's on us! ✅
• Expert retreat planning assistance? Of course, we have this covered! ✅
• Onsite support, tailored to your needs? Absolutely ✅

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Not only this but we also have access to 160+ locations around Europe, APAC, the US, Latin America, and now Africa, meaning the sky is your limit when it comes to choosing the right location for you and your team.

Make sure you get your reward systems right to fortify your talent management and accentuate positive growth for your teams!

Balance your global and local needs

This principle is especially important for organizations that are expanding. Balancing global and local needs is a smart way for your company to strengthen team management. As your company grows, it’s so easy to be completely focused on the big, global picture. Too often, companies lose track of how they interact with the local market.

A strong global strategy aligns your vision across international markets, and adjusting that strategy to fit local needs can go a long way to retaining top talent. 

Create a clear global framework for talent management. You want to make your core company values, performance expectations and leadership programs uniform, right across the board. However, you need to make sure to adapt your principles for local teams too, as best you can. 

As an example, you might have set up a global training program that looks fantastic on paper, but adjusting and adapting the content to different languages can make a big difference. Your highly skilled workers from abroad will see this personalized touch and be able to work better with their international colleagues. 

Truly understanding what motivates employees in different regions is another big part of the puzzle. What works to engage talent in one country could fall flat in another. Adapting your perks and recognition schemes to suit local needs keeps staff motivated and prevents them from looking elsewhere.

The path to new markets can be fraught with complications that interfere with the way you manage your teams. By adapting to your local environments, you’re staying safe and paying attention to what matters to them.

Prioritize hiring internally

As you move further into setting up your talent management system, shifting some focus toward internal hiring can create a positive cycle. Hiring from within is conducive to an atmosphere that promotes growth and professional advancement.

A lot of the principles of effective talent management are about loyalty. Your skilled workers will feel much more motivated knowing that you can see their potential within. Promoting from within also encourages continuous learning and development. Workers will be much more likely to seek out opportunities to upskill, knowing there are ample chances to advance their careers.

Internal hires already understand the company’s culture, values, and goals, so they can hit the ground running. By focusing on internal hiring, you’re singing from the rooftops that the company values its people and is committed to their long-term success. This, in turn, leads to higher retention rates and a stronger, more engaged workforce.

Plus, you’ll be saving time and resources on onboarding and training. That’s got to be a win-win!

Lead from the top and get executives on board

In any successful talent management strategy, leadership from the top is essential. You can’t just talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. 

If management and executives aren’t completely on board with talent management goals, initiatives may not gain the traction they need to truly make an impact. That’s why the next step is to make sure, once the other principles are set up, that top leadership is aligned and driving the company’s talent management efforts.

Prioritizing talent management sends a strong message throughout the organization. Employees see that leadership is invested in their well-being and overall career trajectory. It adds the personal touch that is sorely lacking when many companies establish their talent management plan. 

Getting executives in amongst the work increases buy-in from the entire workforce. It also enhances a culture of accountability. If leaders at the top are engaged in talent management, managers and employees have an example to follow.

If executives are fully in-tune with talent management, then their involvement will create an invaluable resource for future development. Integrating talent management into the broader business strategy ensures that the organization remains focused at every level. That might have them allocating resources for leadership development programs or offering public recognition for team achievements. Involvement from leadership is crucial for a stellar talent management system.

More often than not, talent management works best when it’s a top-down effort. Executives who lead by example help create a company culture where employees feel ready to stick around for the long haul. So, if you want to take your talent management to the next level, make sure your execs are front and center, setting the pace for the rest of the company.

Measure over time and promote continuous learning

The final principle encourages you to carry the light of continuous learning and iteration into future endeavors. Talent management isn’t a one-time fix or a silver bullet to destroy disengagement at work. It’s a process that evolves, an engine that needs maintenance. To keep things moving in the right direction, you need to measure your efforts and keep iterating.

First, let’s drill into the term “measuring.” It’s important to check in on how well your talent management strategies are working. Are employees more engaged? Is your employee turnover rate decreasing? Are teams performing better? By keeping an eye on key metrics over time, you can spot what’s working and what needs tweaking. Without measurement, you’re flying blind.

Use data-driven measurements to lay the grounds for continuous learning. Encouraging your talent to keep growing isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s essential for sustained improvement. The more opportunities people have to learn through workshops, mentoring, and online courses, the more they’ll feel invested in the company.

Offering learning programs shows all staff that you’re invested in their long-term career development, which improves morale and retention. It’s also a win for the company, because who doesn’t want a workforce that’s always sharpening their skills and staying ahead of the curve?

This final principle brings us full circle in the cycle of talent management. Create a positive system to manage your skilled workers, and they’ll be ready to help others through the employee lifecycle. Be ready for whatever challenge comes next, and stick to our mantra:

"Measure over time and promote continuous learning."