Be careful! Talent!

Do you have any stars on the team? I’m sure, you do. How many of them? What a result do they bring to your company? Let’s talk today how to form your system in such a way for your team to act as the Queen on LIVE AID.

There is a separate direction that handles forming and working with key employees. Its name is Talent Management.

Talent Management includes:

• Managing — that is a set of HR processes that are integrated with each other. In this case, the focus is on the talent management system, rather than on its individual parts. It allows using the full potential of the system;
• Talent management covers all key HR areas, from recruitment to adaptation and from performance management to retention.;
• The main goal of talent management is increasing in productivity. The system is being built only for employees to work effectively and to achieve company goals. 

I think, talent management is not a part of the HR system now, but an upgrade of it. The percentage of “talents” should be 20% of the total amount of employees. This is what the theory taught us before. And moreover, you had to create extra conditions only for the key employees and for the “gold reserve” (employees who are able to replace or able to become one of the top performers). I.e. the whole talent management system worked just on 20% company’s staff. This method takes place on manufactures, big corporations, and global service companies.

Then, companies with top products and niche services should have 2-3 times bigger percentage of key talents. Because there each employee need to have the largest expertise in his/her own and related fields.

Niche business gets profit not from one person, but from a represented product or solution. That is why a strong core team is a basis for such companies. The team can manage missions, big ideas, aims, and main business processes. And the percentage of “stars” in these companies can reach 60-70%. 

At the same time, these companies can scale with outsourcing, that will deal with the specific expertise development or flow tasks.

Some examples.

Let’s examine the Valve company.  There are about 400 employees.

1. Each employee chooses a project to work on.

2. There isn’t a rigid hierarchy but the flat management structure.

3. Developers start working on their projects and compete with each other poaching colleagues.

How do you think Valve builds their company on the principle of 20% top employees and 80% of others? I don’t think so. Otherwise, this system would not have survived. They build everything on a set of processes like hiring, adaptation, involvement, inside rotation, and employee support. It is a good example of a company that implemented Talent Management. As a result, Valve’s profitability per employee is 10 times higher than Google and Microsoft.  You can learn more about Valve’s corporate culture from their Employee book.

Based on the above, today I will talk not about analyzing the current staff and working with the best ones, but about the approach of how to create the company of the bests.

Read also: Recruiting as a reproductive organ in the company system

Let’s build the talent management model.

This talent management model is identical to Dave McClure’s AARRR marketing model. The method determines the success of a project with a conversion funnel. 

From the HR point of view, it helps to perceive employees as internal customers. And so, when we treat each employee as a client, this method transforms into the principles of the first-class service for external clients.

Let’s look through each stage of talent management in detail.

1) Acquisition

The attraction of the potential candidates to your company. At this stage, it is important to focus on the HR brand of your company, and then on the recruiting processes.

• how to become an attractive employer for the experts you need? 
• where do you have to talk about it?
• what do current employees say about your company spending time with their friends in a bar?
• what associations do potential employees have when they hear your company name?

These are fundamental questions to which you need to answer to become a top employer.

2) Activation 

The stage “Activation” concerns staff selection or how you make your choice.

• what metrics will you use to choose the right people from your pool of candidates?
• how to avoid hiring unsuitable employees?
• how do you decline candidates, who aren’t suitable for you in the current position?
• how do you interview, test and support candidates in the selection process?
• how do you keep in touch with the previous candidates’ base?
• what impressions do your candidates have? Did they get a positive experience after being interviewed in your company?
• how do you work with your employees to make them stay in your company and be productive?

You need to answer these questions to hire the most suitable employees, who will help you to lead the company to success.

Also, with the right approach, your candidates will go home with a great desire to accept your proposal in the future 🙂

3) Revenue

This stage is about effectivity, i.e. getting a maximal return from your employees. The revenue includes adaptation, education, training, development and effectivity management.

• how can you reduce the term from the stage of opening a position to hiring a new employee?
• which steps will help you to reduce an employee adaptation term and get the maximal effectivity in less time?
• how will you ensure that your employees are competitive in the labor market?
• how will you build a system for training employees to use their knowledge in their work?
• what KPI will you use for different units?
• how will you ensure that people work at most efficiency through performance management?

4) Referral

Recruitment of new employees and the creation of the company’s reputation at the expense of internal staff and personnel reserve. 

• how do you create a referral program for employees?
• what actions will your employees use to protect and promote your brand?
• what attachments are needed to create a referral program?
• how to make it viral?

5) Retention

Working on the increasing customers’ LTV, you have to work on retaining employees as well. It is a problem if your potential candidates or your key employees believe that your company is an undesirable employer.

The stage includes retention, satisfaction, compensation and development opportunities.

• how to reduce the percentage of voluntary turnover?
• what loyalty and reimbursement programs can you add to make your employees happy?
• how will you support the HR brand?
• how will you educate your leaders?
• how will you support and engage the staff in common goals?
• how can your employees develop vertically and horizontally in the company?
• how transparent is the process of compensation and transition to other position for your employees?

A well-thought-out retention system and the proper usage of talent management metrics will help you to create a winning culture that makes you one step ahead from your competitors.

A small conclusion.

Talent Management is a very big “cake” that you will have to eat piece by piece. There were written a lot about this topic, and you can still write a book of 1000 pages.

And as always we start from the base 🙂

I hope it was a useful model with the help of which you will be able to build up your company.

Good luck! 

l.sidorenko