How to become a talent-centric organisation to better attract, engage, manage and retain employees

To reach the top, you need top talent. It’s a simple truth, but not so simple to put into practice.

Indeed, attracting top talent is a lot easier said than done; and if you aren’t hiring enough top talent, you have a problem. The ideal is to become “talent-centric” as an organization – to develop your talent acquisition strategy and employer branding to the point where you become a talent magnet, attracting and engaging top talent without necessarily having to seek them out.

Of course, attracting talent is only the first step: badly-managed employees tend to become bad employees, and you won’t find many high-performers sticking around somewhere their talents aren’t appreciated.

How To Become A Talent Centric Organization

There’s no simple recipe to becoming a talent-centric organisation, and much will depend on the size of your organisation and the type of talent you need to succeed. The following are some general pointers for anyone looking to better attract, engage, manage and retain top employees:

· Get your basics right. A well-written job description will never be enough to attract top talent, but a poorly-written one will be more than enough to keep it away. Top performers know their value, and know what they’re able to bring to the table: if the only clear thing about your job description is your own lack of clarity, count on them looking elsewhere. The basics cover more than the job description, of course: make sure your employer branding is positive and consistent, and that your job advert is being marketed in the right places, before turning your attention anywhere else.

· Engage a good recruiter or Talent Acquisition Professional. Don’t just hire them, either: enable and positively encourage them to go after top talent, so far as your resources and strategy allow. If your resources and strategy are hindering you from attracting top talent, reconsider your talent acquisition strategy: Low margin based recruiters may only persue candidates that don’t fit the requirements that you require, this could be salary based and or aspirational meaning it’s numbers that the recruiter may be looking towards not quality, so if you want the best be prepared to make adjustments accordingly.

· Top talent needs top management. Depending on the size of your organisation, you might be managing your new talent directly; but whether it’s you or another manager, you need to make sure the working relationship between the talent and management is a positive one, personally and professionally. Managing top talent doesn’t often mean micro-management, and in some industries it will be necessary for managers to have at least a working knowledge of what the people under them do.

· Review and revise your talent acquisition strategy. Times and trends change, in recruitment as in anywhere else, and you need to keep up. Make use of any and all data by using the ‘Triple-A’ approach (Acquire, Analyse and Act). This can let you see what works and what doesn’t, both in terms of your acquisition strategy and the personal and professional traits of your successful employees. Compare the effectiveness of your organisation’s approach to those used by your competitors. Talent-centric organisations don’t all look alike, but they do all look to the future.