Posted by Aoife Gorey 
The definition of talent management, according to Johns Hopkins University, is “A set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees. The goal of talent management is to create a high-performance, sustainable organization that meets its strategic and operational goals and objectives.” The words I’d like to point out here are attract, develop, motivate, and retain. With the way the workforce is practically changing daily, it seems as though the definition of talent management should be slightly modified. Let us breakdown these key words to explain.
The process of attracting talent in the business world is not a simple definition. Talent is a broad term that could be referring to experience, behavioral traits, skill level of a certain position, or all three. Fortunately, modern technology has made it easier to find the right talent with solutions such asassessments. Obtaining talent is a task in itself that must be completed before development, motivation, and retention can take place.
The next step is development of said talent. After talented individuals have been acquired, they must be trained to accurately represent and perform for their organization. Again, this step has been simplified with processes such as training seminars and onboarding techniques. With the simplification of these first two steps at hand, the main focus of talent management has become motivation and retention.
Motivation and retention happen to be coinciding terms. Both can be achieved through employee engagement, and both are highly important in talent management. Lately, organizations have switched their talent management focus more to one of employee engagement or retention. The business world is becoming more aware of the necessity to acknowledge employees as individuals with varying needs and skills. Rather than using talent management as a blanket term to cover everyone in a general manner, which neglects employees’ specific abilities and personalities, it is now a more common practice to cater to the individual with specialized employee engagement tactics.
All of this begs the question: is there new meaning to the phrase talent management? I personally think it’s safe to assume that there is. What was once a search for talented employees has now become a compilation of strategies to transform and improve the individuals providing said talent. As the years pass and the modern workplace advances, talent management may even become more of an elastic term and change yet again.
Josh Bersin recently wrote, Is "Corporate Talent Management" Dead? What's Next? In his article, he outlined that it's a shift away from "Talent: to a focus on "People." "engagement, empowerment, and environment are now the real issues companies face." Download our eBook “Trending in Talent Management” today.
