The troubled times of the Covid pandemic are becoming an increasingly distant memory, but when it comes to the way we work there have been two major shifts.
One is the increase of remote and hybrid working, bringing new challenges in terms of increased pressure on leaders, a lack of mentors and interaction for junior staff working from home, and technology.
Such issues around working from home are counteracted by benefits such as greater flexibility, while studies have shown that hybrid working makes employees happier, healthier and more productive.
The other major change during the pandemic was the Great Resignation. This phenomenon saw thousands of workers leave their jobs, either to retire or to find roles with a better work-life balance.
In the wake of the pandemic in 2022, The Office of National Statistics revealed there were 565,000 more people in economic inactivity than there had been prior to the Covid outbreak. This number was concentrated largely on the over-50s.
This loss of talent resulted in the creation of skills gap within the workforce and a shortage of available candidates, while organisations faced challenges around recruiting in a virtual world and deploying employees remotely.
During this time of unprecedented change, talent mapping became an important tool to monitor organisational skills gaps and proactively determine future talent needs.
Even though the initial ruption of the Great Resignation has eased, a lack of workers with the required skills is still restricting growth across the UK. A Reed Talent Solutions survey of 1,000 hiring managers, conducted in June 2023, found 77% believed it was either very, or somewhat likely, that a lack of access to workers equipped with the skill sets they require will restrict growth within their business over the next three years.
We have created this talent mapping guide to help define what talent mapping is, outline the responsibilities of a talent acquisition specialist, and to provide guidance on creating a talent mapping strategy.
What is talent mapping?
The world of work is constantly changing, with automation and artificial intelligence on the rise, the growing importance of diversity and questions around the kind of talent an organisation will need to recruit to reach the next level. One way of organisations responding to these changes is through the implementation of talent mapping.
Talent mapping is vital to define organisational talent strategy. It can be used to find the right professional for each role and to help retain high-performing employees, while improving the skill sets of workers throughout the business.
Organisations can use talent mapping to create a clear picture of their talent pool, identifying where talent and skills are lacking. This can then be used to adapt existing recruitment strategies, as part of an effective and efficient talent acquisition strategy, to fill those skills gaps and develop talent sourcing processes.
Benefits of talent mapping
Most organisations struggle with challenges such as capturing the attention of top talent, maintaining compliance, managing employee turnover, and streamlining hiring processes efficiently.
Talent mapping has the capability to deal with all these issues and more, including:
Identify and fill skills gaps
Talent mapping allows organisations to see the types of skills and talent they need, but currently lack or might lack in the future.
By identifying those gaps, they can work to fill them by recruiting new talent or by reskilling and upskilling current employees.
The use of talent mapping will also prevent skills shortages in the first place. By using the data collected, organisations will be able to assess their future needs and develop the necessary strategies.
Develop training and learning strategies
Organisations which use talent mapping will be able to develop training programmes that target the skills gaps which have been identified. This will allow them to close those skills gaps quickly, attract and retain the top talent available, build a succession plan, and strengthen their employee value proposition.
Improve talent retention
As with training and learning strategies, the use of talent mapping allows organisations to identify employees who can benefit from growth opportunities. Talent mapping has the potential to facilitate succession planning by helping organisations identify and groom potential new managers or those who can fill key roles. This will boost staff morale and improve retention across the business.
Better workforce planning
Talent mapping can result in better decision-making around resource allocation, from the hiring of new employees to the development of training programmes and business goals. By providing accurate data about the talent organisations have, and what they need, talent mapping will allow businesses to develop a workforce plan which will help them to grow and have the right people in place at the right time.
What are the challenges of talent mapping?
Despite its many benefits, talent mapping is not a simple process to implement. It takes time and effort to collect and analyse the data that needs to be collected to provide the insights necessary to combat skills gaps and develop your workforce.
Data collection requirements
In order to successfully implement a talent mapping strategy, organisations will require a lot of accurate data.
To create a comprehensive talent map, everything from your goals and objectives, the current talent market and your employee’s existing skills levels will have to be assessed carefully.
This process requires a lot of time and effort, leading to inevitable business costs, but without it, organisations can suffer from costly hiring mistakes, poor assumptions about their talent needs and an inability to source and hire the best people.
Working across departments
Talent mapping also requires thoughtful planning and the involvement of all departments across an organisation. It can often be a challenge to get everyone on board with the process.
Leadership buy-in is an essential part of any talent mapping strategy. Without it, human resources departments will struggle to work effectively with mid-level managers to collect the required data.
