How do you measure your talent management against the best?

One way to look at this from a new angle is to look at the usual benchmarks from a qualitative perspective. Running sorts of due diligences on typical data, like retention and succession, to dive deeper into the data and extract meaning from the numbers. Making it practical: all leavers are not the same, have we looked at resignations through the performance, diversity, knowledge, skills lenses? Lots of data on competitors are available these days thanks to open source intelligence and social media.

The talent management piece which is highly crucial needs to be attended right from scouting for talent. A larger emphasis on quality of hire surely gives you an edge over others. Surely the engagement score, performance evaluations are the metrics but when you have hired the right fit through a robust hiring process makes individual aligned to the vision of the organization. Not necessary that you will find the talent from a competitor; try exploring cross industry hiring, such people bring in a diverse perspective into the business and perform with a zeal. The two aspects which would set you apart is quality of hire and cross industry hiring.

This involves staying updated with emerging trends, tools, and methodologies within the current landscape. We can evaluate employee satisfaction, engagement levels, and turnover rates to provide insights into the success of retention initiatives and overall organizational culture. Feedback from clients helps in identifying areas of improvement and evaluating the competitiveness of the best talent management.

🏁 Top 3 methods for benchmarking your talent are:- ✅ Participating in Management Competitions, see how your teams fare against the best in the Industry ✅ Writing Research Papers by employees to overcome industry challenges, is your talent coming up with solutions? ✅ Is your Talent getting invited to Industry Seminars & Conferences as a Subject matter experts ? An organisation which motivates and develops it talent to perform in the above events, would definitely have 💯 engagement driving retention and attracting the best talent.

My experience as a HR manager and senior executive in private and public sector, shows that despite the routine standard metrics in the talent management field specifically regarding the hiring and recruitment phase, the intuition of the employer and the talent manager is very crucial in order to look beyond the candidate's CV and his work experience. In this new era with its dynamic and ever-changing characteristics, a pioneer HR practitioner and manager should look for: 1. The candidate's inner capabilities and potentials. 2. His powerful intentions and ambitions to meet his professional goals in his beloved career. 3. How much he really love his profession and career path.

A Talent Strategy has the following purpose: 1. Support the business with having the best people in critical positions at all times and 2. Retain the best people than can make a difference in your organization. For that to work, you first need to understand the business strategy and what needs to be delivered how, when and where. From there you deduct the needed skills, experience, but also positions that are critical. Align all relevant HR processes like recruitment, performance appraisal, succession management and people development to make sure you identify and invest in the people that are willing and able to make a difference. If you don’t invest in them, other companies will. Developing and promoting them is your retention element.

The talent strategy doesn’t just need to align with the business strategy, it needs to deliver on it. How do we know if it is working? It leads to value creation and minimizes the impact of severe risks. Ex. Your talent strategy includes succession planning, which includes proactive talent landscaping for a particular critical role, which may have been identified as high vacancy risk in 12 months. When this critical role is vacant, and you backfill in a fraction of the typical time frame, you save the business from significant operational risk.

I agree with this. But I will add that when formulating talent strategies, it is essential to not only look internally but to look externally as well. Utilizing external data to see where talent pools are located and what competition is doing can help underpin strategies. Especially in today's rapidly changing labor market, many companies have struggled to hit DEI initiatives and retain candidates. I feel that companies fell short this year due to poor strategy formulation, to begin with. Perhaps they did not utilize data to help make these decisions around talent. With the proper data, many companies can determine if a build vs. buy is better. As well, they can genuinely formulate sound strategies.

First and foremost, HR needs a seat a the table…you can have the best innovation strategy, product development and market opportunities but without the people it will not happen…a business strategy needs to be informed by the state of the current environment and resources available and then needs to be paired with any future state and aspirations a business has…the people and thus talent strategy is the difference between a pipe dream and an aspiration that motivates people and starts a movement. The people strategy mustn’t be an after thought that comes after the facts have been decided. It is the foundation for inspiration and dreams turning into reality.

In my opinion this is the only way to approach this subject. It doesn’t matter if you hit all your internal KPIs for talent management if the talent you bring in does not help the business achieve its goals. KPIs must never become the end-target but rather provide guidance for future efforts.

Taking feedback from all relevant stakeholders including employees is a given. However if the opportunity areas are not worked upon and action isn't taken on improvement areas, soon everyone will see this exercise as waste of time and stop giving genuine feedback. Also it takes a lot of effort, rigor and discipline for an organization to have a transparent and open feedback system. It is only with consistent messaging from the top leadership that employees will see this as a key value driver within the organization.

"What we measure is what we control and can improve." I believe there is atmost clarity around leadership expectation and actual performance delivered when leadership and member spend time in transforming expectation to tangible measurable outcome. It looks difficult and time consuming but if one is ready to accept the fact that feedback is essential, ideally have the flexibility around the approach adopted to reach there. Feedback from juniors and seniors will later play a vital role to know what is it we could've have done differently. Feedback works best when it is lined up with a target in mind just like our school days - we use to receive feedback from teachers with a focus on marksheet and hence improvement was obvious outcome.

