Talent Development 101: Strategy & Examples for Your Business
How can your organization thrive in the digital economy of today and tomorrow? Focusing on your most valuable asset – your people – can make a huge difference, hence why talent development is becoming a priority. Let’s explore what talent development is and how a targeted talent development strategy can help improve organizational performance and contribute to business sustainability.
Contents
What is talent development?
Talent management vs talent development
Talent development examples
Why is talent development important for businesses?
How to create a talent development strategy
FAQ
What is talent development?
Talent development refers to strategically developing employees’ skills based on organizational objectives. It is an organizational process that builds upon employees’ existing skills and knowledge while identifying and filling skills gaps to drive business performance.
In other words, talent development helps employees advance in their careers while also achieving organizational goals. This includes focusing on learning and development (for example, through a mentorship program, leadership training, and on-the-job training), creating a tailored development plan for each employee, and more. The aim is to uncover hidden talent and grow and retain your high performers inside the business.
For employees’ training and development to be successful, the talent development strategy must align with business objectives and business needs. Employees who are on board with company goals already have long-term career success in mind. They can see where they want to be in the organization in the near future and are willing to stick around if an employer is willing to invest in their career. They also must see a clear connection between their personal goals and the long-term goals of the organization.
An organization that wants to secure its place in the future understands that employees need structure, support, and encouragement to maintain a high set of skills and knowledge. That’s where a talent development program with a strong basis in company objectives has a better outcome than one that is limited or non-strategic.
Talent management vs talent development
The terms talent development and talent management are often used interchangeably; however, there is a difference between the two, and both are important when it comes to the growth of your employees and business.
Talent development focuses primarily on developing, motivating, engaging, and retaining existing employees in line with their professional goals and the wider goals of the company. The objective of talent development is to help employees enhance their skills and knowledge, which in turn contributes to the organization’s growth and success.
On the other hand, talent management is a broader term that refers to a strategic approach to managing human capital in an organization. It encompasses a wide range of HR activities aimed at attracting, recruiting, developing, and retaining employees. These activities include performance management, succession planning, and employee engagement.
In summary, while talent management is a comprehensive approach that covers various aspects of managing and optimizing the workforce, talent development is a subset of talent management, specifically focused on improving the abilities and potential of the organization’s current employees.
Talent development examples
Here are some real-life examples of talent development strategies that have led to greater motivation, engagement, and performance among employees.
Adobe
Adobe offers on-demand courses to its employees so they can build a variety of skills, and they offer financial support for external academic pursuits ($10,000 per year for long-term courses and $1,000 per year for short-term ones). They also offer “Accelerate Adobe Life,” which is an extensive feedback program that allows new and current employees to choose specific areas where they would like development support.
The company has a 33% internal hiring rate and a 20% annual promotion rate. They also have an overall satisfaction score on Indeed of 4.3 out of 5.
Costco Wholesale
Costco created a “Journeys for All” program, which offers employees the chance to upskill, be mentored, and network. There’s also a “Supervisor in Training” initiative where qualified warehouse employees can explore and familiarize themselves with managerial duties and a merchandising training course to give employees a solid background in Costco’s core business.
These talent development strategies have led to Costco consistently placing in top positions on the World’s Best Employers list by Forbes. In addition, 60% of employees have been in the company for more than five years, and most warehouse managers were promoted within the company from an hourly role.
Why is talent development important for businesses?
If you are concerned with the growing number of skills gaps in your organization or struggle to retain your top performers, talent development can be the difference between success and failure.
Here are some reasons why your organization should prioritize an integrated talent development program.
Reducing skills gaps and future-proofing the organization
With 87% of companies worldwide acknowledging that they have a skills gap, the continual development of employees is more important than ever to help them and your organization thrive. Talent development strategies can help to bridge skills gaps, empower your employees, and prepare you as a business for the future.
While new technology is expected to make many jobs obsolete, it is also creating new types of jobs and demanding new skills at an accelerated rate. According to Boston Consulting Group, tens of thousands of new jobs will be created by 2030, and as much as 60% of the workforce will require training by 2027.
As a result, the need for skilled labor in computer-focused, STEM, healthcare, social services, and education is expected to increase but will suffer the most shortages. Factors outside of technology that continue to create talent shortages include the retiring of an aging workforce, more adults getting retrained or switching careers, and economic factors driving candidates toward higher-paying careers.
