Business leaders often devote countless hours to developing strategies and acquiring resources to achieve desired business outcomes. While the steps involved in creating business processes and selecting effective technology are vital to achieve company goals, people ultimately deploy the resources and execute the plans. Since people drive the organization’s processes and technology, leaders must consider the human element when striving to attain optimal business performance.
Talent optimization is a framework for aligning business strategy with human capital to derive maximum value from the organization. Concentrated on understanding the behaviors and needs of employees, talent optimization offers a scientific approach to remove obstacles that prevent success. When a company systematically deploys an effective talent optimization strategy, common barriers to success, such as sub-optimal productivity, high turnover, and unsustainable culture, can be eliminated
Key considerations in talent optimization
To develop an effective talent optimization strategy, consider four key principles:
1. Framed by business context
The plan for maximizing effectiveness of team members must be tailored to specific objectives and circumstances surrounding an entity, which includes the approach to organizational structure and methods for assessing employee effectiveness. Talent optimization is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather involves understanding and addressing the particular needs of a company.
2. Driven by people data
Central to the success of talent optimization is effective collection, analysis, and application of people data. Insightful use of people data not only enhances informed decisions but also diminishes biased speculation.
3. Systemically adopted
For talent optimization to be effective, the people strategy should be communicated effectively and embraced across every level of an organization. Awareness and implementation of the components supporting talent optimization must extend beyond just management or human resources to each individual employee.
4. Positioned against disengagement
Employee disengagement is the biggest obstacle to productivity and often results from job misalignment, which refers to when an employee skill set is not conducive to the nature of the work assigned. Another cause of employee disengagement occurs when individual values and motivations do not align with the culture of the company.
Managers that lack the necessary coaching and leadership capability to inspire elevated performance from employees have an impact on employee engagement. Moreover, individuals may not function collaboratively or productively due to personal characteristic traits and team work styles.
An effective talent optimization strategy can be designed to prevent or mitigate factors creating employee disengagement that result from the organization, job, co-workers, or management.
Aptitudes of talent optimization
For successful implementation of talent optimization, a cross-functional team of business leaders is essential to develop the system that will enable success. Four areas of focus are indicated as follows:
1. Diagnose
Diagnose refers to the identification and prioritization of the most crucial root causes behind talent gaps because this activity requires awareness of the factors behind disengagement and effective use of people data to measure and monitor specified metrics. Proper diagnosis of employee engagement will enable effective action while deploying the talent optimization strategy.
2. Design
Design refers to the vision for organizational structure, leadership, and culture that defines a company. To achieve talent optimization, intended design of structure, leadership, and culture must align with business strategy. Proper design considers contextual factors, such as whether performance or politics drives career paths and succession planning.
3. Hire
Having established conditions for composition in terms of desired skill sets and intended personal interactions, business leaders must build high performance teams of people according to résumés and referrals, which can be challenging without a talent optimization strategy. Effective hiring requires discipline in effectively communicating job requirements, assessing candidates based on those parameters, and empowering the hiring team to attract people who fulfill the needs.
4. Inspire
After assembling an effective team, keeping employees motivated is a crucial aspect of talent optimization. Creating a company culture grounded in mutual trust and respect empowers teams to feel support, have purpose, and achieve goals.
Roebuck Technologies can help you put a talent optimization strategy in place that will facilitate optimal outcomes for your business and your teams. Contact us today to get your talent optimization strategy underway.
