What is talent management?

Talent management is an organization's commitment to recruit, retain, and develop the most talented and superior employees available in the job market.

We can define talent management as the goal-oriented and integrated process of planning, recruiting, developing, managing, and compensating employees.4When a manager takes atalent management perspective, he or she:

1. Understands that the talent management tasks (such as recruiting, training, and paying employees) are parts of a single interrelated talent management process. For example, having employees with the right skills depends as much on recruiting, training, and compensation as it does on applicant testing.

2. Makes sure talent management decisions such as staffing, training, and pay are goal-directed. Managers should always be asking, What recruiting, testing, orother actions should I take to produce the employee competencies we need toachieve our strategic goals?

3. Consistently uses the same profile of competencies, traits, knowledge, and experience for formulating recruitment plans for a job as for making selection, training, appraisal, and payment decisions for it. For example, ask selectioninterview questions to determine if the candidate has the knowledge and skills todo the job, and then train and appraise the employee based on whether he or sheshows mastery of that knowledge and skills.

4. Actively segments and proactively manages employees. Taking a talent management approach requires that employers proactively manage their employees recruitment, selection, development, and rewards.As one example, IBM segmented its employees into three main groups (executive and technical employees,managers, and rank and file).This enables IBM to fine-tune its training,pay, and other practicesfor employees in each segment. As another example, many employers pinpoint their mission-critical employees, and manage their development and rewards separately from the firms other employees.

5. Integrates/coordinates all the talent management functions. Finally, an effective talent management process integrates the underlying talent management activities such as recruiting, developing, and compensating employees. For example, performance appraisals should trigger the required employee training. One simple way to achieve such integration is for HR managers to meet as a team to visualize and discuss how to coordinate activities like testing, appraising, and training. (For instance, they make sure the firm is using the same skills profile to recruit, as to select, train, and appraise for a particular job.) Another way to coordinate these activities is by using information technology.