A talent development program can prepare your workforce to face an uncertain future and empower employees to develop their skills and competencies. In turn, making sure that your workers have the skills and capabilities to help you reach your business goals will give the organization a competitive advantage. A McKinsey survey showed that 99% of respondents who said their company’s talent management was very effective also said they outperformed competitors compared to 56% of all other respondents.
Improved employee engagement and performance
When employees understand their role and how it contributes to organizational goals and have the skills and knowledge they need to perform, they are more engaged and productive at work, will exceed their KPIs, and will perform better.
Employers can boost engagement by designing a tailored career path for each employee, which takes into account their skills and interests, and then develop a learning program for them to succeed.
Generating new ideas and business opportunities
If you want to increase innovation, take on bigger and better clients, and become more profitable as a business — a talent development program can support these factors.
Employees who are encouraged to learn new things have more confidence and willingness to bring their ideas and knowledge to the table. This can increase collaboration and help to identify new sources of income generated from previously undiscovered opportunities and clients.
Developing more effective managers
Talent development isn’t just for new hires; it’s for managers to build solid careers too. According to Jocelyn Stange of Quantum Workplace, “Managers play an important part in defining and driving the employee experience. But they might not be equipped to make an impact without support from leadership and ongoing training.”
Increased employee retention rates
Employees who feel valued and can see that their employer is investing in them and their growth are more inclined to stay in their jobs and be loyal to the company in the future. Plus, research shows that one of the top reasons why employees look for a new job is due to a lack of growth opportunities. Offering ample learning and development opportunities will help you keep top talent on board longer.
How to create a talent development strategy
Creating an improved talent development program for your organization requires planning and cooperation between your HR and learning teams. No matter what stage your talent development plan is at, here are some best practices to improve your efforts over time.
1. Understand your company objectives
Your talent development plan needs to align with your organizational goals and your business strategy for the near future. This will help you make sure that you’re investing in the right initiatives.
A key question to ask yourself is what your organization strives to achieve through a talent development program. It could be engaging and motivating employees, retaining your top performers, filling a skills gap, or something else.
Let’s say your company is planning to work more heavily with machine learning over the next five years. That would mean that developing your employees’ skills in that area will be crucial for the future success of your organization.
2. Identify upskilling and reskilling opportunities
Assess each of your current roles and the skills and capabilities required for them. Next, take an inventory of current employee skills using a combination of tests, surveys, and interviews. With this information, you’ll have a clear idea of the skills you need versus the skills you currently have and where you’re lacking.
Having a solid grasp of underutilized expertise and knowledge is also helpful when considering the skills that new jobs will require in the future and adapting or developing these accordingly.
Which employees already have the basic skills that you can focus on developing? These are great candidates for participating in upskilling initiatives. Also, if there are jobs that are at risk of becoming obsolete while other roles are emerging, consider how you can reskill your existing employees to take on the new positions.
3. Provide many learning options and methods
There are many options when it comes to providing learning and training opportunities to your workforce. Talent development isn’t just about formal training and can also include on-the-job learning, mentorship programs, coaching, e-learning, micro-learning modules, self-learning, and more.
Different methods are effective for different types of training. What’s more, each person has a unique learning style, so offering a variety of learning options will help engage employees and facilitate effective learning and growth.
For example, developing presentation skills in an employee would typically require some kind of face-to-face interaction in person to mimic a real-life presentation setting. In contrast, if you need to develop health and safety skills or certification amongst certain employees, an online course could be more suitable and make it possible for employees to organize their learning around their existing schedules.
Involve managers in the process and create directories of learning resources. These should be readily available to your employees.
4. Align talent development with your employee life cycle
Your talent development plan should consider every stage of the employee life cycle and provide your employees with opportunities for learning and development from the moment they’re hired until the day they leave.
For instance, new hires could be paired with a work buddy so they can learn essential on-the-job skills and enroll in any relevant workshops or training sessions that are crucial for their daily responsibilities. Employees who have been with you for a while could be offered the chance to reskill and develop to be promoted to a more senior role or to make a lateral move into a different department or role.
Promoting your talent development efforts in your recruitment process is a great way to demonstrate how much you value your workforce and show candidates why they should choose to work with you rather than a competitor.
