Talent Planning 101: The Ultimate Starter Guide (For 2024)

Written by Scott Houghton
7 minutes read

 Did you know that 62% of HR professionals claim their organization doesn’t have a strong talent pipeline? That means many businesses may not have enough talent to fill their roles when hiring new employees or filling existing positions. 

Luckily, talent planning can help strategically identify the skills, capabilities, and competencies businesses need to thrive and survive.

Contents
What is talent planning?
Key elements of a talent planning strategy 
Implementing a talent planning process
Best practices in talent planning


What is talent planning?

Talent planning is all about ensuring your employees have the right skills to help your business succeed, both now and in the future. Whether that’s upskilling existing employees or hiring new ones, talent planning future-proofs your talent pool. 

With talent planning, HR uses forecasting to plan the need for talent in the future by analyzing workplace data to help identify any knowledge gaps, assess the pool of existing talent, and check how the business will likely expand in the long term. 

By doing this, HR can implement strategies to fill the organization’s talent gaps. For example, this could involve identifying a future skill the business needs and organizing training to nurture that skill within the workforce or recruiting more staff.

The importance of talent planning

Talent planning ensures you have the right workforce for your organization’s future needs. The world of staffing and HR can quickly change. A member of staff might decide to leave the business, for example. When that happens, it can be tricky for a team, manager, or even a whole business to adapt.

The employee who leaves might have a particular skill few others can do, or it could create a lot of extra work for the team. 

Talent planning is important because it can help you avoid being blindsided by a sudden demand for talent such as this. It ensures that competent, well-trained employees can fill new or existing jobs quickly and conveniently. Helping reduce disruption and confusion while minimizing the likelihood of any skills shortages.  

Talent Planning Key Strategies

Key elements of a talent planning strategy 

Developing a talent planning strategy that gets results requires following some key steps. These involve using data, being organized, and nurturing talent and relationships. 

1. Workforce analysis

One of the most crucial aspects of talent planning is workforce analysis. Using analytics helps leverage data to evaluate the existing workforce’s performance and identify any skills gaps, determining which skills and employees need further development. 

Workforce analytics can assess the current workforce’s skills, experience, and knowledge. It can help identify any gaps between the skills employees possess and those needed to achieve an organization’s strategic business goals. 

Then, by understanding a workforce’s strengths and weaknesses, HR uses this data to implement strategies to address gaps in talent or skills, such as training, leadership development programs, or through recruitment. 

Workforce analytics is the bedrock for developing more sophisticated and targeted forms of talent planning. 

2. Forecasting future talent needs

Workforce analysis helps businesses anticipate their future needs when it comes to attracting and retaining new talent. For example, if the data shows that, based on current trends, a company’s sales division is expected to grow by 40% then HR can determine that more sales managers will be needed to keep up with growth within the business.

Forecasting is also used to determine shifts in the labor market, turnover rates, and retirement projections to help businesses identify what skills they will need in the long term. 

Analyzing business trends can help companies prime their HR teams to provide more training to upskill their existing employees, hire new staff, and identify exactly how many roles they’ll need based on a range of forecasted data. 

3. Succession planning

Succession planning is a strategy businesses use to pass down leadership roles to more junior staff members. For instance, if the head of marketing plans to retire next year, a new candidate must be identified and trained for the role. 

They may already possess all the technical know-how to succeed, but they could enhance their leadership skills. Succession planning helps HR identify which employees could step into senior roles, should a senior employee leave, and what training will be needed to help them move into their next role. 

4. Recruitment and hiring strategies.

Of course, filling all your vacancies from within your organization is impossible. At some point, you’ll need to recruit new employees from outside the business. 

Proper recruitment and hiring strategies ensure that a business has a steady stream of talent ready to be deployed in the event of rapid business growth or current employees leaving their jobs. 

Investing in a well-functioning, well-trained HR department that deploys innovative and data-driven hiring strategies is crucial to talent planning. It allows organizations to recruit new talent quickly and identify the best, most in-demand candidates from outside their organizations. 

