How to Align Your Talent Management Strategy with Your Business Strategy

At its core, talent management is all about hiring, retaining, and developing the right people to help your company meet its business goals. You should align your hiring tactics with your business strategy to maximise the benefits your talent management plan brings your organisation.

When creating a talent management strategy, develop one that eventually drives business goals. Here is how to form the kind of team dynamics that will help you formulate and implement an effective strategic plan. 

Harvard Business School defines business strategy as “the strategic initiatives a company pursues to create value for the organisation and its stakeholders and gain a competitive advantage in the market.” In other words, a business strategy is an organisation’s long-term plan to meet its goals. It is your company’s roadmap to achieving its mission and vision, and it converts this vision into measurable targets. 

A business strategy is important because it unites the organisation’s departments toward a common objective and outlines the steps they should take to achieve success. Strategic planning also helps management to identify the company's strengths and weaknesses and allows teams to operate more efficiently.

Clearly define your business goals.  If you want your talent management to drive business success, then your talent management strategy must complement your business goals. First, define your objectives as an organisation. Then create your talent management plan with those objectives in mind. 

For instance, if your business goal is to increase sales, then determine how your talent management practices can help reach those objectives. Does your sales team have the resources and skills to reach their targets? Do you need to hire a sales director, or is there someone you can upskill for that role?

As Forbes explains, “Workplace strategies that put both people and business at the heart of the process are better equipped to remove inefficiencies and streamline operations. Your workplace strategy should be designed to make your business more effective and more agile, consciously and meticulously linking to your business goals, strategy and workers' needs.”

One method you can practise is an OKR or Objectives and Key Results. It is a synergistic goal-setting technique used mostly by human-resource professionals. It helps your company break down ambitious goals via measurable results. Because it tracks progress, aligns the team, and encourages collaboration, an OKR establishes a framework for HR to create a meaningful and company-wide impact. 

For example, your objective could be to improve your company’s compensation and benefits. Your key results could be quantified through an increase in salary-competitiveness ratio or overall customer satisfaction – which you can assess through quarterly surveys.

Assess your current talent management program Once you’ve set your objective, evaluate how effective your existing talent management program is in supporting your business goals. Assess your current practices from recruitment and onboarding to performance management and succession planning. This will help you to determine areas for improvement. 

At this point, getting your employees involved is crucial. After all, they are in the best position to give feedback on whether your current practices meet their needs and enable them to perform at their best. You can accomplish this through company-wide employee engagement surveys, one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and a performance census. Whatever method you choose, make sure to establish a sense of psychological safety so that employees can give honest feedback without fear of repercussions. 

Take a look at your employer branding and employee value proposition as well. Are you still faithful to your promises? If an jobseeker applies to your company, will their expectations meet reality? Moreover, online company reviews are a great way to find out what current and former employees think about your organisation. For instance, JobStreet has a feature which allows employees to leave reviews on your company profile page. 

Make sure your strategy is data-driven Using data to guide your talent management strategy is essential. After all, gathering and analysing quantitative and qualitative data such as surveys, time-to-hire metrics, cost per hire, employee retention rates, exit interviews, and company reviews can help you make informed decisions. 

When it comes to data on what Singaporean jobseekers are looking for as well as hiring trends, JobStreet’s Future of Recruitment Report, Compensation and Benefits Report, and other yearly signature reports can provide useful and up-to-date insights. 

Create a positive workplace culture. Part of effective talent management is taking a proactive role in forming your company culture. As the New York Times points out, employees will naturally develop their own cultures within their teams if left alone. And if each team has its own culture, this can create silos and rivalries among departments.

This is why it is essential to define your company culture and communicate it well across your organisation. A positive and inclusive organisational culture will help you attract and retain the talent you need to achieve your business goals. After all, when employees feel valued and respected, they will be more inclined to stay loyal to your company. This is especially true for Singaporean employees—according to the Future of Recruitment Report, 14 per cent of workers included “relationship with superior” in their top three deal breakers. 

