Talent Management is an effective way of securing, developing and motivating people with the right skills and approaches to meet business objectives. It also provides a way of targeting not only each person’s natural areas of strength, but also pinpointing the specific qualities that the organization will need in the future.

Talent Management includes many traditional HR aspects. However, what differs talent management from other similar programs is the drive towards integrated and effective systems of having the right people, doing the right jobs, to ensure the organization’s success.

Talent Management is broadly defined to include key areas such as:

• Workforce planning
• Talent gap analysis
• Recruiting
• Staffing
• Employee education and development
• Retention
• Talent reviews
• Succession planning
• Evaluation

EMEND works in partnership with clients to:

1. Identify valuable talent and ensure all staff is working efficiently
2. Assess employee strengths and developmental opportunities
3. Assess employee value to the organization
4. Provide development opportunities through coaching and training
5. Offer lateral moves for more varied experience
6. Recognize efforts and compensate accordingly

Talent Management keeps employees motivated and productive and develops top management talent. Without a Talent Management program, an organization may lack the talent needed to capitalize on growth opportunities and may even lose future leaders. There is a significant financial impact to the organization if it loses key talent, especially if talent is lost to a competitor. This is what makes Talent Management crucial to an organization’s success. People cannot be forced into performing at a certain level. They need a strong dynamic and motivation; they need the desire and the want to improve performance. Coaches can help kindle this dynamic and focus on inspiring commitment and dedication. Simply put, an effective coaching management style will help improve employee performance, thus impacting the bottom line.

The most effective approach is a one-to-one coaching style, where one person is the advisor and counsellor, and focuses on helping the other person learn something new. The relationship between the coach and the recipient is a delicate one and takes time to cultivate. It must be built on a solid foundation of mutual trust, respect and open communication. To maximize results, the learning relationship needs to be customized for each person, and should embrace unbiased constructive feedback, the power of encouragement, and the creation of meaningful, concrete, results-oriented goals.

Coaching is a great avenue to helping people make meaning out of what it is they are doing and for giving them a sense of self worth. But, for coaching to be effective, there are three fundamental requirements that must be met:

• A strong developmental bias; where the aim is to help people excel in what they do.
• Extensive personal contact; which involves taking the time to build strong personal relationships with people. The attention provided in a one-to-one coaching practice can yield awesome strength.
• A genuine and caring persona; which allows the recipient to know and believe that the coach truly wants to see them succeed.

EMEND works with clients and their high potential staff in one of 4 ways:

1. By guiding the recipient in working out an accurate and truthful description of a problem or developing some insight into their behaviour.
2. By helping individuals become more sensitive to the organization’s culture.
3. By helping staff increase their potential and reaching highly competent technical levels.
4. By clarifying performance expectations and encouraging acceptance of more difficult tasks.

The practice of Coaching was traditionally reserved for employees with performance problems. Although still a potential motivation, the coaching approach has evolved into a development tool that involves working with promising individuals who have demonstrated growth potential. Leadership coaching is typically offered to people in positions of leadership who have demonstrated significant talent, are intelligent and possess valuable company insight as well as corporate knowledge (i.e.: executive and management levels).

HR Planning

The planning function of an organization’s HR unit leads all other HR functions; staffing needs must be identified and forecasted before other functions can be addressed. In doing so, effective HR planning can save organizations a considerable amount of money in identifying unnecessary costs related to over and under staffing. Once the staffing plans are completed, then the remaining HR functions can be integrated into a cohesive plan. In addition to cost savings, HR planning builds in flexibility and enables organizations to effectively respond to changes in the environment. This flexibility is needed to take advantage of opportunities as they become available or known to the organization.

Today, HR planning is growing less and less concerned with the number of people employed by an organization, and is rather shifting the focus on ensuring that all employees are making an effective contribution. Forecasting techniques play an important role in HR planning because they address issues relative to the specific skills that will be required by present and future employees, and how exactly these skills will be acquired.

Many organizations use both quantitative and qualitative techniques in order to achieve a more comprehensive analysis. EMEND INC. works in partnership with clients to:

1. Determine the organizational objectives
2. Determine the HR objectives
3. Forecast shortages and surpluses
4. Determine the objectives for each employment function
5. Identify future skill sets
6. Review job designs

The importance of undertaking human resource planning cannot be stressed enough; without accurate planning to properly identify the business demand (both numerically and in the skills required) and secure the appropriate supply, organizations will be unable to position themselves to compete effectively in the marketplace. Only by projecting future needs can companies take action today to meet tomorrow’s needs. For example, forecasts indicate that over the next decade there will be almost 1.5 million high-tech job openings. Without effective HR planning, your organization may be unable to fill some of these positions.

Retention Management

In addition to achieving a higher ROI, retention management programs can benefit a company in every aspect of its business; it can effectively cut down on recruiting and training costs as well as reduce supervisory time required in training employees for new position. Employees can equally benefit from Retention Planning in that increased learning and development opportunities can and will lead to growth opportunities. The result is that employees feel encouraged and motivated to be productive and are able to achieve a greater sense of job satisfaction.

Retention Planning also allows for a more trusting relationship with upper management, ensuring healthier and improved communication between employees and management. Considering the substantial benefits to employees, organizations stand to boost over-all happiness and job satisfaction. This contributes to an improved work-life balance, increasing employee productivity.

