Defining Talent Management: From Then to Now
Talent Management is a term coined by McKinsey in the late 1990s. It was made famous by the phrase “the War for Talent” and the subsequent book by Michaels.
Before this book, the concept of ensuring an organization has the talented people it needs was not a highly scientific or systematic activity within an organization. Once the observation was made that talent management is a critical component of success, it has taken on many functions within a company:
- Workforce Planning
- Engagement and Retention
- Learning and Development
- Leadership Development
- Performance Management
- Data and Analytics
- Rewards and Recognition
- Talent Acquisition
Services, technologies, and careers now encompass all of the above. But, they all live within the overarching concept of “Talent Management” which can be defined as the process of identifying, developing, recruiting, retaining, and deploying those talented people.
Five Imperatives of Talent Management
The process mentioned in the definition of Talent Management is still best described by the five imperatives that Michaels identifies in his book:
- Creating a winning employee value proposition that will make your company uniquely attractive to talent.
- Moving beyond recruiting hype to build a long-term recruiting strategy.
- Using job experience, coaching, and mentoring to cultivate the potential of managers.
- Strengthening your talent pool by investing in A players, developing B players, and acting decisively on C players.
- Central to this approach is a pervasive mindset: a deep conviction shared by company leaders that competitive advantage comes from having better talent at all levels.
JCSI focuses exclusively on the Talent Acquisition component of Talent Management. We believe that it is important to view Talent Management as a comprehensive group of diverse activities. These activities start with securing the flow of talent into an organization, recognizing that it is a major corporate asset, and managing it as such.
