Human Resource Management Courses: Tips About How to Develop Talent

What is talent development within an organisation?

Talent development is the process of identifying, nurturing, and enhancing the skills and knowledge of employees within a business to improve their performance.

The goal of talent development is to help enhance the employee’s abilities, ultimately leading to higher levels of profitability for the company.

Talent development activities include succession planning, mentoring, on-the-job learning, online education, and more.

Talent development shouldn’t be confused with talent acquisition or talent management. Whereas talent development involves improving skills, talent acquisition refers to finding and hiring the right employees.

Furthermore, talent management involves the entire process — from finding and hiring employees to developing their skills and keeping them happy.

Learning and development are critical to South Africa’s transformation and economic growth. This is why The Skills and Development Act seeks to empower the SA workforce with skills and ensure there’s space for new workers.

Benefits of talent development

There are several reasons why talent development is crucial in today’s workforce. These include, but aren’t limited to:

Improve performance and productivity
Talent development is an excellent way to improve employee performance and productivity.

Employees who build their skills can complete tasks faster and with fewer mistakes.

Since business processes (especially those of larger companies) typically involve a chain of activities, employees can finish their work faster and send it to the next phase much quicker.

Retain employees (especially those with a specific skill level)
According to LinkedIn’s How Learning Programs Attract and Retain Top Talent Report, 56% of organisations struggle to keep high-potential and top-performing employees.

The same report states that 45% of employees who leave companies do so because of a concern over a lack of advancement opportunities.

This means that employees want the possibility to advance in their careers within a company. An excellent way for them to achieve this is through skill development.

Thus, by offering talent development at your company, you show employees that if they’re willing to enhance their skills, they could climb the corporate ladder within your organisation.

Meet transformation goals
South Africa’s workforce needs to be improved for the country to compete globally. Therefore, skills development is essential in allowing employees to unleash their unique attributes and talents to aid economic growth.

If all South African businesses work together to train people and grow the talent pool, the entire company and its people will benefit.

Fill the skills gaps
Hiring employees with all the skills necessary to get the job done isn’t always possible. So, what are HR managers to do?

Talent development helps HR managers identify employees with existing or transferable skills that can be developed. From there, they can create pathways for these employees to reach their full potential.

As a result, the employee will become highly skilled, and the company will get better results.

Role of an HR practitioner in talent development

HR practitioners are responsible for recruiting top talent and managing workers. They must ensure employee performance remains high by developing or identifying training programs to build staff members’ skills.

This often involves mentoring employees and providing suitable training materials and resources to help them succeed.

They also need to work with employees to create long-term goals with the company, such as a clear roadmap to getting promotions. This way, employees’ “lifetime” with a company increases.

HR practitioners must collaborate with managers from other departments to develop plans for improving the work environment and providing good skills development opportunities for employees within that department.

To be a good HR practitioner, you need the following skills:

• Excellent listening skills
• Outstanding verbal and written corporate communication abilities
• Honesty, integrity, and a good attitude to set a good example
• Interpersonal skills
• Problem-solving and conflict resolution

Discover more on the subject with How to become an HR Manager with Human Resource Management.

How to develop talent in an organisation or business

Human resource management courses will teach HR practitioners to develop talent in an organisation. They’ll typically need to follow these steps.

1. Understand the company’s objectives
HR practitioners first need to understand the company’s objectives and goals.

• What is it that the company wants to achieve?
• What’s the company’s 5–year plan?
• By determining the company’s goals, HR practitioners will better understand the type of employees and skills needed to get the job done.

As a result, they can invest in the right initiatives to help the company reach its objectives.

2. Assess talent
Next, they need to take inventory of their current employees and see what skills they already possess as well as the necessary skills and capabilities they need.

During this phase, they will ask themselves questions such as:

• Which employees already have valuable skills that can be developed with training?
• Which employees have the temperament to learn these new skills and progress into leadership positions?

In doing so, they’ll identify the best candidates for taking part in upskilling programs.

3. Build an effective talent development strategy
Once the HR practitioner identifies the company objectives and candidates for skills development, they can build the strategy.

This includes identifying upskilling initiatives to help employees develop their abilities, nurturing a growth mindset within the organisation, and working with department managers.

After effectively developing the strategy, they can manage it by ensuring employees are taking part in the training and tracking data to measure results against performance goals.

Study Human Resource Management courses with MANCOSA

Now that you know what talent development is and what role HR managers play, does this sound like your ideal career?

Human Resource Management courses or human resource management distance learning will help you develop the necessary skills to become an HR practitioner.

Head over to our Higher Certificate in Human Resource Management to learn more about what’s included in the course.