5. Implement employee development plans
Every employee should have a unique development plan that is tailored to their personal career goals. Such a plan helps them understand the role they play in meeting organizational goals as well as what they need to do to exceed expectations and advance in the company.
An effective employee development plan considers both the needs of the employee and the business and holds the employee, HR, and management accountable. It makes for an effective way to address skills gaps, boost employee engagement and productivity, and reduce turnover.
A common problem with employee development plans is that both managers and employees are often too busy, which leads to regular check-ins and learning being deprioritized. This is why it’s important for HR and managers to sit down and carve out a space and time for learning and plot in regular check-ins to ensure employees are on track and know where they stand.
An employee development plan template can help with this and provide the structure needed to properly monitor progress.
6. Create a culture of continuous learning
Encourage active learning and focus on developing adaptability by giving employees time to learn something new or acquire a new skill every day, week, or month. Make continuous learning a cultural core value of your organization and find ways to instill this mindset into your workforce.
A great example of this is Visa, which has created a strong culture of learning by establishing a learning team, a corporate university, and an ongoing effort to provide an industry-leading customized curriculum for its employees.
6. Promote performance coaching
As a form of on-the-job learning, performance coaching stimulates employees to improve their skills through everyday interactions. It plays a crucial role in talent development.
For example, managers can use a skill will matrix to determine the right coaching strategies for individual employees. Learning should always be linked to performance, which, in turn, should be defined in measurable parameters.
7. Train managers to support talent development
As discussed, managers play a critical role in talent development when it comes to encouraging and developing the employees who work under them. Therefore, training managers to support your talent development efforts is essential in ensuring that everyone is on the same page and able to nurture and support your workforce.
There are many ways to do this, including the above-mentioned performance coaching, as well as encouraging employees to share the knowledge and skills they acquire with the rest of their team to inspire them, and recognizing and rewarding people who are actively participating in talent development initiatives in the company. This contributes to creating a culture that celebrates learning.
8. Include leadership development
Who are the future leaders of your company? Start identifying these people now by assessing their skills, competencies, and aspirations, and prepare a leadership development plan for them. This will help your organization build a solid leadership talent pipeline for the future. In addition, focus on helping managers develop better behaviors to improve their relationships with their team members.
9. Get the support of key stakeholders
Foster communication between all the people who can build your employee development and training program. This includes Human Resources, talent managers, team managers, and the employees themselves.
Having the support of the right people is essential for acquiring the resources needed to get your program off the ground and running. You can, for example, create a committee to regularly discuss gaps, monitor progress, and cheerlead the talent development strategy.
10. Monitor, evaluate & improve
For your talent development program to succeed, you must collect and analyze data and measure it against your performance goals. Having a KPI for each goal will help you monitor progress. For example, you may want to measure turnover, L&D spending, retention rates, high-potential talent rates, employee engagement, and more.
Many learning management systems offer reporting that can help achieve this. However, don’t forget to regularly check in with your employees and gain their feedback on how valuable they think your program is, along with suggestions on what would help them develop further.
This data will help you gain valuable insights into the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps of your talent development strategy so you can make changes accordingly.
To sum up
By building an effective talent development strategy, your organization will experience many benefits:
- Increased competitiveness due to highly skilled and knowledgeable employees
- Improved engagement levels, leading to greater profitability
- Better retention rates, which reduces the burden of recruitment.
The investment in your employees will help you meet business goals and future-proof your workforce.
However, it’s important to note talent development is a long-term process that requires careful planning, design, and implementation. But when your organization is committed to developing employees, they will feel valued, nurtured, and committed to helping you achieve organizational growth and sustainability.
FAQ
Talent development is a process that focuses on building the skills, knowledge, and experience of employees so they can help achieve business goals and grow in their careers.
An example of talent development is creating a mentoring program for all employees where they meet regularly with someone more senior in the business to discuss their goals, ask for advice, and learn new skills and knowledge that can then be applied in their role.
There are many methods of talent development, including mentoring and coaching programs, buddy systems, leadership training, manager training, on-the-job training, workshops, seminars, online learning, and employee development plans.
Talent management is a strategic approach that addresses multiple facets of workforce management and optimization to create a sustainable and effective workforce that can meet the current and future needs of the organization. Talent development is a specific component of talent management that concentrates on improving the capabilities of the organization’s existing workforce in line with organizational goals.
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