What is talent management?

Introduction 

The way we work is fundamentally transforming. The AI-human merger (driven by automation and Gen AI) and changing skills landscape is redefining the meaning of “talent”. What was known as talent ten years ago is very different from today, and many of the roles, skills and job titles of tomorrow are unknown to us today. Complex, changing and competing forces are continuously forcing organizations to rejig their lens of hiring, engaging and retaining top talent for great business outcomes. This demands a fundamental rejig in the Talent Management ideology. It means, organizations need to drill down into each function within the Talent Management spectrum; one of which is Talent Acquisition and specifically, the recruitment or hiring piece. Solvecube helps organizations fundamentally overhaul their recruiting lens, and open up more strategic avenues to hire the “best fit” talent. 

The need for effective Talent Management Strategy

Amidst rampant skill shortage, embracing a skills-first talent approach is becoming a stark necessity for organizations to foster business agility, collaboration and innovation. 

Skills that employees need for a given position have shifted by around 25% since 2015; by 2027, this number is expected to double 

Moreover, 1 in 4 organizations report that full-time regular positions they’ve hired for in the last 12 months have required new skills. 3 in 4 report that it has been somewhat or very difficult to find qualified individuals with the new skills they need. Moreover, employee agency is at an all-time high, people today wish to be associated with organizations for more than just the paycheck – for passion, purpose, and a holistic sense of belonging. 

Organizations must remember that human beings are still at the core of the digital world of work. A skills-based talent management strategy is the way to reimagine the workforce and empower workers to realize their full potential.

Best Practices in Talent Management

Talent management, sometimes referred to as human capital management, is the strategic practice of acquiring, onboarding, developing, retaining, and transitioning employees to help build an organization’s culture, engagement, capability, and capacity.

In today’s parlance, talent management is a touchpoint along the entire employee lifecycle: 

1.  Hiring right: Attract right talent through a strong Employer Value Proposition, and fulfil roles basis a skill-role-culture fit. This includes aspects like strategic workforce planning to identify one’s ideal talent mix, talent acquisition strategy, DEI agendas, and culture assessments. 
2.   Engaging right: Talent management and talent development programs that ensure people realize and sustain their full potential in alignment with the business goals. This includes performance management, learning and development, organizational development, career pathing, total rewards strategy. 
3.   Retaining right: Retaining top talent for sustained impact involves lot of factors such as employee engagement, total rewards, skill development; basically balancing employer expectations with employee expectations. 

There is no one formula for best talent management, it varies as per business needs. In fact, talent management is no longer relegated to HR, it is increasingly becoming a top priority for CXOs. 

In 2024, 22 percent of CEOs in India, compared to 20 per cent in 2023, have emphasized that enhancing the employee value proposition to attract and retain top talent will be their primary operational priority for achieving long-term growth objectives .

CEOs in India believe that by leveraging information like availability of talent, quality of life for employees, and other such metrics, businesses can strategically position themselves, and attract top talent by ensuring their needs are fulfilled]. The power to shape the future of talent, lies in staying informed and adapting proactively.

How SolveCube can enhance your talent management strategy?

Solvecube’s holistic people strategy solutions provide a one-stop-shop for firms looking to develop or enhance their talent management strategy: 

1.   Build organization, through Right Talent: Solvecube’s AI-powered talent platform enables a dynamic aggregation of global talent – your go-to place for ‘hard to find’, seasoned and mature senior talent, from on demand talent to CXOs. Easy and speedy talent search, with access to an on demand talent pool of 20,000+ and an aggregated talent pool of 580+ million, with few clicks!

• Full service hiring with access to expert senior professionals across domains and industries.
• On demand hiring in an agile talent model. Clients can hire Experts on Demand in flexible formats such as fractional CXOs, project consultants, subject matter experts, domain experts, short term talent, interim talent, gig talent, Ninja Teams, and many more. Organizations can even build a blended workforce strategy to align with the changing business needs.
• Right-fit hiring, thanks to AI-powered talent acquisition process with JD generation, Sourcing, Searching, Rank-ordered Shortlisting, and Selection with scientific, unbiased fit-for role, skill and cultural assessment.
•  DEI-forward hiring, upholding the employee needs for fairness and respect.
• Outsourced hiring model (Employer of Record), which helps hire workforce across 100 countries through Solvecube’s partner API, to streamline processes for efficiency and effectiveness.
• Build inhouse recruiting capabilities for your TA team with our Recruiter on Demand Service (RoD). Clients can hire from 2200+ experienced and certified talent acquisition professionals and recruiters to work on their hiring needs. 

The Solvecube SuperApp is designed to empower CHROs and CXOs with access to a wider talent pool, and the tools and technologies to translate that access to suitable talent. This tech-enablement is backed by human expertise – carefully selected and assigned RMs closely partner with clients and handhold them through the talent search and hiring process, ensuring the “human touch” in hiring and onboarding. 

2. Engage and Retain right Talent, through Right HCM: HR processes or people processes are at the core of talent management, because the right HR processes can drive a superior employee experience along the entire employee life cycle as well as the candidate life cycle. This holds true, be it external-facing like recruitment and onboarding, or internal-facing like performance management, learning and development, total rewards, employee relations, or strategic workforce planning. Tech can be a great enabler here – a comprehensive suite of HCM tools ensures organizations are able to effectively as well as efficiently manage, engage and retain their talent. Hence it is important to streamline existing HR processes to align with the desired business outcomes.  Here is where Talent Diagnostics plays a critical role in talent management. 

• Talent Diagnostics: As per Kurt Lewin’s change management model*6, any transformation begins with analyzing the current state and communicating the need for change. To improve people practices this translates to assessing current capability, effectiveness, and maturity of existing people practices. Solvecube’s standardized, cost-effective, and easy-to-use online talent diagnostic tools help organizations quickly assess this.
  • ice.cube carries out a deep assessment of HR processes based on dynamic benchmarking. It’s hassle-free, cloud-based format provides a clear direction for people strategy and HR practice, within 3 hours!
  • p.three quickly assesses the maturity of people practices relative to business requirements, finding out the gaps in the HR framework, all within 12 minutes!
• HR Policy and Process streamlining: A strong HR policy framework forms the foundation of talent management, and Solvecube’s ready to use, country specific HR policies and templates called hr.ready is a great go-to tool to kickstart formulation or revision of org-wide HR policy and HR process. 

3. Enhance People Strategy with Right Human Expertise: Solvecube’s multidomain, experienced founders and leaders bring decades of expertise in building and leading organizations on the talent frontier. Solvecube’s People Strategy Advisory solutions centre around Culture Building, HR transformation, setting up or ramp up global and regional capability centres, and much more. 

The right talent management strategy is one which aligns with the business strategy in an agile and dynamic manner. Organizations often find it difficult to translate this talent strategy from thought leadership to on-the-ground implementation. A strong partnered hand holding with the right blend of tech and touch, can propel businesses towards talent success, and therein, business success.