This document provides an overview of talent management strategies for small businesses. It discusses the benefits of talent management, which include aligning employees with goals, improving communication, recognizing performance, and providing development opportunities. It then offers specific strategies for small businesses to attract, engage, and retain top talent, including building an internal and external brand, effective recruiting, performance management, learning and development, and succession planning. The presentation emphasizes that talent management is just as important for small businesses as it is for large companies.

1. Attracting, Engaging and
Retaining Top Talent
Winning the Battle
Presented By:
Terri Joosten

2.  Benefits of Small Business
 Obstacles to Small Business
 Importance of Talent Management
 How To Make Changes
 Building a Brand Internal and External
 Recruiting
 Performance
 Learning/Development
 Succession Planning
 Analytics
 Industry Facts
 Conclusions
 Technology Decisions
 Solution Review

3.  Companies with employee base of under 500
 In some cases with less than 1000 if HR is
really being under utilized or if large amounts
of part-time or season help.

4.  Direct Line of Sight and Reporting to
CEO/Owner
 Limited Silos (departments with conflicting
objectives)
 Easier Access to Entire Employee Base

5.  Budget
 Time
 HR Foot Print
◦ People
◦ Process
◦ Technology
 Perceived HR Value

8. Small businesses can benefit in a variety of significant ways
from talent management strategies and initiatives. For
starters, talent management can help any small business:
1. Align employee activities to corporate goals;
2. Improve internal communication;
3. Provide recognition and feedback in real-time;
4. Manage the employee performance review process;
5. Give employees the ability to manage their own careers;
6. Provide development and training opportunities
7. Give important “people information” to managers and
executives
8. Build better managers
9. Help attract top performers
10. Retain top performers

9.  What Employees are looking for in an
employer

11. 85% of candidates are looking for career
development

12.  Organizations in are attempting to brand
their organizations as an “employer of choice”
in order to attract and retain top talent

13.  Our People are our Biggest Asset!
 Saying you’re great is not good enough you
need to walk the talk

15. People, People, People………

16.  Most small companies don’t have a brand
 Brain Storm Session
◦ Department Heads
◦ What makes your company competitive in market
◦ What differentiates your company from competitors
 Competencies
◦ Core (Strengths) – Customer Service, Quality
◦ Unique – Google/Creativity

17.  Once you have the competencies you need to
communicate
◦ Mission Statement
◦ Tag Line – on web site (including careers), on letter head, add to
logo, in sales presentations, etc.
◦ Monthly employee newsletter focus on attainments that map to
corporate competency achievements from company, department
and individual level
◦ Performance – Rate your staff on how they are doing against your
company competencies
◦ Develop – provide opportunities for your employees to improve in
these areas
◦ Suggestions – allow employees opportunities to help improve on
these competencies (Suggestion Box, Reward program for
savings, etc.)
◦ Walk the talk! Make sure your company is focused on these
competencies
“If you build it they will come”

18.  How do I promote my open roles!
◦ Employee Referrals
 Offer incentive - cash, movie tickets, draw prize
◦ On your career site
 Have trouble getting them on your site?
 Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
 Often thought to be cost prohibitive
 Free systems
 Saas Systems from $80-$150/mth
 Re-usable database
 Posts directly to career site
 Online management and tracking of applicants

19. ◦ Aggregation Boards –
indeed, simplyhired, wowjobs, careerjet
 Free
 Best at SEO (search engine optimization)
 Increases number of applicants at no cost
◦ Social Media
 Linkedin
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Craigslist, Kijiji
 Use Apps like tweetdeck to automate process
 Don’t believe social networks work Red Balloon
 Built in posting capabilities in ATS systems, RSS feeds, or
manual posting links or tinyurls

22. Career Path
My Job Development
Plan
Skills &
Competency
Dream
Job
Measure
Performance
Motivate, Engage and Develop your Future
Leaders

