"Star Search"—Talent Management Made Simple

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – In this article, author Sherry Fox talks about ‘talent management’, the process of attracting, hiring and retaining highly skilled employees for your business.

While the term talent management may be new to you, the problem it addresses is surely not. In fact, as the article points out, a 2007 survey of 500 executives of small and medium-sized companies revealed that talent management is their greatest business concern after revenue.

And from where I sit, it should be. As the article states, “And whether companies are willing to admit it, at the end of the day, it’s their people that are going to make the difference to their bottom line”.

It never ceases to amaze me how much money companies invest in inventory, plant and equipment, and technology, yet how little they invest in human resource management. Over the years, I’ve heard more than one entrepreneur tell me “why should I spend money training my employees on this new software when eventually they’re going to quit and go work for my competitor?” And then they wonder why they don’t see the benefits they expected, and should have gotten, from their new computer system!

A word of caution-some of what this article talks about, like an ITM solution, may be overkill for some companies. But there is plenty of good advice in this article that should be heeded by companies of all types and sizes – for example “companies that tolerate employees who continually underperform-especially in the area of management-can pay the highest price of all”.
And the last paragraph of the article that talks about your “star performers” couldn’t be truer –“letting them walk out the door is like shooting yourself in the corporate foot”.