Getting talent right is getting business right. In order to meet business challenges, grow the organization, and keep customers happy, the right talent must be hired, retained, deployed, developed and engaged. “In a competitive global economy, HR needs to create a ‘talent first’ culture” (Aberdeen 2012).

The Talent Hub can assist you in providing a roadmap for talent management and provides practical models and tools to inform your talent management strategy so that employees can really become a source of sustainable competitive advantage for your company.

The Talent Hub can assist your company with the design and implementation of the following:

• Design of an integrated talent management strategy
• Acquisition strategies
• Staff Retention
• Staff Engagement plans and engagement surveys
• How to tailor your strategies for the different generations in the workplace
• Education of line managers with regards to their role in talent management
• Education of your HR staff with regards to the implementation of Talent Management
• Help you to formulate and integrate your EVP (Employment Value Proposition)
• Career Development frameworks
• Talent development
• Team development

More detail on some of these services follows:

The EVP (Employment Value Proposition)

Employee engagement is a critical business imperative in today’s environment of increased competition, economic uncertainty and quest for business sustainability. Studies have shown that employee engagement and commitment to their employer can have a direct correlation to retention, productivity, and, ultimately, core business value. The Employment Value Proposition (EVP) is a concept that is commonly associated with candidate perception and recruiting, but is just as important in employee retention and engagement. The Employment Value Proposition (EVP) is the set of attributes that the labour market and current employees perceive as the value they gain through employment at an organisation.

According to the Corporate Leadership Council’s research a well thought through and executed EVP can:

• Improve the commitment of new hires by up to 29%
• Reduce new hire compensation premiums by up to 20%
• Increase the likelihood of employees acting as advocates from an average of 24% to 47%
• Ensure much greater commitment in new hires – up to 38%. Organizations with poor delivery of the EVP typically have less than one in ten employees who are highly committed to the organization after one month of employment.
• Sustain commitment. EVP delivery has lasting impact on new hires. After 12 months of employment, 31% of new hires had the highest levels of commitment at organizations with strong EVP delivery. That number is remarkably lower at organizations with poor EVP delivery, 3%. (Corporate Leadership Council, 2006).

In addition an effective EVP allows organisations to source more deeply within the labour market, increasing its access to passive candidates. This is important for organisations who want to secure the best talent in an increasingly difficult talent market.

The Talent Hub assists organisations in defining and segmenting their EVP, ensuring that the HR processes and policies support the EVP and implementation.

The EVP is also at the core of a successful employer brand. To be truly successful, an employer brand needs to reflect who you are as an organisation and be incorporated into every aspect of the employee experience.

Performance Management

The Talent Hub is in partnership with Appraisal Smart to offer to South African organisations a sophisticated web-based, enterprise-wide Performance Management System based on international best practice. Appraisal Smart™ offers an innovative, cutting-edge approach to administering Employee Performance Appraisals/Reviews, and will place you at the technological forefront of this crucial Human Resources and Managerial function. It not only enables you to automate the administration of Performance Appraisals—you can now elevate it to a highly effective relationship, productivity and behavior modification tool, enabling you to drive change, productivity, development of core competencies, and ultimately, bottom line results. The Appraisal Smart solution is not just an electronic document management tool – it is an interactive Performance Management Support System. The system also has some powerful add-on modules, namely Smart360 -the world’s only context-targeted 360 System (can also be a stand-alone system) and the L&D Module that helps you to manage your employee Learning and Development, Personal Development Plans (PDPs) and Career Development online. For more information on this system please visit www.appraisal-smart.com or view our Smart 360 brochure.

In addition, The Talent Hub assists organizations with the design, implementation and training for their performance management systems.

Succession Development

“Organizations with top-tier leadership are much more likely to outperform competitors in the marketplace, resulting in significant differences in financial value relative to peer organizations” (Corporate Leadership Council).  “Boards today are questioning the adequacy of current succession practices. They are setting higher goals for succession requirements, talent issues, and development plans.” —James W. Walker and James M. LaRocco

Research conducted by Development Dimensions International (DDI) reveals that traditional succession management systems where an executive nominates a replacement for themselves, and estimates when they might be ready to enter into the role, are extremely ineffective. Findings indicate that most organizations with designated replacement systems fill only one-third of their management positions with individuals targeted by the system. To ensure that succession management is a flexible system oriented toward developmental activities, rather than a pre-determined list of high-potential employees and the positions they might fill, a growing number of companies create global talent pools for middle management positions and above (Corporate Leadership Council).

The Talent Hub assists client companies in setting up the infrastructure, systems and procedures to effectively implement succession development. This involves:

• The initial needs analysis and business case
• The design of the system
• The selection/nomination of candidates for the succession pool
• The development strategies for the development of the candidates
• Monitoring the development readiness of the candidates
• Evaluation and follow-up

Career Mapping

According to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) the lack of effective career management not only creates an organizational capability problem but also is one of the largest pain points employees feel. CEB research showed that employees most commonly cite lack of future career opportunities as a driver of disengagement—more so than compensation or poor management.

The Talent Hub assists clients in mapping career paths/matrices, focusing on the fundamental components of a career path as listed in the book “Career Paths: Charting Courses to Success for Organizations and Their Employees” (Carter, Cook and Dorsey), namely:

• Sequential list of positions or roles
• Qualifications
• Critical developmental experiences
• Competencies that are accrued, strengthened, or required
• Important career success factors

Psychological and other assessments

Feedback intensive development is key to the development of talent. For this reason the Talent Hub makes extensive use of assessment in all the services it delivers. Some of the assessments that are used include:

• Personality measures
• 360 degree (or multi-rater) feedback
• Leadership instruments
• Simulations, e.g. an inbox for secretaries
• Role-plays
• Interviews
• Business cases
• Reflection
• Staff observation
• Videotape
• Instruments to assess behavior change

To accelerate development and to obtain learner buy-in some of these methods are combined in what is called a collaborative assessment centre. In the collaborative assessment centre the employee works closely with a personal facilitator to gain insight in his/her strengths and development areas. Together they plan how to leverage the strengths and to develop priority areas. The Talent Hub has specific assessment centres for:

• Leader/Managers at all levels
• Sales staff
• Secretarial and administrative staff
• HR staff

The Talent Hub employs registered Industrial Psychologists to administer, score and interpret psychometric tests for recruitment, development and teambuilding purposes. The tests are selected based on the client’s objectives.

Onboarding

For companies to truly benefit from the competence recognised in each new employee, it is essential to support them through a comprehensive introductory process. “Onboarding can be described as the direct bridge between the promise of new employee talent and the attainment of actual productivity” (Alice Snell)

An effective onboarding process enables new employees to gain access to information, tools, people networks and materials needed to perform their function more quickly. If managed as a strategic process, onboarding will improve the company’s bottom line.

The Talent Hub creates structures and processes that provide guidance and support to newly appointed executives and other employees. This is done through the effective implementation of the four components critical for the design and management of a successful onboarding process, namely:

• Process analysis
• Implementation
• Integration
• Reporting

The Talent Hub also creates onboarding toolkits for managers and train them on how to implement onboarding effectively.