5 Reasons to Specialise in Talent Management

Talent management is a branch of HR that aims to identify, develop, and retain talented employees within organisations. It’s also an area of HR that needs the right people on hand who can effectively maximise the potential of those employees with the greatest value.

If you’re an aspiring or experienced people professional looking for an area of Human Resources to specialise in, as a talent manager, you’ll have the chance to contribute to a workforce plan and business strategy that will enable employees to develop and thrive in their roles.

If that’s not enough to motivate you, below we elaborate and review 5 reasons to specialise in talent management that might just change your mind.

1. Attract the Best Employees

The key to organisations attracting top talent is, first and foremost, getting the word out there about how incredible their company is. Often those companies who already have well-known products and working practices have no trouble with this, attracting the best candidates by marketing and reputation alone.

For a people professional focused on the talent management process, however, attracting the best employees means investing your time and effort in creating a stand-out recruitment process that reflects your company’s reputation.

As a talent manager, this means having your hand in everything from well-crafted and detailed job descriptions to the process in which each successful candidate is offered their position and brought on board - all of which will ideally reflect your company in a positive light.

To add, with the right talent management strategy, you’ll not only attract the best employees, but you’ll keep them engaged as well, ultimately improving retention rates and showcasing your own value to the company.

2. Increase Workplace Productivity

With the right approach to talent management, it’s been proven that HR professionals can positively impact and increase workplace productivity.

While there are many areas you can hone in on, we recommend focusing most of your energy on the following three:

Employee Engagement

Creating the right workplace conditions for engaged employees to put their best foot forward each day (while remaining committed to the organisations goals and values) not only contributes to organisational success but to the wellbeing of every member of staff.

When you take the time to check in on who appears the most driven and engaged and why, it will help you understand where additional attention, training, and meaningful work is needed among teams. 

Supporting Practices

Working in HR means you typically have the benefit of working with a wide variety of groups within your businesses, meaning you have the opportunity to identify what factors set them apart and make them more or less successful than one another.

For example, you may find that one team is using specific practices to support productivity that should be implemented across the organisation, including:

• Scheduled, uninterrupted work time
• Daily or weekly stand up meetings
• Effective motivation, recognition, and rewards systems

Positive Working Environment

Working in talent acquisition and management means identifying workplace stressors (i.e. low salaries, long hours, and unrealisitc job expectations) and providing positive solutions to these challenges that support productivity, such as:

• Flexible and remote working options
• Career development and coaching opportunities
• Wellness initiatives, and
• Recognition programs

By using your knowledge and skills to assess how your organisation is currently supporting these factors, you’ll help bring focus to any glaring skills gaps, outdated company strategies and support overall business performance. 

3. Contribute to Diversity & Inclusion

These days there’s been a shift within the talent management sector of HR, where many people professionals are trying out a more holistic approach to retain top talent in the face of skills shortages and job role mismatches. This means incorporating inclusion at each stage of the employee lifecycle, including:

• Recruitment & Selection
• Onboarding
• Employee Development
• Performance Management
• Succession Planning, and
• Offboarding

To be fully effective, however, talent managers need to develop and align strategic talent acquisition plans with their business needs at each stage - and now more than ever, diversity and inclusion are taking the limelight as a focal element of these strategies.

So, if you’re aspiring to make a difference and improve company culture, specialising in talent management is a great place to start as you’ll have a hand in ensuring your organisation’s employees (regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity, and so on) feel that they’re recognised equally among their peers right from recruitment to in-house progression, up to their eventual exit interviews. 

4. Champion CPD

While many organisations have put Learning and Development and other forms of training on the back burner throughout the pandemic, what businesses need now are forward-thinking people professionals who will help close the glaring skills gap that it helped create - that’s where CPD comes in.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is used to describe the learning activities that employees engage in to develop and enhance their existing skills and knowledge.

As a talent management professional, you can help implement workplace practices that encourage employee’s to work on their own CPD both in and out of work (with an online professional qualification, for example!), helping bring many benefits to individuals and organisations, such as:

• Improved workforce planning and adaption to changing industry demands
• Increased motivation and employee retention within the workplace
• The potential for cost savings due to reduced staff turnover and increased efficiency
• Developing the knowledge, skills, and behaviours that enhance the quality of work, promoting the growth and development of employees and the business

This brings us to yet another reason you should specialist in talent management…

5. Create Growth Opportunities

Perhaps one of the most fulfilling things about specialising in talent management is that you’ll have the opportunity to create genuine growth opportunities for your organisation and its employees.

Along with the tactics mentioned above, when you incorporate the following practices, you can create additional opportunities for growth that can help employees advance and excel in their careers. These include:

• Regular coaching and mentoring
• Work shadowing
• On the job training, and
• Online and virtual learning

When a company takes the time to properly attract and retain the right employees and keep them engaged, employees feel that they aren’t just another cog in the machine and that their organisation truly cares about their place and progression in the company. This contributes to their own sense of accomplishment and wellbeing (and yours as well) - keeping everyone happy, loyal, and driven members of staff.

Without a doubt, talent management is one of the most rewarding specialisms and career routes for HR professionals, so if you’re looking to make a true impact in the world of work, then it might just be a good fit for you!

Free your potential and advance your HR career today with one of our 100% online professional CIPD qualifications.