You may be asking yourself, what if anything should I do with talent management in these uncertain times? The answer is clearly to invest in your human capital to optimize performance. Now more than ever, leading companies will emerge and separate themselves from the losers. Being on top of your company’s talent and organizational drive means being part of the winners.

Invest in Talent

Through performance reviews you will stimulate a performance driven culture within the organization. Through management performance review processes or 360 degree employee feedback reviews, employees will be stimulated by individual development opportunities.  Accumulated results also provide management with the right set of tools to keep everyone on their feet, through motivation and leveraging strengths and addressing challenges. 

Invest in Company Goals

In times of crisis, companies can no longer ponder around with business as usual. This means setting goals for your company, getting the best out of your talent base and knowing how or whether your people are aligned with your company's goals and strategies.  Market analysts have speculated that many companies will in one way or another be adversely affected by the financial crisis currently underway. All the more reason to fine tune your talent base.

We have long proclaimed the necessity for companies to be proactive with talent, in good times and bad. We've asserted that to remain competitive and keep productivity high, you will also need checks and balances on company and individual employee level performance. Now seizing the moment, to introduce these online tools or enhance your current strategy, will allow you to reap the benefits in the short and long term, staying ahead of the competition.

Here are some pointers that may help:

• 1) Come up with proper goals and strategies that fit and focus on your people and the current external environment.
• 2) Get to the point. Without getting harsh with the reality of the current environment and what that could mean for your people; you have to allow good performers to excel and be aware of the low performers.
• 3) Be able to focus on your performing talent base. Make sure you provide the proper tools to invest in this base. Be cognisant of the fact that these true performers  remain on your radar.
• 4) Transparency. In trying times it is up to you to communicate and be transparent in order to avoid rumours. In a Watson & Wyatt study, companies with high trust outperform companies with low trust by 168% , (source Watson Wyatt).