The world of work keeps evolving, and human resources are at the center of it all. AI is reshaping how we hire, hybrid teams are the norm, and employee expectations are changing once again. Combined with the demand for new skills and the need to prepare for even more change, strategic talent management is a must.
A talent management strategy is what companies do to attract, develop, and retain their workforce. We saw firsthand what happens when that strategy doesn’t resonate during the Great Resignation. Millions of employees quit, often after realizing their companies weren’t prioritizing them as people, and reevaluated what mattered most to them at work.
The result is the workforce of today — employees who want meaningful work, opportunities to grow, and an employer that treats them like people. When you put your people first and center your approach with an effective talent management strategy, you can attract top talent and retain them for the long haul.
Set strategic goals for managing your people and set your team and your business up for success, now and in the future.
What Is a Talent Management Strategy?
Talent management strategy refers to a company’s approach to:
- Recruiting and hiring
- Onboarding
- Performance management
- Employee engagement
- Learning and development
- Compensation and benefits
- Company culture
- Workforce planning, including internal hiring and succession planning
Talent management practices are the different ways companies bring exceptional employees on board, ensure their happiness at work, and retain them long-term. Your strategy answers questions like:
- Where do recruiters find the best candidates?
- How does my company engage its employees?
- Why do employees choose to stay or leave my organization?
- How does my company compete with other employers to win top talent?
- Are we providing sufficient talent development and career growth opportunities?
- How does my company handle employee departures, including retirements, terminations, and resignations?
- What is my organization’s ideal headcount today? In five years? In ten years?
Talent management strategy not only helps you effectively recruit, engage, and retain your people now but also enables your HR team to plan more accurately for the future. Some certainty amid all the uncertainties we’ve experienced is certainly an excellent reason to develop a talent management strategy for your workforce.
Most HR teams use software to set up and manage their talent management framework. HR software for talent management includes applicant tracking systems, employee onboarding software, performance management and engagement systems, payroll and benefits administration, and people data analysis. Other teams use a total talent management system to handle their strategy, which connects — or replaces — their various software solutions.
What Are the Key Components of Talent Management?
Seamless talent management strategies are built via the efficient management of each of its components. It’s essential to consider how these building blocks work together to build a talent management framework that drives business success.
Your strategies for these HR functions are what determine the effectiveness of your overarching talent management strategy:
- Talent Acquisition and Recruitment: Your methods to attract, find, and hire talent, including your employer brand and candidate experience
- Employee Development: Your approach to offering and supporting training and development opportunities, including internal mobility
- Performance Management: How you set performance expectations and give employee feedback, including goal-setting and performance reviews
- Succession Planning: Your plans for ensuring key leadership positions remain filled, future leadership needs, and closing skills gaps
- Engagement and Retention: Your methods for creating a positive company culture and increasing employee satisfaction to encourage retention, including employee recognition and workplace flexibility
Talent management is all about providing an optimal employee experience through their complete life cycle, from their first encounter with your brand until their departure. With solid strategies for each of these components, you’re tuned in to what your workforce needs and how you can best support them from application to offboarding.
Why Is Talent Management Important?
A holistic approach to talent management helps ensure you offer an employee experience in which your people have the support they need to:
- Fulfill their role responsibilities
- Grow their strengths and gain new skills
- Maintain their well-being
When these needs are met, your people are more engaged and better equipped to meet their performance goals and contribute to the success of their teams, which, in turn, determines business performance. To put it simply, a talent management strategy enables greater business success.
Talent management statistics show that effective strategies improve employee performance, engagement, and retention:
- Among employees unlikely to look for a new job, 69% say their work is fulfilling.
- 76% of employees say they work harder for a company that invests in their growth.
- 37% of employees would be motivated to do better work more often if they received more personal recognition.
With the right talent management processes and software, HR functions are aligned with business goals, and your people are able to reach their full potential, giving organizations a strong competitive advantage. That’s why it’s important to plan a full-scale talent management strategy and consider what tools you’ll need to execute it.
What Are Talent Management Best Practices?
According to McKinsey, there are three indicators of talent management success:
- Rapid talent allocation, or the ability to reassign talent swiftly when business priorities change
- An HR team that’s involved in creating a positive employee experience
- An HR team that plans and operates strategically
But how do you get there? Follow these best practices to support a successful talent management strategy.
1. Align With Business Strategy
To be as effective as possible, your talent management strategy should be directly informed by the business’s goals. If, for example, one of its annual goals is to increase the number of brick-and-mortar locations, your talent management strategy should include increased recruitment efforts in those geographic areas. This alignment ensures that your team is focusing on work that contributes to the overall success of the company and establishes the impact of HR as a strategic department.
Talent Management Strategy Tip: Establish top-down goal alignment as the standard practice at your company. With this approach, individual performance goals support departmental goals, which align with business objectives. This transparency motivates employees, making it clear how their team — and their own work — contributes to achieving big company goals.
2. Support Learning and Development (L&D)
There’s a wealth of evidence that employees with access to skill development and career growth opportunities are happier at work. They’re less likely to quit and more likely to be high performers, and they put more effort into their work.
