Practice 3 of an Effective Talent Management Strategy illustrates how to define priorities and a talent management programs’ roadmap to achieve an upgraded state. This Practice Guide provided by Wowledge is part of a series with four practices needed to craft an effective Talent Management Strategy, including specific steps and tools. The complete series included at this level are: 1 - Selecting areas of focus aligned with business and talent management drivers. 2 - Assessing talent management needs and aspirations to establish best practices to target. 3 - Defining priorities and a talent management programs’ roadmap to achieve an upgraded state. 4 - Adapting practices and creating plans to implement or improve talent management programs. Progression overviews and practice guides on these topics and other key HR programs available to members at https://wowledge.com/ Wowledge is the expert-driven platform for lean teams building modern HR programs. Members enjoy access to up-to-date best practices, step-by-step guides, tools, templates, and insights to accelerate the design and implementation of all key HR programs and processes. Since each organization has unique characteristics, needs, and aspirations, Wowledge's practices are developed utilizing an exclusive stage-based approach – from Core to Advanced to Emerging – that reflects distinct levels of sophistication to meet our members where they are. Get started for FREE at Wowledge.com

1. CraftinganEffectiveTalent
ManagementStrategy(Practice3)
Howtodefineprioritiesandatalentmanagement
programs’roadmaptoachieveanupgradedstate.
PracticeGuide

2. TALENT
MANAGEMENT
STRATEGY
OVERVIEW

3. As a company de
fi
nes its business strategy, each
function must align its objectives and actions to
support its strategic goals. Talent management
strategy is a key process that the HR function follows
to accomplish this directive by identifying priorities
and setting up plans to advance talent management
practices. It is directly enabling corporate strategy. It is
a compass to decide how to design and prioritize
talent management and other HR programs, services,
and policies and guide how they should mature over
time.
This process follows a periodic cycle, typically
conducted on an annual basis, where the HR team
analyzes current and future business and organizational
needs, reviews its talent management programs and
practices to assess if they respond adequately to those
needs, and identi
fi
es adjustments.
Whatitis
3
These improvements may enhance the effectiveness
and ef
fi
ciency of services provided in response to
regulatory, operational, technological, or employee
experience opportunity areas.
Talent management strategy is different from “Talent
Strategy”, which includes looking into business
requirements in terms of the capabilities required by
the organization, the ways to access them in the
market, and their development, maintenance, and
retention. It is also distinct from “HR Strategy”, which
focuses on de
fi
ning how to organize and operate the
HR function, as well as determining what processes,
policies, and services will be part of it at any given
stage.

4. Talent management strategy is useful for prioritizing
time and investment decisions on the most important
initiatives for the organization, not only the most
urgent. It is an overarching plan that encompasses all
talent management areas, helping align the HR agenda
with the business strategy.
It allows HR teams and key stakeholders across the
business to collaborate and agree on main objectives
and a roadmap of improvement initiatives.
The scope typically comprises programs supporting
the worker life cycle, which involves attracting,
accessing, engaging, managing, augmenting,
developing, and transitioning talent. Nevertheless, the
process creates the opportunity to holistically review
other areas driven by HR to evaluate and improve.
Whyuseit
4

5. Definingprioritiesandatalent
managementprograms’roadmap
to achieve an upgraded state.
PRACTICE
GUIDE L1
Progression

6. In a world with unlimited resources, organizations and
HR teams would implement all the initiatives
identi
fi
ed as desired practices. However, it is often
necessary to prioritize based on a number of
important considerations.
Howitworks
6
Value Alignment: The degree of impact on the
company’s value drivers. These might be business,
organizational, or outcome based, including:
a. Support of business strategy or transformation –
Impact or contribution that the practice could have on
business objectives or transformative projects.
b. Enable future business growth – Extent to which
the initiative sets the company up for future success
from a business or organizational perspective.
c. Improvement importance – The degree to which it
will be critical to improve on the particular area, based
on data from analyses, assessments, or feedback.
d. Impact on overall employee experience – The role
that the practice will have on enhancing employee
branding, creating positive employee experiences, or
helping align organizational culture.
Select differentiation factors and run
analysis to evaluate improvement
initiatives
The simplest approach to ensuring some degree of
analytical rigor while allowing leaders to visually
differentiate among options when defining the practices
most critical for the organization is to employ a
prioritization matrix.
The matrix requires two main categories to analyze and
map initiatives. Typically, the categories to use are value
alignment vs build difficulty.

7. Build Dif
fi
culty: How dif
fi
cult or easy it is to execute
the activities necessary to implement the practice or
initiative; the level of resources needed and other
requirements that might or not be available. Useful
differentiation factors to consider are:
a. Investment dependency – Financial resources required
to build and deploy the practice including technologies
needed not currently available in the organization.
b. Talent needed – Total relative (to the other
initiatives) number of people required and ability of
the organization or team to access the necessary
skillsets needed to implement.
c. Time required – Total time needed to have the
initiative up and running from the design or adaptation
of practices to its full rollout.
d. Degree of complexity – Rami
fi
cations that originate
from implementing and operating the new practice
including interdependencies with other functions of
the organization, processes, and systems, as well as
the extent of changes required.
7
Each practice initiative can be evaluated separately
considering the individual differentiation factors per
category based on an interval scale from 5 to 0, where
5 is the highest and 0 the lowest rating.
At this stage, it is not necessary to have very detailed
information or analysis, only enough to compare
initiatives.
Scores are added to obtain a total score per category
for each initiative to plot in the prioritization matrix.
The “Targeted Practice Prioritization Tool” can aid this
analysis.
Depending on the type of organization and the
emphasis on particular business objectives, the
categories might be switched for others or speci
fi
c
evaluation criteria might be different.

