Talent Management Is a Cycle Not a Timeline
Successful companies are built by successful teams and people. To successfully manage and lead teams of people, it is important to understand all of the various elements in a talent lifecycle.
The first is to think of the company’s relationship with employees or any team member and your relationship as a manager or leader with your team members as a lifecycle, something that is cyclical and not a linear timeline.
Traditionally, you may think of employment as starting when you hire, the middle is when you are managing and the end at termination– either voluntary or involuntary.
This model is too simple and does not account for the multifaceted realities of the relationships between the company and its talent.
In reality, talent management begins before you hire and continues long after termination, it is ongoing. Organizations impact the community around them. Your potential, future, current, and former employees are in that community. The community interacts with your company as customers, consumers, followers, observers, employees, or stakeholders.
A formal employment relationship happens when the timing is right. The employee is interested in work and the company is looking to hire. But strategically managing talent or building a mutually beneficial relationship with your community of potential and former employees is always happening. When active employment ends, those employees stay in your talent lifecycle as former employees and potential next hires, continuing to interact with your broader talent pool and community.
Shiting from thinking about the talent lifecycle as linear to circular can help managers and leaders think differently about how they and their organization at large interact with both their current and former employees, contractors, and any other stakeholders. Leaders and managers move past the classic power dynamic - you are the employer and you have jobs people want so they can get paid. Instead, consider the framing, your organization is a player in a broader lifecycle and community, competing for the best talent. How you treat stakeholders of the organization in a variety of situations can have a significant impact on how you are perceived as an employer.
The remainder of this article defines the basic functions of talent management. Keep in mind, that these functions exist in a never-ending cycle, not on a linear timeline.
Elements of Talent Management
Community Engagement
This is how you or your company engages with your stakeholders aka your community at large. Your community and the stakeholder groups in it– your customers, suppliers, followers, observers, neighbors, etc. may be the potential talent to eventually work for your organization.
Your overall community is likely to be diverse in background, identity, age, ethnicity, and race.
When you see companies investing in school programs, corporate social responsibility, volunteering, or community events, etc., it is community engagement and an investment in their talent lifecycle.
Talent Acquisition
Talent acquisition is any action taken with the direct or indirect intention of attracting and hiring talent. This includes but is not limited to observing a potential need to hire, meeting potential candidates, posting a job listing, interviewing, networking with candidates, and other formal recruiting and hiring processes.
A traditional talent acquisition timeline often looks like this:
Identifying a need to hire
Establishing a hiring strategy
Posting a job listing for candidates to apply
Reviewing applications
Scheudling phone screens
Conduct interviews and maybe technical assessments
Reviewing with the hiring team
Conducting reference and background checks
Extending an offer
Onboarding
This type of traditional talent acquisition arc is what we most often see as the obvious action to acquire talent. Less obvious actions to acquire talent can look like engaging on Linkedin, networking, creating positions for amazing talent, hiring and promoting from within, hosting an event, hiring through referrals, etc. Talent acquisition is an iterative process happening all throughout the talent lifecycle.
Learning and Development
Learning and development can mean different things to different organizations, but often includes everything from onboarding and ramping up talent into new positions, to upskilling, reskilling, compliance training, and manager and leadership development. This could also include any mentorship, coaching, pairing, or peer-to-peer development opportunities.
Formal learning and development is often facilitated through the organization. Informal learning can occur when a manager assigns a project that helps a team member learn a new skill set when employees are challenged to hit steeper goals when a lunch chat turns into a lunch and learn about someone’s hobby, when an informal employee resource group forms, or any sharing of new information, tools, skills, or insights between team members.
Learning and development can be driven from the ground up, from employee interests or needs, or top-down with leaders requiring new education.
Like all other elements of talent management, learning and development is ever-evolving.
Performance Management
Performance management is traditionally thought of as tracking goals and progress, discussing feedback in formal performance reviews, and creating performance improvement plans for anyone missing expectations.
In reality, performance management is any of the direction, administration, supervision, or organization of team members’ work to impact their output and results.
Elements of performance management are related to compliance, regulation, and tracking– this is where you may see formal reviews or processes. Standardization can also be important for equity and fairness. The process may also be required for scale and alignment as well as to help ensure less HR debt as you grow.
In reality, any time you are observing, discussing, or directing someone’s work to achieve specific results you are managing performance.
Offboarding
Offboarding may look like the formal termination, dismissal, or resignation; the exit interview and any other wrap-up required.
Offboarding like any other element in the talent lifecycle can extend much further. For example, when the relationship ends, there could be space for consistent alumni engagement to create advocates and champions in your broader talent lifecycle community.
Sources
This post is a little different than others and is not based on a specific academic tool or framework but rather on experience as HR professionals and coaches working with a broad range of organizations, managers, and leaders and learning all of the possibilities associated with the talent lifecycle to achieve success.
