Employees play a significant role in driving businesses forward. And why? Because it is your employees that are delivering customer support, producing products, overseeing operations, and coming up with innovative ways of doing business. So, when considering new means of enhancing trade and employee engagement, looking at employees' skills and talent development makes sense.

What is Talent Development?

Talent development is exactly what it states. It is a human resources and performance management function. It is employee-centric, focusing on building talent development strategies to unlock untapped potential.

From there, the employee is trained with new skills to support business objectives and allow your team to gain a competitive advantage. These skills can be leadership, soft skills, organisational, time management, project management, or skills working with the latest technology, to name a few. 

A deeper look into impactful talent development programs reveals that it is more than just providing coursework for people to consume. It evaluates employees' skills and skills they could benefit from acquiring. All this also helps to support a growth mindset within talent management and highlights the importance of continuous learning. In one of our episodes of the Digital HR Leaders podcast we touched on this, featuring Simon Brown, Chief Learning Officer from Novartis who discussed how learning curiosity drove business value.

Talent development shouldn't be mistaken for a costly strategy that evolves multiple digital learning platforms or hours of mentor training. Any business can create a talent development program within their organisation that works best for them.

Seven Company Benefits of Talent Development

Talent development has multiple benefits and is worth the cost and effort to build in the organisation. When employees are given the skills they need to thrive, their ability to contribute value to the business grows. 

More Productive Staff

When employees have continued access to knowledge, they gain the ability to be more productive. They inquire about how to work more efficiently, interact with team members more effectively, and communicate more clearly, improving the overall employee experience. Businesses can see immediate improvements from their employees as they learn better ways to perform their duties. 

In turn, from the knowledge employees obtain, fewer mistakes are made and fewer company accidents allowing them to complete tasks efficiently and get better results. As an example, ING has created a culture of learning agility and seen positive results.

It Can Empower Employees

When employees see growth opportunities to try and learn something new, there is a level of excitement derived from that. People become more interested when their daily routine is spiced up. Because of this, employees put more energy into their work and show up with a positive attitude. With this also comes an employee experience the can greatly impact your business objectives.

Attracts Top Talent

Employees do talk about their jobs outside of work. A happy employee is possibly one of the best advocates for attracting talented individuals. And when that employee describes the talent development provided by their employers, others listen, and apply when there is a job opening. Because career development is one of the newer priorities job seekers are looking for in employment, talent development is attractive to potential candidates.

Closes the Skills Gap

Employers are finding that with the shift of the work environment and the advancement of technology, their employees' skills are becoming obsolete or will soon be obsolete. Also, with these changes, the necessary skills to be successful in today's workforce are advancing. With talent development, organisations can stay on top of the skills they need in the future. 

Additionally, if employers are facing having to let employees go because of a shift in business, talent development provides a means to reskill these workers and keep them on the payroll. From our 2021 People Analytics Trends research, we even found that 42% of businesses that invested in their people and as a result created a more data-driven culture, 90% were confident that their work delivers value to the business.

It Can Increase Employee Retention

It is common knowledge that many people deliver their notices due to seeking new opportunities for growth and development. Usually, people like to work with the people they know and the place familiar to them. By providing career opportunities within the organisation through talent development, employees are more motivated to stay. Employees who gain these development opportunities tend to be vocal about the experience and after all employee experience and performance management are two sides of the same coin.

Improves Compliance

With a well-established talent development framework within the organisation, there is a fair chance that opportunities will be available for all employees, keeping the business in compliance with laws as well as DE&I efforts. 

Support the Workforce Planning Process

Workforce planning is best when a skill-based approach is applied. To prepare for the future needs of the company, an established talent development framework helps set the company up for success by giving employees the skills that will allow them to fill the needs of the organisation.

How to Be Successful With the Talent Development Framework

There are several benefits to building a talent assessment framework. It provides a structure of talent evaluation for talent development while aligning with company goals and needs.

There are several things to measure and evaluate to build a talent assessment framework. The Talent Assessment and Development framework (TAD) is a holistic framework that lets you look at talent internally and externally through the same lens.

The TAD framework has broken it down into ten dimensions.

1. Skills - refers to the technical abilities which an individual leverages to do a particular job.

2. Behaviour - is what a person brings to the job, including mindset, energy, and community.

3. Experience - what a person has done or needs to accomplish or develop something.

4. Education/knowledge - is the formal and informal means of learning.

5. Contribution/accompaniments - tangible results of work done.

6. Activities and the use of time - look at how long it takes to get work done.

7. Relationships - account for the size and quality of relationships a person has and if those relationships are enough for the person to get the job done.

8. Purpose and passion - asks what sparks and sustains someone's energy and focus and smartly documents it to create a path for the future

9. Compensation/financial - considers what the company is willing to pay to get the work done and how much the individual is willing to accept to accomplish the job.

10. Benefits/wellness - goes beyond health care needs and looks at the individual as a whole and what would improve their work experience within the organisation

How to build a talent assessment and development framework

Talent development thrives when the HR department leads the way. Four steps to take to build more successful talent development within the organisation.

Get Everyone On Board

Change cannot happen if only one person works to make the change. Everyone needs to be on board. Business leaders need to provide the encouragement and resources needed for success. Employees need to bring their enthusiasm to the table and participate in the programs.

Create a Company Culture of Learning 

With company culture significantly affecting performance and engagement, it is essential to develop a sense of curiosity. Also, since company culture is created and perceived by the organisation's employees, their full participation drives this forward.

Assess Employees' Current Skills 

It is vital to have an effective means for capturing employee skills data. Whether it is employee self-assessments, surveys, or an AI, the company needs a baseline to begin developing new skills with their employees.

Identify Skills Needed

For a talent development strategy to be effective, an organisation must know where the business is headed and how they plan on getting there. Rene' Gessenich of Novartis describes their approach: 

"Therefore, we instead opt for an approach that tries to be very targeted. So, we really try to zoom into areas of the business that either will face tremendous change from market pressure or from our customers and how they are changing, or very important for us from our business strategy perspective, to really zoom into key pockets, which has maybe 500 or 1000 associates, and really try to make an impact and really try to make an impact and really try to act."

How HR Can Help Build Talent Development

CHROs, HRBPs, HR professionals, and HR teams as a whole need to acquire the knowledge and skills required to make strategic decisions regarding building a talent development framework within the company. As we have seen in our other findings the role of learning and development is a trend that will only increase in the future. Talent development will struggle to get off the ground without a business-focused, data-driven, and experience-led approach when working with key stakeholders.

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