5 ways talent mapping helps in securing business future and growth

Are you building and nurturing the talent today that your business will need tomorrow? Are you aware where the talent resides in the markets where you operate today or where you intend to operate?

Talent mapping plays a critical role in the organisation's talent management and development. It is a scientific approach and well-defined process that helps understand future talent needs, assess the readiness of current employees, engage high-potential candidates in the industry for future hiring, and develop a strategic plan to fill identified skills and talent gaps.

Here's a closer look at how talent management can help meet your business growth and goals. Understanding your future needs and growth strategy

The true value of talent mapping helps you project future talent needs. It helps you understand where you are looking to head as an organisation and where the talent pool is available.

It is like an ‘outside in, inside out’ approach, helping you gauge where you stand internally and against the markets.

For example, a software services firm might want to hire designers who are familiar with artificial intelligence and machine learning languages. Where are you headed in the next five years? What capabilities will be needed to thrive in the changing business environment? So, the first step would be to start the talent mapping process by defining your growth strategy, future investment plans and work backward to the competencies, capabilities, development needs and develop team accordingly.

Competitive intelligence

Talent mapping, when done diligently, can help you show-side by-side comparisons of a competitor within an organisation or functional group and how they are interconnected within their teams. For example, a comprehensive talent map for data science heads within the retail space would list the director’s name but also build his organisation out levels deep to include the managers and leads within his team. Additionally, compensation, benefits, career growth parameters and geographic location would be included along with more insights on current trends on any specific motivational or non-traditional benefits would also be cited and detailed out. It also acts as a great benchmarking tool for sales strategy, competitor current, and evolving structures and report lines, level of responsibility, current skills, academic background, and talent development planning.

Succession planning

Talent mapping allows businesses to create a roadmap for the future planning. Organisations can use it to understand the gaps and differences between their talent pool in-house and outside their organisation. A simple exercise of filling the organisation chart can demonstrate what the strength of in-house talent is, which roles would be critical for your growth strategy and currently do not have a clear succession plan in place, and whether it would be possible for the organisation to groom internal talent for such roles or if buying talent in the future would be necessary. In case it is a buy decision, it can help the business to map the candidate pool, proactively engage via different approaches and have a warm repository.

Better reach and engagement

Talent mapping done with right due diligence will always help improve candidate quality, engagement, brand recognition and time taken to fill the open positions. It begins prior to hiring stage, starting with defining the right and meaningful talent within the industry so that once there is an active role, engagement can begin promptly. When an organisation does talent mapping on a pro-active mode, it provides all the necessary information on the dashboard. Reaching out and engaging with “right fit” and "engaged" candidates at the inception of a search will speed up the process of getting a hire, which in turn leads to organisational cost savings and potential for growth.

Building your own strengths

Organisations have traditionally used performance/potential nine-box grid mapping tools that chart individuals’ skills and capabilities and assess them in terms of performance and potential for their current roles and future possibilities. Talent mapping exercise can help benchmark your talent pool/individual roles to the talent available in the market and give you a visual of what percentile your organization falls at, skill gaps and future development needs. With such knowledge, organisations can begin to put in place development measures that should help address gaps in their employees’ skill-sets and prepare them for job roles required in future.

These are some of the ways companies can be benefited using talent mapping services as it helps their business to grow strategically.

The benefits of talent mapping are not only confined to business capability, but also to increase the possibility of hiring the best candidate for the organisation.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)