A CRITICAL COMPONENT FOR EXCELLENCE IN INDUSTRY

Today for any industry to grow and achieve excellence, one of the most critical elements is talented workforce. The talented workforce has to be acquired first and then it has to be well managed to ensure its availability and continuous optimum utilisation by the industry. The first step is ‘Talent acquisition’ which involves everything needed to recruit, interview, hire and bring talent onboard, then comes ‘Talent management’ which enables organizations to rapidly align, develop, motivate, and maintain a highperformance labour force and includes ‘Talent retention’. Talent management is crucial for growth of industry and service sectors which are two most revenue generating components in our economy. Talent management is the full scope of Human Resource (HR) processes to attract, onboard, develop, motivate, and retain high-performing employees. Digital disruptions and a shifting workforce is changing talent management, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. There has been a shift to remote work, and less focus on where talent is located and more on that is the best fit for a certain job. What the pandemic hasn’t changed is that employees, wherever they work, want to feel connected and engaged. Business and human capital management (HCM) practices have evolved significantly from where they were decades ago and the companies are reimagining performance management to focus on what employees can do to increase their contributions in the future. This means a shift from managing performance to enabling performance. Talent management is about delivering the right experience at the right time for every employee. Challenges and Options. Lack of pool of suitable candidates is perhaps the most common employee recruitment problem. Create an internal labour market that facilitates the mobility of employees from their current roles to other existing or newly created roles within the organization.

Lack of understanding and communication between hiring managers and recruiters seriously compromises the employer’s ability to attract top quality candidates. Proactive communication is the best option. Poorly written job descriptions lead to confusion and companies lose out on top quality talent. Use professional, clear job titles, and avoid fancy adjectives, superlatives or extreme modifiers. While there is a rise in use of technology for recruiting, most recruiters do not fully utilize the power of data to enhance their decision making capabilities. Need for recruiters to be more data-savvy, and start tracking metrics beyond the usual time to fill or quality of hire. A poor candidate experience hampers talent acquisition and results in wastage of resources. Create a user friendly career site that is regularly updated with jobs, clear job descriptions, and create a well-defined application flow and a continuous communication plan to keep all stakeholders well informed. People are the heart of a company, without the right talent, companies risk poor culture and low customer satisfaction. Employers today face a more complex talent management landscape than ever before, and those that manage talent well will have a competitive edge over those who do not. Happy employees lead to happy customers and deliver business results.

SHIFTS PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Traditional performance management focuses on the past and “monitoring” performance. However, companies are starting to shift toward performance enablement, a forward-facing approach designed to empower employees to drive their career progression.

TRAINING AND PERFORMANCE SUPPORT
Training, online learning, and other tools enable workers to reach their full potential, expand their skills and capabilities, Learning including virtual learning and talent mobility is especially critical for companies that close the skills gap in their organizations through reskilling or up skilling.

ABOUT SUCCESSION PLANNING
This ensures that the company has capable managers and leaders moving up and through the ranks. Succession planning lets users identify critical roles for succession, nominate internal and external candidates, assess readiness, target development needs, and create succession pools and plans.

CRITICAL SKILLS AND GAP ANALYSIS
Organizations are going through a transformation, particularly in the area of digital skills that are essential to become more agile. By assessing the skills of the workforce today, and the projected skills and capabilities needed in the future, companies can better plan for and prepare a workforce that fills the gaps and positions needed by the company to take full advantage of all opportunities.

A COMPETITIVE DIFFERENTIATOR
An agile, people-first talent management strategy enables people to be at their best selves, and ensures availability of the talent and skills industry needs to address current environmental challenges. Increasingly, talent management is a big differentiator in a competitive global economy. Today the focus is on: “internal fit”, aligned with “cultural fit” and the two are linked to the business strategy and long-term goals of the organization i.e., “strategic fit”. Getting the right people in pivotal roles at the right time should be nothing new to HR professionals, but done effectively, talent management can create long term organizational success..

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY THE AUTHOR ARE PERSONAL