When you create a culture of learning and constantly offer ways to learn new skills and hone strengths, you also create a more agile workforce. Employees with a wide range of skills can more easily pivot into new roles, giving you the chance to close skills gaps and extend their tenure.
Talent Management Strategy Tip: Employee onboarding is an excellent time to map out new hires’ desired career paths — and boost engagement while you’re at it. New hires are still fairly likely to quit during the first few weeks at a new job.
Give them a great reason to stay by showing them the possibilities for their future in the role during the onboarding process. Include a task for managers to work with the new employee to discuss the role’s career path and employees’ strengths and areas for growth.
3. Personalize Employee Experiences
Employee experience (EX) and company culture are tightly connected. When EX falls flat, even strong benefits and pay may not be enough to keep great people. When it is thoughtfully designed, it reinforces your values, builds trust, and helps you attract and keep an engaged, high-performing workforce.
Personalization is where culture becomes real for each person. It means shaping development, feedback, recognition, and work expectations around individual strengths, goals, and preferences so employees feel seen, respected, and that they belong. When people experience this kind of fit, they are more likely to live your values, advocate for your organization, and contribute to the culture you want.
Tailored experiences also bring your culture to life. If you say you value growth, you show it through individualized learning paths and visible internal mobility. If collaboration is important, create opportunities for cross-functional projects and peer recognition. These touchpoints shape how people describe “what it feels like” to work at your company — and that’s what becomes your culture.
Talent Management Strategy Tip: Learning opportunities tailored to each person’s strengths and interests are a powerful way to personalize EX and reinforce a culture of growth. Managers can amplify this by giving specific, constructive feedback in performance reviews and one-on-ones. They can also connect development conversations to your company values and career paths.
4. Leverage Data and Technology
In today’s world, operating strategically requires people management teams to leverage data and AI — no exceptions. Talent management software is the most efficient way to bring these tools into your strategy. With centralized systems for recruiting, onboarding, performance, engagement, and retention, your team can spend more time acting on insights instead of tracking them down.
AI takes that a step further. Intelligent HR platforms can spot patterns in your people data, recommend top-fit candidates, flag turnover risks, and even suggest personalized development pathways. Instead of guessing, HR teams gain a real-time understanding of workforce trends and can make proactive decisions.
With analytics and AI working together, you can build a talent management approach tailored to your organization — reworking strategies that fall flat, scaling the ones that succeed, and helping every employee reach their full potential.
Talent Management Strategy Tip: Download ClearCompany’s Buyer’s Guide to find a software solution that has everything your team needs to support a future-focused strategy.
5. Focus on Internal Mobility and Gig Work
The traditional career ladder is no longer the only way to retain employees and help them grow. Forward-thinking companies are building "career lattices" where employees move sideways, diagonally, and vertically to acquire new skills. Internal mobility is no longer just about promotions. It’s about unlocking the hidden potential of your workforce.
You might create an internal talent marketplace where employees can apply for short-term projects, or "gigs," in other departments. This strategy helps fill critical skill gaps rapidly without external hiring costs, and it re-engages employees who are at risk of quitting. By making internal movement so accessible, you show your team that their growth within the company is a priority.
Talent Management Strategy Tip: Audit your current internal transfer process to be sure it’s free of unnecessary roadblocks that stifle mobility. Shift to a culture where browsing internal opportunities is encouraged.
Measuring the Success of Your Talent Management Strategy
Your talent management strategy is only as good as its results. You need to track metrics that tell you if it’s having the intended impact on your business — or not. Going from guesswork to data-backed evidence means you can better demonstrate your strategy’s value, secure buy-in for future initiatives, and refine your approach over time.
Before you start any new initiatives, establish a baseline for key performance indicators (KPIs) so you start with a clear point of comparison to measure progress. Key metrics to monitor include:
- Employee Retention Rates: A rising retention rate, especially among top performers, is a strong indicator that your talent strategy is working. Analyze turnover data to see if you are successfully keeping the talent you want to keep, like those with specialized skills or high performers.
- Employee Engagement Scores: Use regular pulse surveys or annual engagement studies to gauge employee morale, satisfaction, and commitment. Higher engagement scores often go hand-in-hand with higher productivity and a healthier work culture — a sign you’re managing talent the right way.
- Time-to-Fill and Quality of Hire: Track how long it takes to fill open positions and look at performance trends for new hires after their first year. If your strategy is successful, you’ll see reduced hiring times while the quality of candidates improves.
Measure these KPIs consistently so your HR team can make data-driven decisions that strengthen your talent management strategy.
How To Find the Best Talent Management System for Your Company
A great talent strategy needs more than vision — it needs technology that makes it real. The right talent management system becomes the engine behind your strategy, helping HR move from administrative support to a strategic partner that hires, develops, and retains high performers.
Ready to define what “right” looks like for your organization and avoid an expensive mismatch? ClearCompany’s Talent Management System Buyer’s Guide walks you step-by-step through the evaluation process so you can invest with confidence.
Download the guide to learn how to:
- Prioritize your organization’s wants and needs
- Connect market and HR trends to your own goals
- Build a strong business case and get executive and HR buy-in
- Ask high-impact questions in vendor demos
- Thoroughly vet and compare talent management systems so you choose a solution that fits today and scales for tomorrow
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