Talent Management

Table of Contents

• What is talent management?
• Scope of talent management
• The processes of talent management
• Talent management vs. talent acquisition

What is talent management?

Talent management refers to the entire scope of the human resources (HR) process. This includes attracting, developing, motivating, and the retention of high-performing employees.

Simply put, talent management is a process with the set goal of maintaining a high-performing workforce through the management of employees.

Scope of talent management

Talent management encompasses much more than the sum of its parts. For example, one aspect of talent management is retention of employees. However, this does not simply mean reactively offering employees more money as they announce their departure, but rather fostering a thriving workforce filled with happy employees through company culture, diversity, and values.

The processes of talent management

Talent management includes a wide variety of processes and functions that range from recruitment to employee retention. Below are some of the processes involved in talent management:

• • Job requisition
  • Recruitment planning
  • Job description (a process that should include team members)
  • Writing of job advertisement
  • Placement and continued optimization of job ad
  • Application review
  • Communication with candidate
  • Phone, online assessment, video, or screening interview
  • Interviews that include multiple employees and team members
  • Background checks and information verification
  • Extending a job offer
  • Negotiation or agreeing upon conditions
  • Employment contract signing
  • Employees first day and onboarding process
  • Welcoming a new employee and company introductions
  • Job training
  • Setting employee goals
  • Employee coaching, relationship building, and informal feedback
  • Formalized feedback such as employee performance reviews
  • Employee development and continued training
  • Career planning and career path trajectory
  • Promotions, lateral moves, transfers, referrals, internal hires
  • Employment termination either by choice or by discretion of employer

Talent management vs. talent acquisition

Before diving into the comparison of talent management vs. talent acquisition, let's define talent acquisition, since we have already done so for talent management.

Talent acquisition relates to the long term health of your organization. Unlike recruitment, talent acquisition is not solely focused on hiring talent. Talent acquisition focuses on long term human resource strategy. It involves building a brand, culture, and company values that employees want to work for, as well as hiring talent with the potential to grow into unicorns.

Now back to the comparison between talent management and talent acquisition. Simply put talent acquisition is involved with all the processes that enable you to hire top talent (employer branding, company culture, mission statements, job advertisements), while talent management is involved in making sure that once talent is hired that newly acquired talent is developed and nurtured to ensure increased business growth and employee productivity and performance. In short, talent acquisition is the strategy to recruit the most sought after applicants in your talent pool, while talent management is the process of retaining and growing the employees you hired from your talent pool.