Business leaders who aim to create high-performance organizations often begin by implementing processes for strategic planning, budgeting, operations and marketing.

But they miss a prime opportunity to go one better – to connect their human assets to their core business management processes and make talent management a strategic priority.

Many continue to view employee recruitment as a mostly tactical issue. Companies readily admit that their success depends on their professional workforce, yet many fail to use talent as a driver of long-term strategies.

In the intensely competitive battle for high-value workers, no company can afford to maintain this kind of status quo on workforce acquisition. Strategic talent management has evolved into a best practice. An intentional approach can produce a talent plan based on an understanding of an organization’s business goals, an assessment of current and future talent markets, and a prioritization of needs that can be pursued accordingly.

Like all long-term business strategies, talent management requires leadership at the top levels, along with supporting resources.

Develop a talent supply chain.

Any strategically valid framework for managing talent should start with recruitment, which must be fully aligned with the organization’s business needs and objectives. Often this requires an analysis of human assets within an organization now and in the future.

A needs assessment is a proactive approach that replaces the traditional reactive process of collecting applications for positions as they become vacant. Instead, talent needs are projected and potential staff shortages are forecast so that an organization can more clearly recognize impending gaps, along with identifying the specific capabilities for its labor needs.

In the process of targeting the kinds of talent it needs, a company can also identify the types of organizational learning and skills it must cultivate to meet those needs from within the current talent pool. This approach can help drive intelligent recruitment, shape both active and passive sourcing for candidates, and essentially allow an organization to create its own talent supply chain.

Identify business-critical roles.

Another strategic talent management practice is to reclassify employee roles based on their value to the organization and support of its goals. This move goes beyond organizational titles to further classify employees based on how business-critical their functions are. 

While all jobs are important to an organization’s performance, some have a greater impact on the performance organization than others, and some involve greater costs to the organization. Inherent in each is the risk or gain to the company’s financial performance based on how poorly or well tasks are performed.

Therefore, in addition to functional roles (equipment operator, customer service rep, accountant), companies may also identify and assign a talent valuation for each role based on the attributes that contribute to organizational performance. This allows further strategic alignment of resources, training, and overall talent management.

Commit to a smarter, better approach.

Applying strategic clarity to talent management requires high-level commitment and follow-through. Leaders must shift from a mindset of simply requesting three engineers to fill openings, for example, to consulting on longer-term needs and developing strategies for talent development and recruitment – in other words, to keep the pipeline full.

Additionally, because talent needs are aligned with strategy, effective talent management becomes a critical factor for sustainability and cannot be relegated to “dispensable” and “expendable.”

The reward? Having the right talent in place for achieving and sustaining high performance – not only today, but in the future years that lead up to your strategy time horizon.