3 Cost Effective Talent Management Strategies

Talent Management (TM) refers to the activities needed to recruit, train, retain, assess, and grow your company's staff. There are a number of day-to-day efforts that go into this, from recruiting for open jobs to managing performance reviews. From a cost perspective, each of these areas can look expensive—after all, significant time and other resources are often devoted to the activities. But talent management doesn't have to be expensive; in fact, strategic investments can help keep talent management cost effective while yielding a high return. Here's a closer look at some affordable talent management strategies.

Use an Applicant Tracking System

Effective recruiting is essential in order for companies to ensure they keep growing and are able to effectively replace workers who leave. But posting jobs, vetting candidates, and onboarding new staff can be a lot of work. An applicant tracking system is an investment that can help you reduce the costs of recruiting and save your staff many hours of work. Applicant tracking systems make it easier to move job descriptions through internal approval processes, post them to multiple job boards, and promote them via social media. These systems may offer functionality that enables customized applications with screening questions that make it easier to vet candidates, so you spend less time reading through resumes and are able to dedicate more attention to top candidates.

Assess Your Talent with Performance Reviews

While recruiting helps bring new talent into the mix, it's also important to make the most of your existing staff. Performance reviews are a helpful way of managing compensation, identifying star performers to promote within the company, addressing problems, and keeping feedback loops open to encourage higher levels of productivity. However, conducting performance reviews can also be a daunting process. Using performance management review software can make reviews easier to conduct offering guidance on schedules, questions, formats, and general communication.

Invest in Developing Your Leadership

Having a clear leadership development plan in place can help you ensure your most talented leaders grow along with the company, rather than taking their expertise to your competition. It is expensive to recruit high-level employees, and there are high attrition rates. A leadership development program can help save you money in the long run by helping you offer specialized training, advancement opportunities, mentorship, and a clear growth path within the organization.

From efficiently finding the best candidates for your organization to developing strategies to retain your top employees, Talent Management is a core part of any company's HR strategy. And it can also be cost effective. A talent management software can help your strategy, a relatively small strategic investment in talent management may yield a high return for your business in the long run.