Investing in the Workforce: Why Talent Management is More Important Than Ever

Talent management is a term that gets a lot of traction around the office — almost as much as “Can someone do a milk run?” It can easily lose all meaning if it’s not properly defined or implemented in your workplace.

Let’s recap. First off, talent management shouldn’t be confused with workforce management, even though they’re closely related:

Workforce management involves aligning your people strategies with the needs of your organisation.
Talent management involves ensuring that you have the right people with the right capabilities for those aforementioned needs.

But the problem that many an L&D manager faces is how best to communicate the value of talent management to everyone else.

Well look no further! In this blog we’ll be exploring the key reasons why focusing investments towards your office’s talent management is a win-win for everyone…

Improves operational efficiency

When a business has truly effective talent management strategies, they become 6 times more likely to report higher total returns than their competitors¹.

To see those kinds of results for your company, you should be thinking about:

What your business’ goals and objectives even are
The skills your teams are going to need to help hit those goals
Using the above to inform how you reskill and upskill your employees

After all, if you want to guide your employees in a way that propels your business to success, it only makes sense to do so by factoring in what that success looks like. This also helps in making your people feel like they’re part of a collective set of goals and that they’re providing value to their employer through the work they do and training they undertake.

Creates growth opportunities for staff

Being in a job where you see little to no opportunities for growth is frustrating for any employee and can lead to them wondering why they’re putting as much time and effort into their work as they are. This inevitably has a negative impact on staff productivity, at best leading to employees “quiet quitting” (basically doing the bare minimum) or, at worst, actually quitting altogether.

Talent management strategies help fill the gaps by simply existing. By showing your staff that there are growth opportunities through training, you give them incentive to stick around and put in the extra effort. You also show them that they’re valued and their development is a priority, making them more inclined to offer help and support in return.

This can help reduce backlogs and make your business’ time to market more efficient as your workplace will inevitably see a boost in productivity — 6-12% to be precise²!

Fosters a diverse company culture

Candidates from minority backgrounds are usually underrepresented in corporate settings. The employment rate for ethnic minority candidates in the UK is only 62.8%, while women make up just 19.7% of employees on company or organisational boards³. This inevitably leads to an unfair spiral where they may not be getting the support and attention they need to grow.

Here’s where recognising talent potential comes in.

If you have someone in your team who’s demonstrated real potential within their role, you can use talent management to help foster said potential and put them on a clearer path to progression. You can also consider ways in which that employee could be a better fit for a different role altogether — or even one that doesn’t exist yet!

When you have this kind of mindset towards how you manage talent, you in turn welcome a wider range of people in your team. The key is to not just look for people with a set of prepackaged skills, but about how they can advance with the help of you and your organisation’s talent management. Your employees get to develop their skill sets and your organisation gets a more productive and creative workforce – what’s not to love?!

You’re also improving company reputation and job satisfaction, making it a valuable investment for your business. 67% of job seekers pay attention to the diversity of a workplace when considering employment opportunities and, on average, companies with higher-than-average diversity rates see 19% higher innovation revenues ^4,⁵.

Encourages a positive learning environment

We’re always going on about creating a workplace culture conducive to learning, but it’s for a good reason! If you don’t create a positive attitude towards learning, upskilling your team will be harder and you’ll struggle to manage talent adequately.

You’ll also find it harder to fill any skill gaps within your business, leading to higher costs in recruitment in the rush to fill positions. 70% of organisations report that there’s higher competition than ever to recruit for well-qualified talent and, even then, up to 77% have had trouble attracting people at all⁶.

You’ll save a lot of resources (and tears) by prioritising helping your current employees to grow, rather than looking elsewhere.

Pro tip: Our blog on the benefits of informal learning in the workplace is the perfect starter to help you prime your teams on why they should be excited about learning in the flow of work!

Video Arts can help you maximise your people’s potential

You may be wondering where we’re coming from and why we’re just so passionate about talent management. Simply put, we at Video Arts have over 50 years of experience in helping organisations see better talent management through our engaging and effective learning content.

We know that great workplace learning can only be supported with material that can be both tailored to your L&D needs and (let’s be honest) is actually entertaining for your learners. We specialise in both!

Our range of collections cover all of your talent management needs, from training on soft skills to D&I — whatever you need to start seeing longer-lasting learning in your business. Get your choice of either off-the-shelf courses with some of the most famous faces in British comedy, or a totally bespoke production service.

Just get in touch with us to book a trial and get a taste of our award-winning content!