How to Create A Talent Strategy | The Talent Strategy Group

As I noted in my June 2016 article, Linking Talent Strategy With Business Strategy, if you ask one to articulate a company’s talent strategy, the answers might sound more like a list of talent processes, programs, and practices versus a talent strategy. And while these components enable a talent strategy, they are not a talent strategy by themselves. A talent strategy is a road map for how an organization plans to achieve 3-5 talent-related outcomes (usually over a multi-year period) deemed critical to executing the company’s business strategy. It also includes the tactics for achieving those outcomes, identifies key stakeholders, the time frame for execution, and the measures for evaluating impact. This new article by Marc Effron of The Talent Strategy Group provides four steps for creating a talent strategy, ranging from identifying your strategic drivers to bullet-proofing your talent strategy by identifying barriers and mitigation plans. Each step provides practical suggestions for execution. To ensure your team is aligned on the key aspects of your firm’s talent strategy, and that resources (e.g., time, energy, dollars) are disproportionately allocated to those components, at your next HR team meeting is 1) have each team member share what they believe are the four key priorities of the firm’s talent strategy, 2) aggregate the collective responses to see where there are both consistencies and inconsistencies, 3) realign the team on the vital few priorities of the talent strategy, 4) discuss what the HR team is working on that is NOT related to those priorities, 5) identify opportunities for shifting resources increasingly to the highest priority areas of your talent strategy. A simple exercise like this can accelerate the delivery of business strategy through talent strategy execution.