Make your talent management activity more effective in 10 easy steps

For busy teams who want to quickly increase the impact of their Talent activity, what can you do to make all your work more enticing

1. Turn it into a picture. If you can make a clear picture or diagram that captures your activity and how it fits together, you will be able to communicate what you do faster and better

2. Link it to a calendar. When are things happening and when will people see activity? Too often no one knows how the full range of Talent activity fits into the business cycle or how it impacts their team.

3. Define and share how long it will take for activity to turn into value. If a programme is going to take 3 years to deliver value, be explicit about that, if it is 6 months, tell people, otherwise everyone expects everything to add value now.

4. Communicate the story of how the talent activity is helping the business. Be very clear on the links between the Talent activity and key points of the Business strategy. Talent is about the future, making the organisation stronger tomorrow from actions today, so show people how you are achieving that

5. Make it personal. Show how the Talent activity helps individuals in the business as we as the business.

6. Show a from and a to. What will the impact of your activity be over time on the shape of the business and the flows of talent within it.

7. Stop talking about process, talk about decisions. No one wants more HR process. What they want is the ability to make better, more timely decisions. Show them how the Talent work you are doing is helping that to happen.

8. Make it clear who decides what. Who really controls which decisions about how people progress? Who decides what and how.

9. For each key initiative explain what it is that makes your approach distinct and of value to the business. What problem is it addressing, who is it impacting and how is your approach different and hard to copy.

10. Tell people what you are stopping doing and what you are not doing and why. If you don’t tell them people assume it is ongoing and if you don’t tell them why they won’t believe you.

Most of these activities are about telling your story better and being more rigorous about explaining why you are doing what you are doing. This does not need to be fancy but it does need to be effective.