5.  Employee development and retention

Employment isn’t a one-way street. Employees expect more than just a salary from their employers. Otherwise, they’ll walk. As we saw in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic with the ‘Great Resignation’, employees want more from their jobs. They want to feel valued and respected at work. 

Investing in employee growth through better training is a great way to foster a good relationship between your employees and employer. It demonstrates that they’re valued members of the organization and enables them to grow in their careers. 

Investing in employees through better training also helps talent planning because it equips them with new skills, plugging any gaps there might be within the workforce while increasing employee loyalty at the same time. 

High turnover rate is not a hallmark of a successful enterprise or one which can confidently plan for the future of its workforce. It also leaves businesses vulnerable to skills gaps and staffing problems.  


Implementing a talent planning process

Now that you know the critical elements of a successful talent planning strategy, it’s time to implement one. 

1. Establishing clear goals and objectives

Establishing clear goals and objectives helps you keep your project on track. 

These goals must be realistic so that they are achievable. They also need to be clear so other team members can understand what you’re doing and how they align with the business’s goals. 

Using workforce analytics can help you understand what you need to do. For example, getting a realistic understanding of your company’s expansion plans can help you understand what kind of talent they will need. 

If goals are clear, actionable, and realistic, you have a higher chance of succeeding. 

2. Developing a talent pipeline

Developing a talent pipeline helps you to identify which candidates are best suited to particular roles in the future. When it comes to hiring, recruiters or hiring managers can use this pool of qualified candidates to interview for the role when they’re next recruiting. 

For example, you might have a list of twenty mobile app developers with their details kept on file for the next time you’re hiring. Even if they didn’t get the job this time, keeping their details on file ensures that talent is never far away if you need them.  

3. Performance management and talent assessment

Using workforce analytics data can help evaluate employee performance. This is especially helpful from an HR perspective if you’ve been tasked with identifying employees for a more senior role where they will be promoted. 

Analyzing performance data can easily help identify the best-performing employee and, therefore, the employee more suited to a senior role. This is especially helpful in the succession planning process. 

Plus, evaluating employee performance helps identify if a particular employee or team needs more training in a specific area. Ultimately, this helps talent planning by ensuring all employees are fully trained to do their jobs. 

4. Building relationships with external partners

It’s unrealistic to think that all your talent needs can be satisfied through your organization. Instead, it’s best to cultivate connections with industry networks, your local chambers of commerce, and educational institutions, to name a few. Networking can also help you scout new talent and provide you with referrals.

5. Monitoring and adjusting the talent planning strategy

Priorities, objectives, and people all change. That’s why monitoring and adjusting your talent planning strategy is essential. 

Regularly reviewing and adapting your talent planning strategy is needed because data and business objectives might change. For instance, a business might need more sales specialists instead of more programmers, requiring HR to pivot to meet these needs and requirements. 

You can flexibly adapt your approach to fit your employers’ needs by keeping up with any changes. 


Best practices in talent planning

Here are some of the best practices you can follow to ensure that your talent planning gets off to a flying start. 

  • Continuous learning and development: Promote a culture of upskilling and career growth.
  • Data-driven decision making: Using data and analytics to inform talent planning decisions.
  • Agile and flexible strategies: Adapting talent planning approaches to changing business landscapes.
  • Employer branding: Use employer branding strategies to highlight that your workplace invests in its employees. 
  • Succession planning: Incorporate succession planning to identify and develop high-potential individuals for key roles.
  • Monitor: Continuously monitor and measure the effectiveness of talent planning strategies through metrics and feedback mechanisms.

To sum up

Talent planning is about ensuring your organization has the right staff in place to meet its needs. This could involve training existing employees by identifying skills gaps or implementing recruitment and hiring strategies to procure the right talent. 

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Scott Houghton

Scott Houghton is a copywriter from the UK. He covers topics on HR, technology, business, and SaaS. When not writing, Scott likes to travel and is currently learning to speak Chinese.

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