Talent management: from examples to practice in attracting and retaining talent

In this article, we take a close-up look at talent management, which has become much more than just an HR trend, but the focus of attention for all companies.

We'll look at what it is, why this talent management phenomenon is interesting for HR onboarding, and how to put it into practice using HRIS. You can no longer ignore talent management in your HR policy! Find out more.

See all software Talent Management

What is talent management?

Talent management is a branch of Human Resources that aims to attract, develop and retain the high-potential profiles that will enable a company to significantly increase its competitive edge.

Talents" are employees whose know-how (skills, expertise) and interpersonal skills (aptitudes) surpass the average of all employees.

Talent management is based on an initial planning stage, aimed at defining the company's concept of talent and its KPIs.

The challenges of talent management

Attracting, developing and retaining talent is more than just a challenge! It's a matter of survival for companies in today's ever-changing world of work.

Why is effective talent management a strategic issue?

The ability to attract the best professionals and the ability to retain them are essential to ensuring your company's optimum competitiveness, and this in several respects:

• An ultra-competitive job market: in today's context, talent has many opportunities. It's no longer just a question of recruiting efficient potential employees. To attract the best talent to your company, you need to sell them on a project, a vision and even a culture. If you don't offer a working environment that meets their aspirations, you run the risk of seeing the most interesting profiles go to the competition. 🏃

• The cost of turnover: every time an employee leaves, there's a double penalty! The team is impacted by the loss of knowledge, and recruiting, training and integrating the new employee represents a substantial investment in time and money.

• Changing expectations: today's employees are looking for more than just a salary! They want a meaningful job, flexibility, a better quality of working life with a good personal and professional balance, and prospects for career development. To ignore these needs is to lose the war for talent before it's even begun.

The risks of poor career management

Poorly managing the potential of new talent and the skills of existing in-house staff is a major blunder for your company:

• talent drain: an employee who doesn't feel recognized within the company, or who has no development objectives, will want to change. They'll take their precious know-how elsewhere.

• negative impact on the company's image: unhappy employees are employees who talk. A bad reputation, or a reputation as a company in which you're just passing through, can quickly drive candidates away.

• reduced motivation and productivity: if your employees are disengaged, their personal investment takes a hit. The result? More absenteeism, and less innovation for your company.

Why is this HR specialty so coveted?

The success of some of the world's leading technology companies has shown that employees with exceptional skills and abilities can change the destiny of their company. By attracting, developing and retaining their high-potential employees, innovative companies outpace their competitors and create barriers to market entry for newcomers.

Indeed, it's relatively easy to copy a technology even if a patent has been filed, just as it's easy to invest a little more than your competitor. On the other hand, you can't copy an exceptional team that innovates, federates and executes better than anyone else.

Talent management tools

To attract, identify, manage and retain talent, companies can rely on a wide range of tools. AI, platforms, HR software... how do you find your way around?

Which tools for better talent management?

To effectively manage your resources and complexities, it's time to turn to specialized tools! Recruitment, training, engagement, HR data... Here are the must-have solutions for optimizing and anticipating every stage of an employee's career path.

ATS (Applicant Tracking System) for recruitment

These systems centralize applications and automate recruitment follow-up. They filter CVs according to defined skills, so you don't have to sort through 500 profiles by hand. 🥵 Implementing an ATS considerably reduces recruitment times and proves invaluable during your hiring process for new employees.

HRIS (HR Information System) for tracking resources

HRIS are a very practical way of centralizing all your HR data, making it easier to track your employees' objectives and skills. Employment contracts, training, appraisals and career development all come together in a single tool for ultra-fluid process management.

LMS (Learning Management System) for training

Programs dedicated to the management of continuous professional training and team skills development! These systems offer the e-learning paths best suited to each individual and to your company's needs.

Engagement platforms

These allow you to measure employee fulfillment through feedback and well-being surveys. These platforms encourage employee recognition and motivation, while reducing turnover. They also help to improve corporate culture.

