4 Disciplines of Talent Optimization for Your Business

The success of one company, even despite all the tools and assets at its disposal, always depended on the ability of its staff to meet its goals, maintain a satisfying level of productivity and stay engaged along the way. This topic becomes very complicated keeping in mind that, before they are capable of dealing with these challenges, the businesses first need to properly fill in their ranks.

Unfortunately, keeping in mind that the United States and the rest of the developed world are currently dealing with one of the worst labor shortages since the end of WWII, even these basic requirements presents countless obstacles.

Split between the challenges of the fast-paced market, increasing workload, and very scarce labor, modern companies are forced to take some very innovative steps and try out new corporate strategies for solving these new challenges.

Talent optimization quickly presents itself as one of the most popular mentions circling around.

What is Talent Optimization?

Talent optimization can be broadly described as a business framework that allows companies to align their employment and engagement strategies with their business strategies in order to achieve the best possible results and fill in the productivity gaps we have described in the introduction.

With that in mind, we would like to point out that business optimization is not a one-time effort but instead presents an ongoing process whose goal find prospective employees, carefully plan their efforts and motivate them to achieve set goals. Therefore, the goal of this process is not to reach some specific milestones but rather to set up a system where employers will be capable of recognizing the potential of their employees, monitoring employee development, and allowing them to push their skills to the maximum in the long term.

The modern concept of talent optimization consists of four main points of focus:

• Diagnose
• Design
• Hire
• Inspire

We will quickly cover all of these stages in the following passages.

Diagnose

Diagnose makes the starting point of talent optimization and the one that ties all the subsequent efforts together. The main point of focus in this stage is continuously monitoring the company’s data and employees’ performance and assessing how well this data aligns with the benchmark necessary for seeing the company’s goals through. These efforts are usually conducted by HR professionals.

Also, we would like to point out that the goal of these assessments is not to cast light on logistical or workflow deficiencies but rather focus on HR-related factors like engagement levels, workplace culture, productivity, personal conflicts, and so on. Once the roots of the problems are identified the HR crew will try to determine a correlation between these issues and the overall business performance and the actions that need to be made to make these problems disappear.

Hiring

The next step of business optimization mostly consists of filling in the positions necessary for reaching optimal productivity. Of course, this recruitment doesn't exist outside the framework set in the previous steps but rather utilizes all the previous findings to precisely define the desired job profiles, personality types, and similar traits that don't only fit the previously agreed workflow but also benefit your collective in more social aspects. You should also consider hiring international employees since it can have many benefits.

This is the point where the labor scarcity we have mentioned earlier in the article can be leveraged as an asset instead of observed as a detriment. Namely, instead of pursuing experienced professionals, the companies can look for talented and highly motivated individuals that meet the requirements found in the design stage and could benefit your teams in social terms and mold their skill sets through thorough onboarding and training programs.

Design

Now that they have hard data about the ongoing HR issues, the companies have the foundations for designing talent optimization strategies that will improve the overall productivity and employment strategy. These measures will drastically depend on the business in question. In some cases, the staff gaps could be temporarily filled with contingent teams and third-party direct sourcing solutions. In other examples, the companies will try to increase productivity by putting greater focus on engagement strategies.

Keeping that in mind, however, we would like to point out that the business optimization results we have seen so far usually point out that one of the main sources of employee dissatisfaction comes from poor work-life balance. This data is all but confirmed by the recent surveys published by Statista. So, if your company is experiencing lackluster employee performance, you may consider giving them an opportunity to demonstrate their talent in the framework adjusted to their habits and lifestyle choices.

Inspiration

Finally, we come to the last step of the talent optimization process which is inspiration, or, in other words, conscious actions that are taken to improve the employees' satisfaction, motivation, engagement, and alignment with corporate goals. Of course, much like in the previous examples, these actions will be based on the previous findings. But, even if we put that aside, businesses should always strive to create an inclusive and supporting environment where the workers will be motivated to push their efforts as far as possible.

This can be achieved through a number of tried and true methods. As of recently, however, the option of remote work and flexible schedules have produced quite satisfying results. Also, a high level of mentorship, comprehensive training, and the laid-out paths for promotion and various benefits can only make these efforts more efficient. All people have the desire to make some sort of career progress and climb through the ranks as time goes by. Your goal is to change the perception of your company as yet another section of this journey, but rather the platform where your employees can take this journey in its entirety. You should offer them all resources they might need along the way.

In conclusion

We hope this breakdown helped you understand what the process of talent optimization actually is and how its four main stages could benefit your organization as a whole. At the very end, we would like to remind you that laying out inspiration strategies is not the end of this endeavor but rather a new beginning. As soon as your initiatives start taking place, you should immediately start assessing their outcomes, and, once again, start the entire process from the scratch. As time goes by, your talent optimization will evolve into a well-tuned and self-sufficient system that will push your staff to the level they didn’t know they could reach.

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