Talent management is the attraction, selection, and retention of employees, which involves a combination of HR processes across the employee life cycle. It encompasses workforce planning, employee engagement, learning and development, performance management, recruiting, onboarding, succession, and retention.

Talent management practices have evolved over the years to cater to people-specific trends much like all other aspects of work, and have changed in fast strides over the last few years. Strategic talent management is a necessity in today’s hyper-change environment. Global trends in talent and human capital management have led to a renaissance of the work-worker-workplace equation.

The process thus involves identifying talent gaps and vacant positions, sourcing for and onboarding the suitable candidates, growing them within the system and developing needed skills, training for expertise with a future focus, and effectively engaging, retaining, and motivating them to achieve long-term business goals. The definition brings to light the overarching nature of talent management – how it permeates all aspects pertaining to the human resources at work while ensuring that the organization attains its objectives. It is thus the process of getting the right people on board and enabling them to enable the business at large.

Under the umbrella of talent management, there are a string of elements and sub-processes that need to work in unison to ensure the success of the organization. For example, analyzing the right talent gaps for the present and the future, identifying the right talent pools and best-fit candidates, getting them to join and then optimizing their existing skills and strengths while helping them grow are touch-points that are all equally important. They support each other and the whole structure would crumble even if one sub-process fell out of sync.