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A Talent Plan contains the actions that your management team will execute during the coming period to meet your company objectives for motivating and retaining your technical workforce, to ensure that staff have personal development plans in place to meet their aspirations within the company, and to hire the best graduates and experienced staff for your business objectives. It will include roles and responsibilities for the management and senior professionals within the company and suggest how to develop measurement criteria and regular progress reviews by management at all levels to ensure that the Talent Plan is being followed to realise the desired outcomes.
SDC will work with relevant members of your management team to help them create a plan that they will own and carry out with the involvement of the whole team - managers and professionals.
The steps in building the initial plan are as laid out below. In subsequent years the plan may be reviewed and updated to reflect changing business requirements and the changing environment for resources.
Talent Planning steps include:
1. Assessment of resource needs and environment:
- identification of skills gaps in the near term
- training needs
- review of demographics and diversity (age, gender, ethnic minorities)
- review of attrition rates and trends with respect to business targets
- business outlook in the near and strategic term
- hiring requirements - graduates, experienced hires, others
- financial budgets for hiring, training, reward and recognition schemes
- Corporate directives for the skills and composition of the technical workforce
- who in the company owns the Talent Plan?
2. Creation of an Attraction Plan
- which universities will be visited?
- what are the recruitment steps?
- what is the plan for under-graduate employees?
- how are their needs addressed as well as those of the business?
- what image does your company wish to have with
universities?
- how is that to be built up and maintained?
- what image does your company wish to have with schools?
- what is the plan to identify and recruit experienced hires
- what is the induction programme - how are new hires made welcome?
- are current practices delivering as well as they
might?
- how can they be improved?
3. Creation of a Motivation Plan
- are career paths in place, are they understood by the staff?
- how do new staff find out about them?
- do all staff have personal development plans?
- what is the highest technical position on offer in the company and do you have a satisfactory pipeline of staff progressing towards these positions?
- how are outstanding new people identified and encouraged?
- do all eligible staff have equal opportunity and are they succeeding?
- are the criteria for promotion understood by staff and applied with equality?
- do you have role models for the more junior staff?
- are your staff demonstrating the vitality that your company needs?
- what steps may be taken to improve their contribution to the business?
4. Creation of a Retention Plan
- what highly valued members of staff are at risk of leaving?
- how will this change as the external business climate improves?
- why do staff leave?
- why do staff stay?
- what are the motivators for your staff?
- what steps are to be taken to obtain the outcomes your company requires?
5. Communication Plan
- who reviews and has signoff?
- how will the plan and its progress be communicated to the management and staff?
- who will review and track the progress, and act on departures from the plan?
- who will announce changes to the plan?
- does the Talent Plan have 'clout' within the company, who owns it and who carries it out?
