5 Talent Strategies to Speed Up Business Expansion

It’s critical for any private equity firm to have quality talent assessment and management in place. Without it, it’s difficult to know if you’ve invested in the right leaders and if your portfolio companies are positioned to succeed. To effectively promote growth and prevent costly disruptions, you need an accurate way to assess and build upon the leadership skills of the executives within your portfolio companies. Without the right individuals in the proper roles, growth is difficult, if not impossible.

You want to assess leadership skills and also improve team performance while mitigating future risks. This can all be accomplished with the right resources and succession strategies for critical roles.

Value creation through talent is on the rise in the private equity sector. Let’s discuss 5 talent strategy solutions that accelerate business growth in portfolio companies.

1. Due Diligence Leadership Assessments

Diligence leadership assessments enable deal teams to make critical decisions with insights into identifying key value drivers, retention planning, and mitigating human capital risk factors as part of their value-creation plan.

These assessments are designed to provide investors and decision-makers with critical insights into the leadership and organizational structure of portfolio companies. By leveraging these robust leadership assessments, investors can determine an executive team’s fit into the value creation plan and identify potential risks, allowing them to deliver actionable recommendations that enable deal success.

2. Succession Planning

Succession planning is the process of identifying critical leadership team positions and then developing a methodology that places the right talent into these roles. With a well-rounded view of current and future goals, succession planning helps to ensure you have the right individuals in the right roles to promote growth.

Long-term succession planning strengthens a portfolio company by identifying critical positions and key competencies. This encourages individuals to anticipate and meet - or even exceed - future business objectives. Succession planning also helps to accelerate emerging leaders’ readiness to advance into critical roles, ensures continuity, and increases top talent retention.

To learn more about succession planning, download Vaya’s Succession Planning e-Book here:

3. High-Potential and Management Development Programs

High-potential employees are among your greatest assets. Talented, productive, and ambitious, they contribute to your company’s success and are an integral part of your succession pipeline. Unfortunately, most organizations fail to identify and develop high-potentials, leaving that potential untapped.

With a personalized high-potential or management development program, new and emerging leaders grow their skillsets in order to become more effective managers. Development roadmaps are created to support management teams in the growth and advancement of these individuals.

Vaya Group’s high-potential development plans are customized to align with your company strategy and personalized to your participants’ needs. These plans specifically target next-level skillsets through the creation of new behaviors. Rooted in how the brain learns, our development programs follow a three-step process:

Practice targeted behavior
Reflect on the experience
Refine the path forward

Learn more about our High-Potential Development Programs here.

4. Candidate Assessment

Tailored to your company and culture, a data-driven assessment provides an objective view of candidates and their fit for different roles. By taking the initiative to fill specific, critical roles with the best talent for those jobs, you ensure the right fit for each role and mitigate the potential risk for turnover.

Candidate sourcing can be a time-consuming and expensive process, especially if the wrong candidate is selected. By utilizing candidate assessments, you’re supporting growth initiatives and overall profitability.

5. Executive Coaching and Development

Executives have a huge impact on your company’s success by influencing everything from profitability to culture and talent retention. The executive search process can be a costly and lengthy process, though it can be made easier by investing in and developing existing human capital.

A high-quality executive coaching and development program provides direct, personalized executive coaching with a focus on accelerating growth and value creation. By targeting impactful leadership behaviors, real business results can be identified and measured.

Increase Profitability with Quality Talent Acquisition and Internal Management Development

Value creation through talent acquisition is on the rise in the private equity sector. Even before the pandemic, PE firms had begun to look at company employees with a different perspective than they used to by including them more in their value-creation and operational improvement strategies.

Now, more than ever, talent acquisition and retention are strong pillars of private equity value creation. The sheer cost of replacing employees makes for an unprofitable strategy. Statistics differ widely, but the average turnover per employee can be roughly $15,000 for a $45,000 median salary (based on data from the Work Institute). Reducing or even avoiding these costs gives PE investors an edge to start their value-creation process on the right foot.

With more than 25 years of experience, Vaya Group has the know-how to provide you with best-in-class talent solutions for your portfolio companies. If you’re looking for an efficient way to enhance the skills and abilities of your talent, and effectively monitor the process, we’re here to help.

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