AI and automation in talent management

To achieve your objectives more quickly, take advantage of the many benefits of automation and artificial intelligence:

• CV sorting and profile matching: within seconds, hundreds of profiles are reviewed. AI can identify and spot the most relevant talent thanks to its specific algorithms, and help improve the candidate experience thanks to an accelerated recruitment process.

• HR chatbots: you don't always have the time to manage all the requests for information. Chatbots can take over from you, answering questions from candidates and employees 24/7. The onboarding and integration of new employees is simplified as these bots provide all the key information about your company.

• Predictive analysis and human capital management: AI comes to your rescue to identify signals indicating a risk of departure. It also helps you anticipate training and internal mobility needs. With AI, decisions are made on the basis of reliable data rather than an intuitive point of view. Beware, however, that you may miss out on atypical profiles that may well fit your needs, but don't necessarily tick all the boxes expected by the algorithms.

The role of managers in talent management

There's no denying it: managers have an essential role to play in managing the skills of their teams. In fact, in the day-to-day working environment, managers are :

• real talent detectors: it's often under their very eyes that an employee will create, succeed and develop! Managers can more easily help identify potential. They are also the ones who will be able to define training needs and pass them on to management. 📋

• key players in commitment: the manager's job is to motivate his team! By creating a work environment conducive to self-fulfillment, employee professional loyalty begins. 💪

• vectors of the company's values: it's managers who represent the corporate culture on a day-to-day basis, and make or break the desire to stay with a company. 🧲

• responsible for two-way communication: it is indeed the manager who finds himself at the heart of the internal organization. He or she is the link between employees' expectations and the company's strategies. ↔️

To retain talent, management must be benevolent rather than controlling. The manager-coach, who supports and inspires, will have a greater impact on the retention of the best profiles than one who imposes actions without external involvement of the teams.

Impact of talent management on employer brand

An effective talent management approach doesn't just benefit you internally! It also shapes your company's image and attractiveness on the job market.

Human resources management: the secret of an irresistible employer brand

Effective personnel management is synonymous with an attractive company. The best profiles are yours! Fulfilled employees will become natural ambassadors of your brand to their network. On the other hand, high staff turnover gives your company an unstable image, making it less attractive to job-seekers.

👉 To benefit from the interest of potential talent, make sure your employees are satisfied, and avoid negative reviews on company rating platforms. A company with a positive perception generally receives more applications from qualified people in its field.

Concrete actions to boost your employer brand

To ensure a good image and attract the most coveted talent, we recommend implementing the following best practices:

• Highlight corporate culture: through videos, employee testimonials, internal events documented on social networks.

• Highlight internal success stories: showcasing possible career paths not only motivates internal teams, but also reassures future employees that they are on the right track for advancement with you.

• Communicate transparently: avoid empty slogans and clearly set out HR values and practices.

• Focus on quality of working life: flexibility, work-life balance, recognition of efforts, etc.

• Present your CSR commitments: these days, a socially responsible company is much more attractive to talent.

Examples and best practices

It generally takes more than 10 years to build a talent management system that generates significant revenue. There are exceptions, such as Google, Facebook and Apple, which have succeeded in making their Human Capital the main lever of their hyper-growth in less than 10 years.

Meta (Facebook)

This company went from student project to global social network to ultra-profitable mobile platform in record time. How did they do it? By working with only the most talented people.

Facebook is the first company to measure the value of each employee in dollars: an engineer is worth between $500,000 and $1 million. When an employee's value approaches its maximum, the company recruits and increases productivity.

Whereas the integration of new arrivals lasts a day in conventional companies, Facebook's onboarding lasts 6 weeks, during which the newly recruited employee has access to all Facebook's code and works on various projects.

At the end of 6 weeks, they are asked which project they enjoyed the most. This is an excellent idea, as it's impossible to know which project is right for you when you're applying for a job.

Apple

The Californian company founded by Steve Jobs is the world's most valuable company. It has dominated sectors in which it didn't even exist before (music, telephony, media). Apple has built a strong culture so that everyone is ready for the next revolution. For example, if you've excelled at one task, you're immediately assigned to a new one you know nothing about.

