Companies employing specialists in many different areas know how important a competency management strategy is. Having a talent management system (TMS) not only helps to attract the best experts. It also creates development opportunities for experts and allows recruiters and sales departments to recommend specialists with competences that address customers’ needs.
How to develop your talent management strategy?
HR practitioners and management companies strongly agree that focusing on talent management helps improve business outcomes. Employers give great regard to talent. Google is working on recruiting better people as part of its 20 per cent job training programme. HR Connect reviews ways for managers to manage their employees and helps organizations improve talent management through a comprehensive talent management strategy.
What is talent management strategy in an organization
A competency management strategy is a crucial factor in terms of achieving business goals, including in building human capital. The strategy includes learning and development specialists’ competences, so-called hard competences, soft skills, and a wide spectrum of possible certification and development opportunities, including providing employees with interesting project challenges. Another challenge for the human resources department is attracting new talent to the company, that preferably meets customers’ requirements – and facilitating the entire recruitment process, for candidates as well as the company. How to address all of these needs? Talent management systems come in handy.
What is talent management process?
As part of business strategy, talent management process helps to develop one of the company’s strategic resources – the human capital. Identifying critical skills gaps, long-term workforce planning and recruiting are the main goals of the process. But these are just a part of talent management process. HR professionals take care of onboarding, performance management, employee engagement, support and succession planning.
Developing talent strategy supports employer branding
HR professionals would surely agree that managing talent has a significant impact on the execution of business strategy. It also helps build a competitive advantage, especially in terms of employer branding. Developing skills and clear advancement programs allow companies to upgrade their brands as trustworthy employers. This way, potential candidates recognize an organization as an attractive place to work wherein they can gain new competences. Such a strategy allows employers to attract and retain new employees.
ORGANIZATION
Read about soft skills in demand, and get to how IT outsourcing can help.
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Talent management practices in a tech company – how do we do it at JCommerce?
At JCommerce, we employ specialists in many different areas: software developers, Business Intelligence specialists, cloud experts, Apple administrators, delivery department employees, managers, and back office (HR, sales department, marketing) employees. Managing so many competences in an organization requires a thoughtful strategy and suitable solutions.
We provide technology solutions to our clients on a daily basis – at this time in 2020 we designed and implemented our original SkillMatrix solution. Between six and nine of our employees were involved in the project at a time (Java developers, UI designers, QA, a business analyst, and a Scrum Master).
At JCommerce, we currently use two development and talent management systems: HCM Deck and the self-designed SkillMatrix.
1) We use HCMDeck to:
- carry out annual assessments,
- view feedback after technical verifications,
- place orders for employee training.
2) The SkillMatrix provides us with actual information on:
- the competences of a given specialist,
- their employment history,
- employee profiles (a database of former employees).
What we have managed to achieve:
- Better documentation flow between HR, Delivery and Sales departments,
- Better insight into the competences of employees,
- Greater knowledge of certification and competence levels.
Application development plans:
SkillMatrix is a product that will continue to develop depending on our needs. This not only applies to the needs of employees but also to the requirements of all departments that need support in gaining quick access to specific information. For example, we have recently added a functionality allowing us to print reports, filtering by people / competences and the level of a given competency. The need for this functionality resulted from participation in tenders, where we present the company’s profile.
SkillMatrix will also include functionalities for managing employee profiles and allowing us to see if a given person wants to change the project. All project descriptions will be made available to developers to help them find the best JCommerce project for themselves. The main goal: we want employees to know all the possibilities for allocations and options to change the project which they are working on, and thereby to associate plans for professional development with JCommerce and willingly stay with the company.
SkillMatrix is a product that can be adapted to our needs. The only requirement is that the information in the system must be kept up-to-date. The Team Managers and the employees themselves take care of it.
Who can use the talent management solution?
Line Manager
Manager with insight into the competences of employees can more easily monitor their progress and see opportunities for development.
HR department, recruiters
Teams responsible for recruitment can focus on acquiring employees with the competences required for a given project with the help of cataloged knowledge.
Sales specialists
a sales department looking for experts for their clients may recommend people whose competences meet specific criteria (e.g. working with the use of a specific system, a certificate confirming language competences, readiness to work at the client’s site, etc.). participation in bids, submission of offers, analysis)
Employees
With a completed employee profile, it is easier to set development goals, plan a career path and obtain new certificates.
Candidates
A talent management system can also be a helpful recruitment tool for candidates. Instead of sending their CV, they can set up a profile for a database of candidates.
Business representatives
Thanks to TMS systems, business representatives save the time needed to find the right candidate profile.
What features should a talent management system have?
- Integration with other systems and solutions used in the organization – HR talent management software will be one of several systems used in a company. Make sure that it is possible to integrate it with applications or external recruitment systems already in use.
- Appropriate, clear structure – the system should facilitate the management of a wide range of competences. Therefore, it should have a structure that will facilitate the cataloging of knowledge about employee competences, work experience and certificates.
- User-friendly interface – TMS is a tool that will also be used by employees; therefore, the user interface should be friendly, and its usage should be intuitive.
Do I need talent management software?
If you are wondering if a talent management system is the solution for you, try to answer the following questions:
- Do I know the competence level of my employees?
- Do I know what certification they have?
- Do HR, sales and other departments have all the necessary information about the competences of employees in terms of submitting offers, bids, etc.?
- Do I have a list of job descriptions with the scope of competences required?
- Does the HR department have sufficient tools for recruitment, onboarding and offboarding?
- Does the flow of recruitment documents between departments in my company need improvement?
- Do clients know what employee competences I can offer them?
- Do I provide candidates with sufficient information?
- Do I have a database of candidates?
Summary
Talent management in a mature and developing organization can be a real challenge. Dedicated solutions such as employee profile management systems can help. If you want to learn more about how we utilize the full potential of such a tool – contact us. We will be happy to share our knowledge and experience.
The article has been prepared in cooperation with Olga Chwiej, Team Manager at JCommerce.