5 Steps to Assemble Your Own Talent Machine

Highly successful companies make talent management a high priority. Gallup Management Journal took a look at world-class companies and whittled their employment practices down to 5 important steps to ensure you’re getting and keeping the best talent.

Gallup says, “The most important decision executives make is who they name as manager, at all levels in a company.”

Here are 5 steps you can take to ensure you’re getting the most out of your people:

1. Build a succession plan that works: a succession plan for you and other senior management positions is crucial to keeping your talent machine running. Gallup indicates that many companies don’t have a succession plan, or if they do, it is an outdated one. Make sure to constantly re-evaluate and update your plan so that it’s seamless when you need to execute it.
2. Do an audit of your talent pool: make sure that you have the right employees in the right positions. It’s important to know what you’re working with so that you can make changes if you need to. And there’s no way of implementing a good succession plan if you don’t know how deep your talent pool is.
3. Raise the bar in recruiting and hiring: once you’ve taken care of steps 1 and 2, you know where you need talent. Invest in your recruiting and hiring to fill those voids. Restructure to the hiring process will help you get the right employees and make sure they will fit well into the culture of your company.
4. Provide breakthrough experiences for high-potential managers and leaders: Gallup suggests that companies count the number of positions in the top 3 levels of the company and multiply that number by 3. That’s how many high-potential managers and leaders you need to identify in preparation for succession. Then interview the star employees that you already have. It will help you find what you’re looking for in your up-and-coming talent.
5. Provide ongoing development, engagement and performance management: invest in your employees and develop them. This will help their performance and keep them engaged until it’s time for them to enter the C-suite.

Read: Building a Talent Machine