Planning, Organizing, Time Management, and Your Talent Management Process
I consider myself to be a highly organized and planful person. My family, however, considers me to be a control freak. However you choose to look at it, there are many benefits to being organized and planful in your talent management process.
Planning
By planning your talent cycle annually, you allow yourself to think about your current processes and make any recommendations for new processes as necessary. In one organization I worked with, they made changes to their talent management process so infrequently that they created a cross-department committee that met for six months before making their recommendations. Only you know what will work best for your organization, but by planning their talent management process in advance, this client was able to give their committee enough time to explore the various opinions provided. In addition to providing time for senior leadership to consider their recommendations and make the necessary changes. This was all within their annual performance appraisal process so there were no delays in employees receiving their manager’s feedback during their performance cycle.
Whether you make changes to your talent processes or not, planning out your talent cycle will give you structure around your communication with employees to prepare them for what is to come to aid in adherence with your talent management program.
Organizing
By creating structure and organization around your talent management program you can build in time to test your processes, especially if you use technology to facilitate your activities. At TalentQuest, we strongly encourage all clients to conduct user acceptance testing, even if they have not made changes to their process or in the TQ system from one year to the next. It is best practice to test your system before opening it up to your organization. In addition, you can avoid the last-minute rush-around as your deadlines approach…keeping your blood pressure and gray hair in check!
Time Management
A natural consequence of being planful and organized is better time management. Effective time management increases your focus and improves your productivity. Greater focus allows you to spend more time on the projects, goals and people that matter most to you. When you have more control over your own time you are able to be proactive instead of reactive which can lead to a reduction in errors and greater employee and self-satisfaction.
An easy way to accomplish a year of planning is to utilize whatever digital calendar functionality your organization uses (Outlook, Google, etc.). If you are someone who likes to work with paper and pen, then print out the next 12 months. Whether electronic or on paper, identify what your major deliverables will be and get them on the calendar. Then determine how frequently you will be communicating with your workforce surrounding these milestones and get those communication pieces scheduled on the calendar. You can, of course, write them as the dates approach, but get them on the calendar now. If using technology to facilitate your talent management processes, build in time for user acceptance testing and put it on the calendar. If data clean-up activities are needed to accomplish your deliverables, be sure to put that on the calendar too.
Whether creating structure around your talent management process comes naturally to you, or it is a challenge for you, trust me: the downstream benefits outweigh the upfront work.
