Talent Management Strategy: 8 Best Practices for Success

At the core of any successful organization are its employees, and a company’s ability to attract, develop, and retain their top talent can make a world of difference when it comes to maintaining both profitability and a competitive edge. Yet many businesses fail to implement the right processes and tools for effective, efficient talent management — which can, in turn, lead to poor decision-making, high employee turnover rates, and lackluster organizational performance. 

Often, businesses are either unfamiliar with talent management strategies or relying on outdated tools and procedures for support. A common challenge is that their numerous HR point solutions don’t properly integrate, which creates friction, wasted time, and lengthy hiring cycles. Another issue that most organizations experience is a lack of accurate, relevant data that makes it difficult — if not impossible — to make strong business decisions around talent recognition, selection, and succession planning. 

Successful talent management requires a robust strategy that fits both your organization and your employees. To implement the right approach, you need a deep understanding of how it works and the most critical factors to consider when creating your strategy. 

Below, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about building a talent management strategy that helps your business hire, develop, and retain best-fit talent, including best practices for getting started and how powerful technology can make it easy. 

In This Article

Why Is a Talent Management Strategy Important? 

If you haven’t yet leveraged a talent management strategy at your organization (or if yours hasn’t garnered significant results), you might wonder if investing in a process and technology is really worth it. When properly built and implemented, a talent management strategy can greatly contribute to the success of an organization in a variety of crucial ways, including: 

Professional Development 

It’s in the best interest of individual employees and the business as a whole to support the professional development of your workforce. Since 76% of employees are looking for ways to expand their careers and 45% say they would remain at their place of employment longer if the company invested in their learning and development, providing ample opportunities for workers to grow is likely an initiative most businesses can’t afford to ignore. 

Effective talent management, which takes into account employee data from multiple sources, helps workers create detailed career plans based on their unique skills, experiences, preferences, and more. The right process (and a great tool) can match those factors with relevant opportunities, so the organization can rest assured that the right people are in the right roles —  and employees have everything they need to unlock their full potential. 

Employee Retention 

In 2022, 70% of all U.S. turnover was due to employees quitting, which places organizations in a compromising position: Either become an employer of choice, or risk the costly impact of continuing to lose top talent. A robust talent management strategy focuses on the business’s people as its greatest asset and nurtures their individual and collective success to build organizational value. By demonstrating an investment in your employees’ progress, performance, development, and satisfaction, your company can foster the kind of commitment and loyalty that encourages talent to stick around. 

Succession Planning 

Proper succession planning offers cultural, operational, and financial benefits to an organization, which is likely why 60% of HR leaders say that leadership development is a top priority in 2024. The two go hand-in-hand and play a significant role in talent management, as they aim to match the right people with the right skills in the right roles; all without costing the organization its productivity or efficiency. Strong talent management bolsters the pipeline that feeds into the company’s most vital positions, which results in a strategic, stable, and standardized process for preparing successful candidates. 

Company Culture 

Best-in-class company culture attracts the upper echelon of talent, which can in turn increase the organization’s revenue by 33%. Prioritizing talent management means cultivating a culture where employees learn and thrive in their current roles and can access opportunities to achieve even more. Prioritizing and investing in talent management shows your workforce that you’re truly dedicated to creating a meaningful employee experience that aligns with the company’s core values and mission statement—which is crucial for getting buy-in and engagement from current and future talent. 

Organizational Performance

It’s no secret that highly skilled professionals want to work for the best of the best employers; and quality talent accounts for 29% of the difference between high- and low-performing organizations by way of revenue, profitability, employee engagement, customer loyalty, and leadership effectiveness. Implementing effective strategies for attracting, developing, and retaining that talent can station your organization as a top-performing competitor among its peers and draw in even more top talent as a result. It’s a cyclical initiative that pays off in dividends. 

Business Adaptability

Meeting long-term organizational needs requires significant adaptability to unforeseen challenges as the business grows and evolves. Businesses need processes and tools that help them pivot, or risk falling behind their competitors. It’s no wonder Gartner predicts that 30% of large enterprises will deploy a talent marketplace to optimize the utilization and agility of their talent, as adapting to an ever-changing economic climate has become increasingly essential. Rapid, confident decisions that enable the business to stay ahead of volatility start with strong talent management strategies, which cultivate an agile, proactive workforce. 

Learn more about the top talent management trends for 2024.

8 Talent Management Strategy Best Practices

 While the benefits of engaging talent management initiatives are undoubtedly worth the necessary investment, getting it right can be challenging. To ensure success, build a strategy using these eight tried-and-true best practices:

1. Identify Key Talent Management Goals

Your organization and its workforce are unique, so your talent management goals should be, too. Using your workforce data, identify areas in which your business can improve the ways it attracts, develops, or retains talent. Perhaps your turnover levels have been steadily increasing or you’re falling short of helping employees build critical skills and competencies. Wherever your gaps may be, put your data to work to gain deeper insights into what’s missing across the company and turn those shortcomings into actionable goals. 

2. Create a Framework That Aligns With Your Priorities 

Before you can really dig your heels in, you’ll need to build a clear framework that describes, in detail, how you’ll reach your talent management goals—and how you’ll measure your progress. 

Be sure to include specifics around the skills and abilities of your existing workforce, what you want the organization to achieve, and a thorough process for identifying and ameliorating any gaps between your employees’ abilities and your intended outcomes. The framework should act as a solid plan for:

• Aligning organizational goals

• Implementing learning and development strategies

• Fostering a better company culture

• Assessing the success (or failure) of your talent management practices 

3. Establish a Talent Management Workflow

The effectiveness and efficiency of your talent management workflow can make or break the productivity and performance of your HR team and the rest of your workforce. Managing employee experiences without the right process or tools is time-consuming, burdensome, and risky in terms of employee satisfaction and retention, so set your teams up for success with workflows that empower them to thrive. 

Generative AI (GenAI), self-service technology, end-to-end hiring solutions, and people analytics tools can all transform your talent management workflow into one that enhances the experience for users and individuals throughout the entire talent lifecycle. 

4. Get Stakeholder Buy-In 

Securing buy-in from every level of stakeholder (from the C-suite to hourly workers) is essential for putting your talent management strategy into motion. Of course, as is the case with any change, there may be some pushback that will need to be addressed before you can get the ball rolling. To prevent these issues from escalating and causing blocks to implementation or adoption, make sure you provide ample information, opportunities for questions and feedback, and a clear vision for how your new processes and tools will impact individual and organizational success. 

Don’t be afraid to demonstrate exactly how improvements to your existing processes can solve problems across each team and make your employees’ lives easier — all without sacrificing operational productivity and output. 

5. Provide Employee Training and Development Opportunities 

For employees, perhaps the most exciting part of being part of an organization that prioritizes talent management is the improved access to training and development opportunities. Your strategy should place significant emphasis on establishing a culture of learning and ensuring the efficacy of available training. Employees should also have clear visibility into how their development actions tie to career outcomes.

Make sure these opportunities are easily accessible across a variety of channels so that each individual can learn in a way that works for them, and that there are options for different types of upskilling to maximize adoption. Don’t forget to follow up by evaluating outcomes, acknowledging achievements, and presenting rewards so your workforce knows you're committed to their growth.