Feedback should be taken, wherever possible, from clients and customers. In 100% cases - they are right. However, customized feedback should be developed taken from new joiners, and left employees - this also has almost 100% purity.

Based on my experiences, companies that listens to their employees and stakeholders (and do something) should also has high engagement points. They saw that their contributions and feedbacks really matters. When they engage with the company they willingly to do extra mile for their company and increase company’s reputation. In the end it will increase overall company’s performance.

Employee feedback is crucial in understanding the impact of your talent management practices. Conduct employee surveys, focus groups, or feedback sessions to gather insights on areas such as career development opportunities, performance management, leadership effectiveness, and overall satisfaction with talent management initiatives. Use this feedback to identify strengths and areas for improvement.

In evaluating talent management against the best, it's crucial to personalize your approach. To truly measure success, consider what "best" means to you. Is it about following established standards or aiming higher? Post-pandemic, a one-size-fits-all strategy no longer suffices. Staying relevant, effective stakeholder management, and streamlined operations set your unique path for growth. Instead of chasing the industry rat race, focus on setting practical, attainable goals. Remember, less can often yield more.

You should absolutely draw inspiration from others, but don’t just copy and paste. Truly understand the unique factors in your company first, then draw inspiration that you can then start iterating a solution. Finally, don’t expect to get it perfect the first time out. Success takes time and is always changing.

New employees can be a useful source of information too. If you do a new hire orientation and get feedback, ask new hires questions about the favorite HR policies and practices in past workplaces. Not everyone will have things to add there that are potential best practices - they did leave those organizations, after all. But you may find some gems.

Best practices in most of the cases end up in copying others. Creativity is more important. Two human beings are not same, two talents are different, so each one requires respective management strategy.. Innovate and customize your talent strategy.

Only evaluation is business results. A proper metric can be created in counting how talent strategy contributed to business results - numbers and not stories..

Three things to measure such as employee retention, engagement, and performance while evaluating your talent with outcomes. Compare these pointers with industry to identify gaps and areas for improvement, accordingly you can assess and act upon it for further improvement.

All people who consider themselves as high talent (and where the organisation agrees) are usually highly committed to the organisation so they want to stick around, but they are also driven by achievement, development and progression. As such, whilst talent management should ultimately deliver business results, the medium term measure of robust talent management is a) how much of you talent do you hold on to and b) how much of your talent progresses through the organisation.

Assess the effectiveness of your leadership development programs and initiatives. Measure the impact of leadership training and development on the performance and engagement of your leaders. Use tools such as 360-degree feedback assessments to gather comprehensive feedback on leadership competencies and behaviors.

An effective talent management strategy should be measured against: 1. Both core business & other corresponding organizational strategies it supports (i.e.- a separately defined DEI strategy) 2. It's own goals & objectives as defined by it's mission & vision statements 3. How well the talent management strategy is known & perceived across various cohorts of talent it seeks to serve through a combination of qualitative and quantitative data inputs Understanding how well you are managing talent across the employee lifecycle has some clear and less clear impacts upon other parts of the organization and bottom line business results. What is missing? What are our gaps? Great benchmarking seeks ask better questions to get better answers.

Something I find key in talent management is the succession plans. Have you identified the key positions for your business or unit ? Have you identified the successors for those positions when/if the current holders leave? Are you sure those “successors” know where they are going and if they are happy with this plan ? The more you have a pool of “talents” and the organisation is aware of their capabilities and their wishes , the best a career plan can be built. Communication is key ! Ask people where they want to grow to. Tell people what you can propose to them and try to match things as much as possible. Sounds simple but it is everything but :)

Just running the talent management programmes takes up most of the time and energy of the HR function whose responsibility it is to make sure the activities take place. The next important thing is following up on the outcomes, ensuring the objectives are met and monitoring metrics. This requires working with multiple stakeholders and convincing the business to commit to actions. Are we giving the responsible parties the time, resources, technology and empowerment needed to do the follow up? The business can lose trust if there is no follow up and impact on the commitments made and we are likely to see less engagement the next time we run the programme.

I have seen two companies who do a great job of managing talent and one of the key things is that the process is not exclusively an HR process. HR are heavily involved, but the difference is that every senior manager in each company plays an active role in defining talent development plans for their people and ensuring that their is a formal process for progressing talent through the organisation. The very best example is the company who actively move talent into different roles and across countries.

It depends on the priorities you have around talent in your org. There is no one perfect metric that helps measure this. Comparing your approach to talent against other organisations may be less helpful than focusing on the needs of your business directly.

This is an excellent article with some spot-on contributions. One thing I want to add is this. It is straightforward, but many people don't utilize it. Have an open mind. At the end of the day, if you were successful or not. I have found it best practice always to keep an open mind. With today's technology, everything is changing at a rapid pace. It can be easy to get set in your ways if you feel or have seen them to be successful. Remember, there is always room for improvement. No one is perfect, and no system is perfect. Keeping an open mind while approaching areas in life or business allows you to grow continually. Shutting yourself down to new ideas or ideals can stagnate your business.