23.  Aligning your organization, departments and people
to corporate goals and objectives
 Create as often as possible a direct line of sight into
how each employee contributes to the organization
 Competencies – reinforcing and measuring
◦ Formal review process online or paper based
◦ Monthly or at least quarterly meetings with manager
 Review performance – check list
 Goals and Development Plans (present and future
roles)
 Automated Performance Reviews
◦ Cost effective systems for $’s/Employee/mth
◦ Real Time and year long - not what did I do last 60 days
◦ Year over year results
◦ Reduces objectivity – observable behaviours

24.  Invest in your employees development
◦ Job sharing
◦ Mentoring
 Compliance! (Certifications, Sexual Harassment)
 Free content online – Web is our friend
◦ Find appropriate content and create a place with links to approved
courses.
 Industry specific associations often have educational content and
events to enable development
 Buy and manage books, cd’s, courses
◦ Tuition reimbursement
◦ Annual budget per employee for training
 Learning Management Solution
◦ Buy or develop content
◦ Employee Self Service
◦ Tie to development needs
 For present role
 To get to future roles

25. Definition
Succession Planning is the process of getting
the right people, at the right cost, at the right
time again and again, by planning for changes in the workforce.
 Identify Key Roles
◦ Not just C-Level
 Any role that is difficult to fill (labor shortage) or when empty costs the organization not
just in production but in soft costs relationships, time to gain knowledge lost
 Identify key skills and competencies required for key roles
 Take internal look for possible replacements
◦ Understand investment needed to get them ready for key roles
 Too often this is never followed up on once key successor is determined be diligent on
continued development
◦ If no internal resources identify external resources and track them (linkedin,
facebook) know where they are and what they are doing.
 Schedule meetings to check your plan, ask department heads who do
you have available should employee ABC leave? Things change and if
your don’t review your plan it will no longer be a plan!

26.  Measure! Measure! Measure!
 Accountability
 Return on Investment (ROI)
 Improvements – Time, Money, Employee
Satisfaction!
 Technology makes reporting easier as built in
analytics to track performance improvements
 Turn over, time to hire, employee
satisfaction, company
performance, individual performance

27.  Improved Performance
 Improved ground-breaking 11-year study
A
Financial Output
 Happier People/Retention
entitled Corporate Culture and
Performance by Kotter and
 Better Culture which included more that 200
Heskett, and Ability to Attract and
companies from 22 industries, found
Retain Top Talent that instituted
that companies
performance-enhancing
cultures, including a robust and relevant
performance-management
system, significantly outperformed those
organizations without such a culture in
all of the major financial categories.

28. Here are just a few highlights from the volume of studies done globally which
show a positive relationship or correlation between employee engagement and
business performance…
 Highly engaged employees outperform their disengaged colleagues by 20 –
28%. (The Conference Board)
 Engaged employees generate 40%+ more revenue than disengaged ones.
(Hay Group)
 84% of highly engaged employees believe they can impact the quality of their
company’s work product compared with 31% of the disengaged. (Towers
Perrin)
 70% of engaged employees indicate they have a good understanding of how
to meet customer needs, while only 17% of non-engaged employees say the
same. (Right Management)
 68% of the highly engaged believe they can impact costs in their job or unit
versus 19% of the disengaged. (Towers Perrin)
 Engaged employees taken an average of nearly 60% fewer sick days per year
than disengaged employees. (Gallup)
 Engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave the organization than the
disengaged. (Corporate Leadership Council)

29.  Talent Management is equally important in SMB
as in Large organizations
 Communication is still a key to success
◦ Do it well and do it often!
 There are ways to manage your people cost
effectively
◦ Free
◦ SaaS solutions priced for your market
 You have to be the advocate and cheer leader but
you need C-Level buy in
 Align your companies mission with their people
so it becomes part of your culture
 Monthly check lists for HR and Managers

30. Point Solution = Partial Intelligence

33. Attraction Development
Retention
Engagement Management
Find, Manage, Motivate and Empower

34. Terri Joosten
Director of Sales
tjoosten@hrsmart.com
905-754-0200 ext 230