Why A Knowledge Management Strategy Is Essential to Attracting and Retaining Top Talent

Knowledge management seeks to apply organizational knowledge in order to satisfy and exceed employee’s expectations. All executives need to be aware of to better control knowledge management which coincides with talent management, and to do this, they should understand this strong correlation between two important factors.

The focus of this article is based upon the critical role of knowledge management which allows a rich basis to understanding the mechanisms by which talent management is influenced.

Six Key Practices to Integrate Talent Management and Knowledge Management

Since executives are constantly dealing with employee development——talent management is something they pay a great deal of attention to. Of course, this is not new but worth mentioning. A mistake in this area may be vital to the organizations and executives must choose their practices wisely. This article addresses these knowledge management practices in depth to set the record straight upon the importance of talent management.

1. Prioritize Candidate Experience

Knowledge is a collection of meaningful experience. The key take-away for executives is that prioritizing candidate experience can enable organizations to solve problems and create value through improved performance and it is this point that will narrow the gaps of success and failure leading to more successful decision-making.
 
2. Tailor Talent Acquisition Strategy to Business Goals

Executives must determine their business goals for the next three years and develop a talent acquisition strategy which focuses on planning the work and technically supporting newly-hired employees to achieve the business goals. A talent acquisition strategy helps companies to achieve their business goals that reflect excellence and some kind of higher order effectiveness. This is where executives can attempt to achieve business goals—-stemming from a talent acquisition strategy across pivotal areas on the organization.
 
3. Educate the Hiring Manager

Hiring managers can become familiar with employee recruitment practices through education. Education is more active, broad, flexible, experimental, synthetic, and strategic compared to training. Why is this, you may ask? Because education is a process that leads to acquiring new insights and knowledge, and potentially to correct sub-optimal or ineffective actions and behaviors that cause companies to spiral out of control.

4. Enhance Training Efficiency

Executives must provide work-related training programs for newly-hired employees when beginning onboarding and must be aware of their training efficiency programs. Training courses are an effective way to share knowledge. Most importantly, applying knowledge aimed at providing better decision-making and work related practices and creating new knowledge through innovation. Knowledge has to be measured in some way, many trainers talk about return-on-investment of training which is hard to measure, training satisfaction measurement by participants and their desire to apply it to the workplace is a an excellent barometer of learning new skills or building upon old ones. The key point in the training is the knowledge use coupled with testing and re-testing to ensure that the knowledge is actually helping the organization grow professionally for employees and profitably for all stakeholders.

5. Write No Strict Job Descriptions

When newly-hired employees come onboard, they are given job descriptions. But how can executives write no strict job descriptions? The answer to this question lies in an executive’s demonstration to motivate employees to approach organizational problems in a more novel approach. In doing this, executives can inspire employees to rethink problems and challenge their current personal attitudes and values. Most importantly, executives can transform organizations by attempting to change the basic values, beliefs, and attitudes of employees so that they are willing to perform beyond their previous or originally level specified by the organization in their job description.

6. Be More Flexible

Flexibility in the workplace may enable executives to improve departmental and managerial interactions and develop relationships among managers, business units, and departments. Through flexibility in the workplace, executives can also shift the power of decision-making to the lower levels and inspire newly-hired employees to create new ideas and implement them, which can in turn propel interdepartmental communications and improve knowledge exchange.

In Conclusion

This article can offer several implications for practice. First, this article highlights that there is a strong correlation between knowledge management and talent management within organizations. Importantly, this approach advances the current business literature on talent management by offering novel insights into how knowledge management affects talent identification, satisfaction and retention. This article suggests new insights to identify knowledge management as a primary driver of effective talent management for companies. My primary focus is on one factor (talent management) but there are many more important components of the managerial function that can be enhanced when knowledge management is embraced. The key here is that there are positive effects of knowledge management on talent management.

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