Talent management is a huge and topical subject in most organisations, and typically covers the following four key areas:

• Talent acquisition (more commonly known as recruitment & selection)
• Identification of talent
• Development of talent
• Retention of talent

The key challenge to effective talent management is to ensure objectivity and evidence of capability, to ensure that there is fairness and consistency around all aspects of talent management.

Being able to identify, engage and retain talent is critical for any organisation. The cost and time required to replace talent can have significant impact, so it’s far better to develop a process and strategy to optimise talent retention. Retaining the knowledge, skills, experience and expertise of your workforce will maximise and optimise your organisational performance. It is well known that an organisation that recognises, rewards and values talent is an employer of choice, resulting in your organisation naturally attracting the very best talent.

There are a number of key benefits, including:

• Retaining your most valuable people i.e. those that make the greatest contribution
• Retaining knowledge and experience and no-time to plan knowledge transfer
• Saving time and cost to source and re-hire replacement talent can prove challenging
• Increasing your capacity and capability to deliver your product/service
• Enhancing reputation as an employer of choice.

Reward and recognition don’t just have to be financial, there are many other options available to recognise someone’s value.

Our team have extensive experience in this important area, in terms of consultancy support linked to the systems and processes designed to optimise the talent management process. Our initial goal is to establish and understand your current approach to talent management (if any), followed by a review and feedback that identifies areas of improvement. Where beneficial, this may also result in the adoption of SkillStation – our online training, skills and competency management solution which will provide the evidence and data to support your talent management strategy (see below).

Our SkillStation talent management software will provide the objective data and evidence to accurately and quickly identify your talent at every level and function of your organisation. This includes the ability to identify:

• Talent by function
• Talent by seniority
• Talent by length of service
• Talent at a specific subject level (e.g. subject matter expert)

Being able to accurately and consistently identify your talent pool will allow you develop a process and framework to manage and retain your key people, skills, knowledge and experience.