I have sometimes faced the question if Talent Management processes are only for large corporates or could all companies benefit from Talent Management processes. I believe the question is highly relevant and needs to be put into the context of your business needs and how Talent Management can add value for your company.
Implemention of business strategy and business plan
In short, the purpose of Strategic Talent Management is to secure the implementation of business strategy and business plan. Strategic Talent Management is about assessing current competences, both leadership – and functional wise, and defining the future needs. The business value is generated through agreeing on actions to secure that the competency gaps will be closed.
Large corporates have established routines and are often used to work with Strategic Talent Management to identify leadership related risks, creating plans for key executive succession. They have also established work routines on how to follow up performance and future talent development in the company. It is a common practice within large and usually publicly listed companies to have annual strategic discussions at the Board level where talent strategy becomes a part of the business strategy.
However, I believe that all companies can benefit from having a more structured approach on how to manage and develop their critical talents. For the company, the established Talent Management process gives the framework and future roadmap how to develop its workforce and ensure the execution and performance. Successful Strategic Talent Management helps companies to outperform their competitors and, therefore, creates shareholder value by delivering higher Total Return to Shareholders (TRS) than the competitors.
The benefits of Strategic Talent Management for the employees are obvious. It helps companies to attract the best talents, increases employee engagement and strengthens talent retention. During times of uncertainty, as in current situation with Covid-19, it also increases company´s proactiveness and readiness to meet the unexpected.
Strategic Talent Management is usually driven by CEO and the Board and supported by Human Resources function. We have seen that these solutions vary a lot between the companies and successful outcome can be reached in different ways depending on the company size, ownership, IT environment, management readiness and HR function capabilities. For example, in a start-up company where the CEO is a major owner together with some other key people the process can be designed to meet their specific challenges.Today many of these companies struggle because talent related issues are handled as short-term challenges and leading to reactive firefighting and finally risking the execution of company targets.
I have been working many years both strategically and operationally within Talent Management and have implemented different solutions to develop talent and to increase the performance. The feedback I have received during the years relate to complexity, process orientation and lack of execution and follow-up. My experience is that the requested improvements can usually be implemented without losing the quality of Talent Management solution.
We at AIMS International Sweden are specialized to support companies broadly when working with Talent Management issues including building new way-of-working and providing Coaching, Leadership Assessments and Executive Search. Please contact us in AIMS International Sweden in case you want to hear more from the solutions we can provide.
Mikko
works as Executive Search and Talent Management Consultant in AIMS International Sweden. Before starting in AIMS International Sweden he worked close to 20 years in large corporates as a HR leader with a focus on Talent Management practices.
Mikko has more than 20 years of experience in international roles within large global organisations. He has hold Senior HR leadership roles and specialist positions within both telecom and automotive electronics and worked in Sweden, Finland and Germany. Mikko has a Master of Law degree and he has practised in the City Court of Helsinki. Before transitioning to HR Mikko worked several years within legal consultancy.
