Everything you need to know about talent management

Talent management is having a moment. It’s all about ensuring candidates, new employees, and organization veterans have the best experience possible, so they can help make the business perform better. Forward-thinking HR teams are using automated platforms like Rippling to provide exceptional and fulfilling experiences from recruiting to retirement.

What is talent management?

Put simply, talent management is the strategic HR practice of attracting, developing, and retaining employees that make an organization better. Talent management programs bring out the best in people, so they can bring out the best in their organization. 

All facets of HR are impacted by a talent management program. Talent management teams and their processes are strategically essential in high-performing organizations, especially in today’s dynamic economic climate and competitive hiring market. 

In well-run talent management programs, success begets success. Happier, higher-performing employees bolster an organization’s culture from the inside out—their work helps inspire the best from their colleagues. Soon their standard of work and perspectives become adopted organization-wide.

What is the best talent management strategy?

The most effective talent management strategies work to unify an organization’s goals with the personal and professional development of its talent, creating a positive feedback loop in which the growth of the individual is inspired by, and inspires business success. 

A successful talent management strategy is broadly focused on:

• Identifying and recruiting the best talent from pools of suitable candidates 
• Unifying the needs of the talent and the organization 
• Retaining the best talent 

Talent management strategies are most successful when they’re implemented across the employee spectrum—from prospective hires to organization veterans. Designing a strategy for broad employee categories is just the start, however. Platforms like Rippling make it possible to customize employee experiences at the individual level, meeting the employee exactly where they are in their professional journey. 

Recruiting the best talent

Recruiting is, perhaps more than ever, the single most important component of a talent management strategy. If an organization doesn’t have the people, there is no talent to manage. 

Over 4.5 million people in the U.S. willingly left their jobs in November 2021. That’s an increase of more than one million from November 2020. Those departures were triggered by a strong candidate market as well as the pandemic, not an economic downturn. The jobs are there, but people are not satisfied with their work. 

Finding the right candidates amongst hundreds, even thousands of qualified individuals is a major challenge. Then, once those candidates are identified, they must be vetted properly — organizations don’t have the time or people power to hire a wrong fit. Organization and employee mismatches only cause more work for managers and often lead to employee departure.

With Rippling, it’s all seamless. Talent acquisition teams can improve their recruiting processes by:

• Posting job openings everywhere, quickly building candidate pipelines with the best talent
• Creating custom hiring workflows based on position, department, or seniority 
• Automating interview scheduling with Outlook, iCal, and Google integrations 
• Integrating with all the major applicant tracking systems

Retaining the best talent

The Harvard Business Review (HBR), one of the world’s most trusted publications on business strategy and innovation, recently published a set of recommendations to boost employee retention during the great-resignation era. As they note, “...companies need to get on the same page with employees by reconceptualizing what it means to be part of their organization.” 

Rippling has the capabilities to help implement all of HBR’s recommendations. 

Incentivize loyalty 

Organizations must pay people enough to take the issue of compensation off the negotiation table. Bonuses, student loan assistance, and stipends to work from home are powerful options — and they can all be tracked and reported on instantly, from Rippling. 

Provide opportunities to grow 

Ensure, at every opportunity, that all employees have a job that makes the best use of their particular skills. As HBR notes, “...show current employees that you value them even more than potential new hires by providing them with new opportunities to grow and advance.” 

Talent management in Rippling gives employees the tools and training they need to be successful. Organizations can easily access hundreds of pre-made courses to support career growth or even upload their own courses in the Learning Management System. Everything’s accessible within the employee’s Rippling profile. Milestones are automatically tracked and reported. 

Elevate your purpose 

Organizations must prove to employees that there’s more to the business than the bottom line. Rippling’s ability to integrate with all the major communication platforms like Slack, Google Workspace, and Microsoft 365, makes it easy to ensure organizations are getting their message to the people that matter. 

Prioritize culture and connection 

Research during the COVID-19 pandemic, HBR notes, has shown that “social connection has a significant impact on productivity.” While this may seem intuitive, the pandemic has provided many organizations with first-hand experience of just how vital workplace culture is to employee retention. 

With its ability to automate personal announcements like birthdays and work anniversaries, as well as its integration with the most popular workplace communication platforms, Rippling helps organizations meet their employees where they are. It gives organizations the power to prioritize culture in a remote-first world. 

Care for employees and their families while embracing flexibility

The past two years have proved to millions that it’s possible to thrive while working remotely. It’s predicted that many employees will want to retain the ability to work remotely long after it is deemed safe to return to the office. It’s essential that organizations not only recognize this trend but embrace it. 

The most empathetic organizations will also acknowledge the personal sacrifices their employees have made during the pandemic, and act accordingly. Whether that means paid time off or daycare subsidies, it’s all simple to organize within Rippling’s employee platform.

How Rippling helps talent management teams

Rippling is built to bring the best out of a workforce by eliminating the busy work caused by employee changes as well as delivering a personalized employee experience exactly when and where it’s needed most. 

Rippling automates everything 

Rippling gives HR and talent management teams the power to post openings to every job board with a single click. It also works seamlessly with hundreds of apps—like Google Workspace, Slack, and Microsoft 365—so once an employee is hired, they’re automatically given the right permissions in the right apps.

“Automated notifications can help all employees feel valued and build company culture,” says Charlie Ng, HR Solutions Consultant at Rippling. “Little moments like birthday messages, company milestones, and team introductions—nothing slips through the cracks.”

Onboarding and offboarding in 90 seconds

Only Rippling can fully set up new hires, end to end, in 90 seconds. Rippling instantly sets up new employees’ payroll, health insurance, laptop, apps, and more. And, if they leave, Rippling can instantly disable everything, too.

Custom measurements and reporting

With Rippling, HR and talent management teams can easily measure time-to-fill, pipeline, or candidate feedback, and even set alerts to trigger when there are outliers.

A fully automated learning management system 

Rippling intelligently assigns employee training courses, automatically tracks progress, and sends reminders when needed. It also provides essential workflow templates and the ability to upload custom SCORM e-learning packages. 

Rippling Talent Management gives HR leaders the ability to enhance their organization’s most vital asset—its people, all from a single modern platform.