Retention of employees is an important aspect in managing human resources. A successful Retention Plan will identify the specific needs of employees, in order to encourage them to stay with the organization. It will also focus on implementing various strategies such as;

• Environmental strategies; to help create and maintain a workplace that equally attracts and nourishes good people.
• Relationship strategies; to promote a larger awareness of the various working relationships employees have and how to polish and build on them.
• Support strategies to provide the tools and resources needed to effectively meet their performance goals.
• Growth strategies; to assist employees in achieving both personal and professional growth.
• Compensation strategies; to address the broad spectrum of total compensation, base pay and salary.

EMEND works in partnership with clients to:

1. Provide financial incentives, such as flexibility in pay and benefits, in order to meet the personal needs of employees
2. Offer workplace environment incentives such as a personalized workspace and flexibility regarding work and personal life balance options such as working from home
3. Focus on achieving full potential from employees by providing continuous development, greater autonomy to make decisions, and definite career advancement opportunities
4. Develop a plan with the key resource “fast trackers”. This approach involves informing fast trackers of the opportunities available to them and encouraging these employees to cultivate new skills through work transfers or leadership roles on committees.

Without a competent Retention plan, valuable employees may be lost to the competition, and organizations may have to contend with high turnover rates, which can lead to a loss of revenue. This is why organizations should strongly consider investing in Retention Planning.

Succession Planning

Without the support of a Succession Planning program, a company is at risk of losing employees that show potential for other positions. In turn, this can lead to poor promotion or placement outcomes; when too many employees are promoted or transferred to new responsibilities without the proper planning, these same employees risk not being successful or simply quit.

Succession Planning benefits organizations in that employees become highly motivated and will exhibit greater loyalty and commitment. This in turn, makes good provisions for career development. Succession Planning also promotes organization goodwill; employees are more likely to project positive images of their organization outside of the work environment. Lastly, Succession Planning increases an organization’s effectiveness in managing its human resources; the right people will be available and better able to meet the organization’s changing needs.

Succession Planning is s system in which employees within a given organization are selected to move into another position, should it become vacant. This system provides employers with an opportunity to identify employee potential and ensure training and development in order to meet forecasted requirements. Succession Planning helps employers define managerial and other human resource requirements measured in terms of job skills and characteristics, and is fundamental to sustained performance.

EMEND works in partnership with clients to implement succession planning programs that:

1. Evaluate current staff and current promotion needs.
2. Review “promotable” employee competencies.
3. Develop an action plan for each promotable employee (separately or in conjunction with a Performance Management plan).
4. Gauge progress of promotable employees.
5. Analyze plan success alignment with business outcomes and improvement opportunities.

Succession Planning is a proactive approach toward organizational changes such as privatization, globalization, downsizing, and restructuring. In these situations, and in the case of a merger or acquisition, companies must decide which employees stay, and which must be let go. Succession Planning effectively develops potential successors, and actively plans for organizational changes in such situations.

Career Management

As employee productivity levels increase, so does an organization’s productivity. Career management provides necessary tools for a human resource department to accommodate and reward career growth and provide an employee-focused organization. Career Management increases innovation, customer responsiveness, service flexibility and sustains high productivity across the workforce. In short, career management helps support physical strategy and improves an organization’s competitive edge.

Employees benefit from career management programs in that they are given the opportunity to excel in their career goals. Over and beyond this, they have the benefit of greater job satisfaction, which may potentially lead to them into leadership positions.

Career management is a systematic approach to offering employees additional opportunities for career development, increased job satisfaction, leadership training programs, and incentive structures. Career management programs assist employees in setting career goals and developing an appropriate plan for attaining these goals. Employees are given an opportunity to focus on and manage their career growth. A central part of an employee’s career, beyond career development and job satisfaction, is rewards; or more specifically, salary growth. As such, compensation is one of the central components to Career Management. The concept of “broad-banding” explains why: when salary grades collapse into wide bands, broad-banding is used to improve an organization’s effectiveness by managing career growth and administering appropriate pay to match growth. It gives the Human Resources Department the necessary tools to accommodate and reward career growth, as well as provide an overall employee-focused organization.

EMEND works in partnership with clients to:

1. Assess the value of implementing a Career Management Program for the organization.
2. Identify possible opportunities for career development, job satisfaction, and leadership (i.e.: the employee’s goals).
3. Provide fitting rewards and/or incentive programs at every given opportunity (i.e.: the benefits that go along with it).
4. Implement an appropriate career management program, best-suited for the organization and its employees.

An organization parallels what it rewards. As such, organizations that choose not to implement a Career Management program to assist them in their development run the risk of being placed at a disadvantage; significant financial loss, as employees move to a more employee-focused competitor to ensure their own well-being and success. This is why an organization’s biggest investment is their employees. An organization cannot merely run on physical assets alone, it needs human capital. The interrelationship between managing programs and employees can influence and shape an organization’s success. For this reason, specific programs such as Career Management are essential in offering solutions to human resource management issues.

EMEND works in partnership with clients to:

• Determine the Organizational Objectives
• Determine the HR Objectives
• Forecast Shortages and Surpluses
• Determine the Objectives for Each Employment Function
• Identify Future Skill Sets
• Review Job Designs