Building Successful Talent Management Programs Through Employee Experience

Gallup defines the employee experience as:

The journey an employee takes with your organization. It includes every interaction that happens along the employee life cycle, plus the experiences that involve an employee’s role, workspace, manager, and well-being.

There are countless studies on the employee experience, why this is important, and the impact that it has across the full employee lifecycle. According to this HBR article, research shows that companies that perform well on employee experience metrics also tend to perform well on customer experience metrics and here HBR explores how employee experience impacts your bottom line.

According to McLean and Company in their HR Trends Report 2023, employee experience is associated with more favorable organization outcomes. Organizations that are high-performing at designing employee experiences are much more likely to report they are high-performing across multiple measures, including:

• 2.4 times better DEI performance (31% vs. 75%)
• 2 times improved ability to quickly change (38% vs. 76%) 
• 1.9 times better on innovation (42% vs. 80%)
• 1.8 times improved workforce productivity (51% vs. 89%) 
• 1.4 times better overall organizational performance (58% vs. 84%)

The case for this is clear, but often organizations struggle to get this right or see this through. A personalized experience takes you a step further, and talent today expects this more than ever before.

A personalized talent experience helps build a connection with your brand, increases loyalty and commitment, and shows you understand the needs of talent within your business. In this blog, I want to share five practical tips on how to improve the employee experience (EX) when it comes to managing your internal talent management programs and initiatives.

5 practical tips on improving your EX within your talent management programs and initiatives

Tip 1: Get the message across clearly and with an impact

We often hear our customers talk about the importance of talent management within their organization, and that mobility is key for them as this retains talent. Many of our clients already have a solid program in place to identify future or high potentials or ‘ready now’ talent for those next opportunities. However, far too often when asked how these programs are communicated, we hear a familiar story. This was done via an email, a roadshow, or an internal call. While these are all valid communication methods, employees expect something more personal, more engaging, something captivating and exciting, and this first step is often one of the biggest challenges—how to convey the impact and benefits in a personalized and meaningful way—that gets your employee excited and want to hear more.

Tip 2: Be clear on the purpose and benefits

The value proposition for the individual signing up needs to be clear—what they should expect, what is in it for them, how this will benefit them and their career, what this unlocks for them, and why they should commit to this. These are all the questions that should be addressed in your message to ensure the success of your initiative. If this is unclear or unrealistic, employees may shy away from signing up.

A personalized talent experience helps build a connection with your brand, increases loyalty and commitment, and shows you understand the needs of talent within your business.

Tip 3: Be clear on the commitment needed from your employees

While talent programs and initiatives may have clear benefits for employees and organizations, they may not have clear expectations outlined for the individual who opts in. This is a crucial step to ensure that those who enter the program or are part of the initiative know what is needed for them to make an informed decision. Not outlining this clearly has a clear impact on the Return on Investment (ROI) of your program and may result in many individuals being unable to see this through to a conclusion.

Tip 4: Make it real—share success stories and lived experiences

One of the best ways to showcase a talent program or initiative is to take employees through a real lived experience of individuals who have gone through this themselves. This could cover elements including why the individual opted in, what their experience was like, what they enjoyed and what their greatest challenges were, what this opportunity meant for them and their career, and how it enabled them on their journey. Successful participants may also serve as mentors and could play a role in supporting others through this journey.

Tip 5: Deliver on the promise

Whether career growth and opportunities or access to a mentor to close identified learning gaps/experience gaps was promised, this is one of the most important steps in your talent initiative. Delivering against what was promised is crucial—to build trust, create future program ambassadors, and demonstrate real value for employees. In designing your program or initiative, this should be one of your first considerations to ensure the intended outcome for both the individual and organization is realized.

You may be in a position to launch a new talent management program or initiative and are not quite sure where to start or how to bring this to life. SHL has helped thousands of customers across the world with this exact thing – whether it is creating a next-gen candidate experience or demonstrating what a personalized employee assessment experience could be like—we have the right solution for you.

If you want to hear more from us, please contact one of our representatives so we can help you build a successful talent management program!