9. 9
The evaluation process provides an analytical basis for
a preliminary differentiation of the practices or
improvement initiatives up for consideration. This
initial view of priorities needs validation from key
stakeholders to obtain the appropriate buy-in from
the business and identify required resources.
This validation occurs through a working session
where participants collectively review the prioritization
matrix with the preliminary plotting of practice
initiatives.
During this meeting, stakeholders discuss the relative
importance of initiatives and may suggest changes to
the placement of each in the matrix and/or decide if a
particular initiative should be target over others.
Usually, initiatives placed at the top-right of the matrix
are considered “Quick Wins” due to their high degree
of impact on the value drivers.
They are also considered relatively easier to
implement than the rest. The second group of
initiatives are those at the top-left and identi
fi
ed as
“Highly Important”, ranking high in value but
considered more dif
fi
cult to implement. Most of the
discussion typically happens when deciding which of
the initiatives in the second group should be targeted
based on the budget and resources available.
There is a great degree of
fl
exibility with regards to
whom should attend this type of validation session,
but it is important to maintain the number of
participants to a manageable size. Some stakeholders
to consider include:
-The CEO and other top leaders
-Operational leaders (e.g. business units)
-Functional leaders (e.g.
fi
nance, planning, etc.)
-High Potential (HIPOs) leaders (they represent
future leaders and may have signi
fi
cant in
fl
uence)
-HR Team (to also function as facilitators)
Align on priorities with key
stakeholders

10. 10
The main outcome of the session is a validated selection of prioritized practice initiatives that stakeholders will support.
Additionally, there could be agreements on available resources, project owners, expected timelines, or the sequence to
follow to implement each initiative. In some cases, it may be considered outsourcing the implementation of some
initiatives to external parties, such as service providers, consultants, or freelancers.
At this stage, with a focus on only the targeted practice
initiatives, conducting further evaluation is necessary to
clarify what will be required for their design, build, and
deployment.Someoftheaspectstodefineperinitiativeare:
-Initiative project owner or leader
-Supporting team and roles
-Skillsets needed to design, build, and deploy
-Budget and main expenses
-Key interdependencies (other initiatives required to
be in place prior or to be implemented after)
-Time required to complete
-Stakeholders to be involved
-Decision for outsourcing support
All this information will be considered for and
re
fl
ected in a talent management programs’ roadmap.
Identify requirements and
capabilities
De
fi
ne high-level roadmap and
timelines
The talent management programs’ roadmap is a
planning document where initiatives are sequenced
based on an agreed time range that corresponds to the
improvement cycles. The purpose of the roadmap is to
distribute workload across time and consider
moments where there are other activities taking
employees’ or HR teams’ attention (e.g., when
performance reviews are being conducted or during
an engagement and satisfaction survey).
The roadmap is time-bound, with initiatives typically
falling in one of three time-horizons:
-NOW: Initiatives that are the basis for other
initiatives or have been classi
fi
ed as “Quick Wins”.

11. 11
-NEXT: Often for initiatives identi
fi
ed as “Highly
Important”.
-LATER: Usually for the rest of the initiatives or
those requiring multiple other initiatives to be
implemented previously.
The speci
fi
c time ranges vary for each company and
HR team based on their resources and other
commitments. When the improvement cycle is yearly,
the NOW stage is usually set to 3-6 months and the
NEXT phase to 6-12 months, with LATER initiatives
being pushed into the following year.
It is important to consider that some initiatives may
have a longer horizon (e.g., implementing a new
performance management process that must be
piloted in year one with a speci
fi
c audience and to the
rest of the organization in year two).
The other important distinction to make is to separate
initiatives into two classi
fi
cations, which will also
in
fl
uence the way initiatives are sequenced:
a. Independent Initiatives – These initiatives are not
dependent on other initiatives to be in implemented
fi
rst. That doesn’t mean that these initiatives might
not have requirements or link to initiatives already in
place in the organization. Further, these initiatives
may or may not be foundational for others in the
roadmap.
b. Interdependent Initiatives – These initiatives
require others in the roadmap to be in place before
being implemented. Therefore, they may need to be
sequenced later in the roadmap.
The “Talent Management Programs Roadmap Tool” can
be used to facilitate the planning exercise and
document
fi
nal decisions.
Visit Wowledge’s catalog of topics.

13. Wowledge is the expert-driven platform for lean
teams building modern HR programs. Members
enjoy access to up-to-date best practices, step-
by-step guides, tools, templates, and insights to
accelerate the design and implementation of all
key HR programs and processes.
Since each organization has unique characteristics,
needs, and aspirations, Wowledge's practices are
developed utilizing an exclusive stage-based
approach – from Core to Advanced to Emerging
– that reflects distinct levels of sophistication to
meet our members where they are.
About
Wowledge
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