Talent Management vs. HRM: What’s what?
HR and talent management are different in how they approach the talent needs of a company. Know the different responsibilities of HR and talent management professionals, also how they are related.
What’s the difference between talent management and human resource management? Often used interchangeably by the uninitiated, both concepts approach the talent needs of a company differently.
Confusions around 🔗HR and talent management terminologies is only natural, given that in the grand scheme of Human Resource Management (HRM), talent management is very new. It has only been around for a decade. Even though both pertain to management of employees at the workplace, both are different. Read on to know how these popular HR terminologies are interpreted in the industry.
Human Resource Management — The Umbrella
HRM aka Human Resource Management covers everything in the human resource and talent management discipline. It relates to how to manage employees, as well as how to recruit them and promote them. However, an all-encompassing term, the nature of HRM is such that it was proving too static and less agile for new talent needs of the day. This particularly led to the emergence of talent management as a special discipline.
Aspects of HR and talent management included under HRM are:
👉Talent Acquisition (Recruitment function)
👉Talent Management
👉Pay and Compensation specialists (Sometimes, used as a specialized branch for managing employee rewards, compensation and benefits)
Human Resource Management is an umbrella term for talent acquisition and talent management, each of which is a specialized discipline. Colloquially, HR and talent management professionals, when referring to talent management, include talent acquisition functions as well.
Talent Management — A targeted approach
A new approach to HRM, talent management is at the core of what we know as the “war for talent”. It focusses on developing the strategies and methods for retaining in-house talent, and building relationships with best talents in the market to acquire them in-time when the need arises. Talent management, in nutshell, is about keeping the pulse of company’s talent needs.
Managing talent supply chains in talent management include:
👉Developing talent-on-demand network, that is ready to serve talent needs with a combination of outside hiring and in-house talent mobility. (Encompassing talent acquisition.)
👉Anticipating company’s resource needs.
👉Boosting employee retention by building relationships with frontline workers, and including executives as well as management in the process.
Talent management is about shifting the focus from what the business can get out of an employee to how to engage the employee to bring the best out of her and retain her for fulfilling long-term business needs.
Why Talent Management is important?
Let’s answer this by looking at these questions:
👉What happens when you run a high employee turnover rate?
👉What happens when your talent keeps using outdated knowledge to solve new age complexities?
👉What happens when you fail to take care of employees’ needs from their work environment?
In the words of Peter Cappelli, Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in an absence of a talent management strategy, a company ends up spending huge financial resources on hiring (which may haven’t been necessary in case in-house talents were retained or developed in advance). It increases employee churn rate, hiring cost, and the company witnesses low productivity during the time new hires are trained and figure out the functionalities.
The consequences of not anticipating talent needs and being proactive in managing them is what makes talent management quite important for 🔗HR and talent management professionals.
Should you have different departments for talent management and HR?
This question is especially important for companies who don’t already have a talent management department focusing on employee engagement and retention strategies.
The answer to whether or not you should create separate teams or department will depend on a variety of factors: current market position of the company, budget, goals, company size, and others.
For instance, if your growth is suffering from high employee turnover, you can benefit from a talent management department. For that, you may create division within your HRM department or create an autonomous department for talent management. That said, you may also need to 🔗upskill your HR professionals in talent management.
You may keep separate teams for HR and talent management, but whatever you decide, devise the roles and responsibilities of each such that they are synchronized. Even better, if they are also kept in sync with the management, finance and other departments.
