“Talent management deserves as much focus as financial capital management in corporations.”
~ Jack Welch
One of the best ways to strengthen your company as a whole is to devote attention to developing your employee talent. If your staff isn’t given the proper encouragement or assistance needed to help them move forward within your company, it can be more challenging for the company itself to continue growing in its capabilities. There are several ways that you, as a leader, can help to develop the talent at your company. Talent identification and management begin with The Four P’s.
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- Pinpoint individual strengths
While specific roles at any company often require a specific set of skills, your employees will likely have additional strengths within those skill sets that can be utilized and honed whenever possible. Assess your staff in order to pinpoint each employee’s individual talents and areas of expertise, then find ways to incorporate those abilities into their daily workflow. This will not only make employees stronger contributors to your team, but will also likely provide them with greater job satisfaction, as they’ll be performing tasks using skills that can bring greater value to their team’s output. - Practice engaging leadership
Truly great leaders possess characteristics that encourage and inspire their staff. In order to bring yourself to a higher level of greatness as a leader, explore your existing strengths and see how you might be able to improve upon them and add new motivational elements into your leadership style. Above all, be a leader who provides adequate support for your team. Regularly engage with each of your employees and ensure their needs are being met so they can be better equipped to perform their jobs at an optimized level. - Prioritize talent management
Another way to ensure the continued development of your staff is to incorporate effective talent identification and management tools and practices into your business structure. A human capital management solution, for example, can have modules specifically geared toward optimizing your talent management practices. These kinds of software services can simplify the creation of career development plans for your current talent and improve your ability to monitor their progress throughout them. These tools can also automate components of your recruiting operations, like sending out application notifications, in order to speed up the process of cultivating and developing new talent alongside seasoned employees. By improving your company’s talent management practices, you may find it easier to determine what additional steps you can take to aid your employees in continuing to grow. - Provide opportunities for growth
In order to truly develop into more skilled and knowledgeable employees, your staff must be provided with opportunities to exercise their own leadership and to strengthen skills that might be important in the roles they aspire to. Sit down with individual team members and help them set work performance goals for themselves. Once they’ve established concrete, attainable goals for both the short and long terms, do what you can to aid them in achieving their objectives each step of the way.
- Pinpoint individual strengths
For instance, if one of their goals is to expand their understanding of the daily responsibilities of your company’s executive team, create an opportunity for them to shadow you or another company leader so they can gain insight into whether an executive career path could be a good fit for them. The more your employees are able to broaden their comprehension of your company’s functionality beyond their own duties, the greater the likelihood that they’ll be able to develop into well-informed and well-rounded contributors.
HENRY KOTULA 