Foster a culture that is conducive to teamwork.  When your employees work well together as a team, this puts them in a better position to meet business goals. There are steps you can take throughout the employee life cycle to build high-performing teams.

For instance, during the recruitment process, you can ask behavioural questions to ensure jobseekers have the soft skills needed to work well with others. During onboarding, make sure that each employee clearly understands what is expected of them and the part they play within the team.

Once your employees reach the managerial level, train them in the best practices to foster teamwork. For instance, McKinsey suggests creating a team charter at the start of each project as well. When everyone has a say in establishing the ground rules for how the team will work together, this helps reduce conflict while accommodating various work styles. 

A 2017 study on the Nairobi Bottlers company shows that motivation and productivity were up by 66.75% when communication and teamwork were established. Another paper on the corporate culture of Bangladesh emphasises how team climate and team performance were correlated.

While the executive team creates the overall business strategy, departments and teams usually conduct strategic planning at least once a year to determine how they will meet the goals set by management. Here are the steps to conducting an efficient strategic planning session.

Set a goal. Based on the targets that senior management has set, set a clear goal for your team. Apply the OKR method to help guarantee that all team members are on the same page and working toward a common objective. Make sure that each person understands their role in achieving this goal. 

Set aside time for multiple planning sessions. Rather than setting a broad agenda with various topics the team needs to tackle in one day, break your strategic planning process into shorter meetings with clear agendas. It ensures that your team can plan effectively instead of rushing through one topic to get to the next and feeling burned out towards the end of the meeting.

When you’re moving towards your goal, map out the timelines and key milestones so your team can visualise where they should be at every stage of the process. 

The key to maximising the time spent for each meeting is to assign three roles: 

• Leader - leads the discussion and makes sure everyone stays on track

• Timekeeper - makes sure the meeting starts and ends on time by keeping track of the time and reminding the Leader when it’s time to move on to the next topic

• Scribe - takes the minutes of the meeting

Conduct a SWOT analysis. Determine your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and back them up using data and research. It will help your team identify areas for improvement and decide on the best steps moving forward. 

Once you’ve done an assessment, return to your goals and apply your learnings. Strategise where you need to work harder and where you need to tone down on. Break down each team member’s role based on their strengths.

Make sure everyone gets to contribute their ideas. Teams can develop more creative and innovative solutions when they can see a situation from various perspectives. Make sure each team member has a chance to speak up by pausing occasionally to see if anyone has questions, feedback, or ideas. 

Just as you would adapt your business strategy to different markets, multinational corporations (MNCs) must adapt their talent management strategies to different cultures and countries. It includes being aware of cultural differences in communication and working styles and expectations. 

A 2015 McKinsey report learned that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity experienced financial returns 35 per cent above the mean. Meanwhile, organisations with at least one female board member yielded higher income growth than all–male boards.

Moreover, we mentioned earlier that Singaporean employees consider their relationship with their superior as their third biggest deal breaker when searching for a job. By contrast, 14 per cent of employees from the rest of Southeast Asia rank job security as their third biggest deal breaker. Noting these cultural nuances can help you create effective talent management strategies for different corporate offices.

Small and medium-sized enterprises face the challenge of attracting and retaining the talent needed to achieve their business goals while having fewer sources than MNCs. Given that JobStreet’s Future of Recruitment Report cites income as Singaporeans’ top priority, SMEs need to provide competitive compensation packages if they want a better chance of winning over or sustaining high-performers. 

At the same time, they can attract talent by building on the unique strengths that SMEs possess. SMEs can overcome talent management challenges by developing a solid company culture, providing opportunities for growth and development, and highlighting opportunities to work closely with senior management. 

Whether you’re creating a talent management strategy for an SME or an MNC, an effective workplace strategy requires a deep understanding of your business objectives. By using a data-driven approach and tailoring your talent management strategies to organisational goals, you can create a talent management framework that will eventually drive business success. 

Now that you know how to align your talent management strategy with your business strategy, make data-informed decisions by downloading JobStreet’s Future of Recruitment and Compensation and Benefits reports. Then find the talent you need to achieve your goals through Talent Search.