It doesn’t matter if you take a traditional approach or a new approach to your talent management process. Your talent management plays a crucial role in your organization’s competitiveness, innovation, and market resilience.
The reason is simple. When you have the right people in the right roles, your organization will flourish.
But what are the key elements of a talent management system? In this article, we examine the most important factors that contribute to effective talent management and explain why Aluminate for Enterprise is the most important asset for any talent management model.
What is a talent management system (TMS)?
A talent management system is where you do all the strategic planning behind your talent acquisition and management.
It is software that brings together recruitment and onboarding, performance management, career development, and succession planning. Rather than run different software for all these processes, a talent management system does them all in one.
At first glance, talent management may seem to mirror other human resources processes, But unlike human capital management, which oversees the entire organization’s human capital, a talent management system focuses on managing the talent pipeline, both collectively but also individually.
Benefits of a TMS for your talent management strategies
An effective talent management system brings all your recruitment, onboarding, engagement, succession planning, and talent management strategies together. But it doesn’t stop there. It also offers you a framework for everything that influences and optimizes your employee performance.
9 key elements of a talent management system
Here are the nine key elements of a talent management system.
1. Recruitment and selection
Any talent management strategy starts with talent acquisition, and so recruitment is, of course, the first of the key factors in any talent management system. Your recruitment methods will differ based on whether your recruitment focuses on internal hiring, boomerang hires, or new external hires.
No matter the source, you need reliable software for storing all your applicant and preferred candidate data.
Aluminate for Enterprise offers this, with a platform where everyone has their own profile, easily accessed in the directory from the digital dashboard. The customized “for you” landing pages ensure that every member sees offers best suited to them, including internal job postings.
2. Onboarding
After the recruitment, selection, and hiring process are complete, it’s time for the next most important element of talent management: onboarding. The success with which you onboard your new employees will determine their first real impressions of the company.
This is why you should devise an onboarding strategy that goes beyond preparing new hires for their assigned roles.
This is your first opportunity to turn new employees into a motivated workforce. Make them feel like they belong in the company, but automatically assign them to relevant groups on your social network.
Aluminate’s platform with its Groups module is the simplest way to achieve this. The digital library, also accessed from the dashboard, is ideal for sharing onboarding and training materials with new employees.
3. Performance management
Talent management requires continuous monitoring and evaluation. Your performance management tools may include written tests that assess skills, one-on-one interviews, and analysis of business metrics. Together, these give an impression of how departments, teams, and individual employees are performing.
Employee performance is so closely linked to their engagement with the company (or lack thereof). Measuring engagement levels will give you deeper insights into this. And if you are using an enterprise social media platform like Aluminate for Enterprise, you will quickly identify their engagement.
It’s also possible to influence their perception of whether or not yours is a positive work environment, with a good workplace culture. If you want your teams to perform at optimum levels, you need to give them the tools they need for such performance.
4. Learning and career development
Each member of your talent pool is currently useful to you for what they have achieved thus far. Their past and present work experience, and any academic qualifications, constitute their value as employees. But what about their future achievements?
By supporting and nurturing employee’s further learning and professional development, you pave the way for them to acquire more skills.
As a centralized platform of company news that can serve as a digital repository for tutorial materials, Aluminate helps them access the resources they need to develop and gain the skills your business still needs (or may need in the future).
5. Succession planning
Every talent management system must include succession planning. This is where you identify the most talented employees with interpersonal and job-specific skills suitable for leadership roles. Should a top position be vacated, the candidates you identified as having those core skills can step up to fill the role.
Even if your candidate does so in a temporary capacity, it ensures continuity of leadership during sudden and unexpected leadership shifts. You may even choose to approach one of your corporate alumni with an offer to return and fill the vacancy.
6. Career pathing
What does your talent strategy have to do with your employees’ career paths? A lot. If they feel there are no growth opportunities for them in the organization, they are less likely to stick around. This is why the talent management process must include career pathing strategies, too.
Do your employees’ career trajectories align with the organizational hierarchy? Can you help them realize their career goals in ways that satisfy organizational objectives too?
Providing these development opportunities within the organization should be a top priority, or you risk losing top talent. Mentorship allows employees to gain valuable insights from senior staff and corporate alumni. Aluminate’s mentor-matching feature allows mentors and mentees to match up on the platform.
7. Employee engagement
Your talent management strategy should include possibilities for further employee engagement. Engaged employees are more productive and efficient.
When you keep staff engaged, you maximize their potential. That’s good news for any talent management strategy.
This is more challenging when employees are working remotely from another geographic region and time zone. However, it’s not impossible to keep remote employees engaged. An internet-based social network will allow all your employees to stay connected to the company culture.
If you wish to engage in-house employees only, with a private social network over an intranet connection, you can do that too. But choose the right platform. Aluminate for Enterprise is the most customizable online community platform, enhancing employee collaboration, communication, and engagement.
8. Retention strategies
While there are several key elements of a talent management system, they will be of no use without the right retention strategies.
Recruiting talent is about getting the right people for the right jobs. Retaining talent means keeping them there, thereby reducing the burden of continuous recruitment. Creating a positive work environment where everyone feels supported and valued will reduce employee turnover.
But the time will come when even your best employees leave. In their exit interviews, you’ll get more clarity about their reasons. Unless they are retiring, there is always the chance they may return at a later date. That is why you should keep them in your TMS directory.
Of course, keeping them engaged with the company will be much easier if you have an efficient corporate alumni program in place. Aluminate for Enterprise is so versatile, that it meets this need too. You decide who accesses your enterprise social network or not.
9. Data and analytics
Your talent management is a strategic process that must adapt to changes in the organization’s structure. As employees come and go, and new positions open up or are created to accommodate expansion, so too must your TMS adapt and evolve.
For your talent management to be a sustained success, you must constantly monitor and assess its efficacy. The data analytics of your preferred software will guide you so you can streamline and improve your TMS.
Streamline the talent management process with Aluminate for Enterprise
Incorporating these key elements of a talent management system will ensure that you not only attract the right talent but also retain the best talent.
By ensuring your employees are engaged right from the onboarding stage, and offering them opportunities for career development, you maximize their potential and boost employee retention. And you can do all of this, with Aluminate for Enterprise.
Create a robust talent management system. Request a demo today.