To reach higher goals, companies invest more. The opposite is true at Apple, which has adopted the Lean philosophy of doing more with less.

This method stimulates teams to innovate and reduce costly trial-and-error to a minimum. Thanks to this management approach, Apple's revenue per employee stands at a surreal €2 million.

Implementing a talent management strategy

If you're impressed by the results achieved by these successful companies, you should know that it's entirely possible to follow in their footsteps. There are two conditions to this objective: you must consider that the greatest impact will be felt several years down the road, and you must be rigorous in your approach.

Here are the four steps to implementing talent management:

1. The planning stage

The first step is to define what talent is for the company or a particular team. Although the term has become widely used, it does not apply to the same types of individuals.

Human Resources must therefore define skills and assign them weights according to whether they are useful, indispensable or disruptive. The next step is to set up criteria for measuring the skill levels of talent. This in turn enables us to draw up KPIs that can be used as measurement tools at a later date.

Finally, the planning process leads to an audit of the existing situation, which enables us to assess individual skill levels, often by department. This often leads to the detection of Gaps i.e. levels in the hierarchy suffering from a lack of skills and leadership.

💡Whether with the help of an HR consultancy or a powerful tool like Yourcegid HR, you'll need to structure this essential step in your strategy.

2. Acquisition

The second phase consists of recruiting talent. The aim is to transmit the company's culture as widely as possible, to attract and inspire talent to apply for job vacancies or submit unsolicited applications. This works if the values at the heart of the company are strong, attractive and sufficiently imbued in the company's brand image.

👉This enables talented people to grasp the advantages of working for the company, and thus to switch to the recruitment process.

The selection process then involves several stages (test, interview, profile check). For example, Criteo (leader in targeted Internet advertising) selects its talent via 1 online test, 1 telephone interview, 2 interviews with direct collaborators, then 1 interview with the manager. Facebook and Google, on the other hand, have around ten stages.
Talent acquisition culminates in hiring (negotiation of the package) and the integration process, which aims to position the newcomer on the projects that are best suited to him or her, and to pass on the fundamentals.

💡 The right HR software can help you facilitate your entire recruitment process, from acquisition to hiring, integration and employer brand development.

🛠Softy, for example, is a comprehensive, intuitive and easy-to-useATS software that saves you considerable time through comprehensive and customizable talent management features : matching algorithm that analyzes your applications according to your criteria, advanced search form to filter profiles, automatic CV library feed, and much more!

3. Development

No-one comes into a company with their full know-how and self-management skills. This is the purpose of the development process, which begins with individual preparation to ensure that the individual welcomes training, coaching, performance reviews and mentoring.

👉 The second stage is then career development and training to improve performance and skills. Talent management software like Yourcegid RH enables you to tailor training programs to make the difference between classic GPEC and talent management.

💡 On a regular basis, managers and/or HR must propose performance reviews in order to adjust support actions. These reviews are accompanied by coaching and mentoring aimed at developing skills more than expertise.

4. Retention

The longer you retain talent in your company, the better the return on investment. The key is to think "long term" with talent. For example, instead of giving an incentive bonus on December 31st, it's more a question of getting employees interested in results, or making it easier for them to become shareholders in the company. Create personalized career plans, adapting work to the employee (hours, location, methods) rather than the other way round.

Finally, it is more than necessary to work on a positive work environment, which is increasingly sought after by talent:

• pleasant offices,
• modern, respectful management,
• appreciation of the work performed,
• and respect are very important factors in retaining talent.

See all software Talent Management

Conclusion

Talent Management is about acquiring high-potential employees, developing them and retaining them for as long as possible, with a view to creating competitiveness and profitability.

Real-life cases such as Facebook and Apple show that talent management is not only a vector for overall performance, but also a means of adapting rapidly to changing environments.

The major results of effective talent management come after several years, and require rigor. An HR department needs talent management software, or HR software such as Yourcegid HR, to structure its planning and measure its own results.