Difficulties with long-term planning
With the world of work changing so quickly predicting long-term needs can be difficult, even when equipped with a lot of quality data. From advanced technology leading to employees requiring new skills to learnings around developments in areas such as equality, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, there is a need for businesses to be constantly reacting to workplace developments. This means talent mapping can never be a one-time process, with organisations required to regularly reassess their talent needs and skills gaps.
Guide – How to use talent mapping to support your company’s goals
To develop a thorough talent mapping process, organisations need to decide what data they need to gather, how to collect it and how to identify skills gaps.
Follow these steps to develop a winning strategy:
1. Identify your company goals and ideal employees
The first stage of talent mapping in recruitment involves an assessment of existing talent and skills levels, along with the aims and requirements of an organisation.
Questions to be asked will include:
What are your goals for the next year, and beyond?
What talent and skills do you need to achieve those goals?
Where are you currently lacking skills?
What challenges are you facing as a result of skills gaps?
What investment is available to enable your workforce to develop?
At the same time, organisations should draw up an ideal candidate or employee persona, analysing experience and skills requirements. This will serve as a benchmark to help hirers find the most suitable candidates.
2. Define your hiring needs
Effective talent mapping requires organisations to define their hiring needs based on the objectives identified in step one.
Goals can vary from a desire for fast growth to downsizing, and recruitment needs will be very different as a result.
This process will also include developing an understanding of what your competitors are doing. By analysing the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, an organisation can make their own strategy more effective and uncover opportunities to improve processes, including onboarding and the use of automation.
As part of mapping out your hiring needs, it is also important to create talent pools full of ready-made candidates who can fill any gaps in your organisation that may arise.
3. Evaluate what data you will need
Next, organisations will need to consider the data required to create your talent map, and where you will get that from.
This can include collecting data by conducting a skills inventory to list all the skills and knowledge present in your current workforce, and via employee performance reviews and surveys.
A skills inventory will include an analysis of both hard skills, such as software or language skills, and soft skills, including communication and problem solving. This will provide the vital information you’ll need to work out current skills levels in your workforce and to decipher what talent you need to look to recruit.
This data can then be used to populate your talent map.
4. Create job descriptions for new roles
Job descriptions contain the essential responsibilities of any role within an organisation, outlining a high-level overview of the skills, experience and knowledge required to carry it out.
The data captured as part of talent mapping can be used to draw up job descriptions for all new roles and to help organisations write effective job advertisements.
5. Use talent mapping tools
When dealing with such a plethora of data, it is vital to have the right talent mapping tools in place. Having the right candidate relationship management (CRM) tool will boost the speed and scalability of your recruitment process.
The right talent mapping tool will have the ability to build talent pools, deal with analytics and reporting, and be both flexible and quick to implement.
9 box grid for talent mapping and free template
What is 9 box grid?
9 box grid is a talent mapping tool used by human resources departments to map employees in terms of both performance and potential.
All employees are mapped on a 3x3 9 box talent grid, with one side showing performance from high to low, and the other showing potential on the same scale.
The 9 box grid model is a universal tool to use because it has the ability to align talent management and development initiatives to where they add most value.
How to use 9 box grid template
A 9 box grid template can be used to assess how well an employee is likely to perform in the future in line with what the organisation is looking to achieve.
The first step of the process will see employees assessed based on their performance. For example, someone’s performance would be judged as low if it doesn’t match their job requirements and as high if they fully match those targets.
Next, those same employees will be evaluated based on their potential. Someone who has low potential will already be working to the maximum of their ability, either because they are unable to improve or due to a lack of motivation. Conversely, an employee with high potential will be performing well beyond what is expected of them and are ready to take on more complex or challenging tasks.
Once these assessments are carried out, an organisation will undertake a candidate mapping process by plotting each individual into the grid.
The explanation of 9 box grid’s categories
Employees who do well in their jobs but are ranked as having low potential for growth are likely to contribute consistently but not offer improvement or development within their role. Meanwhile, high-performing individuals, with lots of potential, will be seen as future high-fliers within an organisation.
Finally, those who are both low performing and have low potential will need attention for management.
This type of assessment talent mapping will allow organisations to create an action plan on how to manage employees categorised in each box. Talent management efforts should be concentrated on those people with greater potential for growth rather than on underperformers.
Organisations should look to identify suitable roles for those high performance, high potential employee that will allow them to continue to flourish and progress, while analysing any personal or professional roadblocks that may be causing low performance or a lack of growth.
Download our template by clicking on the button at the top of this page.
