5 Surprising Talent Management Stats That Will Astound Your C-Suite Execs

Your employees make business operations happen every day, and their performance is the key to productivity and profitability. But are you investing in their futures?

Keeping your employees engaged is a crucial talent management task for any company, and falling short on this front could have big consequences for your bottom line.  Explore five talent management statistics that you might find shocking.

• 24% of employees worldwide are "actively disengaged"
• 75% of companies agree it takes more time this year than last year to find the right talent to fill positions
• 71% of millennials expect to leave their employer in the next two years and are unhappy with how their leadership skills are being developed
• 87% of millennials rate "professional or career growth and development opportunities" as important to them in a job; 69% of non-millennials agree
• It can cost more than 30% of an annual salary to replace an entry-level employee, and even more for a mid- or senior-level position.

How do these numbers affect your business? You’re affected on two fronts – employee happiness and overall productivity.

When employees are disengaged, they’re not producing the best work possible, and they’re eager to find new positions where they’ll be challenged. Investing in your people is the only way to keep them.

Find out three actions you should take to improve talent management priorities – including talent development, retention and engagement – in your company.

3 Talent Development Actions You Should Take

Identify high-potential employees as early as possible. Your high-potential employees are your business’ security for the future. You shouldn’t wait for high-potentials to emerge: Go find them. When you identify these assets early, you can provide the training they need to prepare them for future roles.

When identifying high-potential employees, it’s critical to look not only at what they accomplished, but how they accomplished it. Ask yourself if their actions align with company values. Perhaps you find yourself saying, “He may have taken some bodies with him but his results are good,” or “She gets the job done but complains nonstop along the way.”

Issues like these will catch up to the employee eventually. Don’t just consider current performance, ask yourself if the high potentials can be future leaders. If you’re only looking at the results, you may miss some key attributes a high potential needs.

Get to know your future leaders. Schedules are packed: You want to ensure employees are providing maximum productivity at all times. However, making time for a high-potential development program ensures your employees are preparing for future roles and engaging in the roles they’re currently in. Take steps to provide managers with time for talent development, including time to talk to their employees. Simply engaging people in conversations about their careers can help show them you’re invested in their future and want to see them grow.

Managers also need to understand the importance of providing time to reflect. Often, managers are too task-focused. They may provide new challenges for high potentials, confusing that with development when these tasks are just résumé building. Managers need to ask questions such as “Where do you think you need to grow?” and “How can you apply this to your next challenge?”

These conversations will help the manager get to know the future leader. They also provide the employee with space for introspection, which enables her to carry forward learning for better results – an important part of development. Taking this time now provides a high return on your investment later.

Involve your team in succession planning. With employee turnover carrying costs as high as 30% of an annual salary, it’s easy to see the need for a strong succession plan. If you have an employee trained and prepared for a position before it even becomes vacant, you reduce ramp-up time and the person being promoted will integrate to the new role more efficiently. Your team should be involved in planning how to get high-potentials from where they are to where you think they can get. When the team aligns development plans to the succession plan, you develop people for the roles they can be successful in – or at least highlight the attributes they will need for that success. For example, putting a hard-charging leader in an area that needs more finesse could be disastrous for the employee and the company, unless the employee is simultaneously developing the interpersonal skills needed in that role.

Many companies give high potentials as many experiences as possible, and may put someone in a role for the providing a certain type of experience. Instead, identify both what the high potential needs to get from that experience and the development focus she should have while in the role. To do otherwise robs employees of the opportunity to reach their true potential.

You can correct the problems identified in the five statistics with a strong leadership development program– one that lets you build a more stable and productive team.