For many of today’s companies, a greater volume of work is expected from a limited number of employees. This environment makes it essential for companies to have a strategy in place to nurture and track employee talent. A lack of effective talent management can critically impact business operations and employee productivity. For example, companies without adequate sales and support training programs take longer to bring new products to market; customer retention issues arise from poorly trained support representatives; and employee productivity remains low when workforce talent is not aligned with business processes and goals.

Since the 1990s, the process of talent management has been utilized by companies to develop workers’ skills, improve overall performance, and ultimately enhance the corporate bottom line. Today, forward-looking companies have begun to develop talent that is aligned with their business by tapping into online communities—known collectively as Web 2.0 technologies—such as blogs, wikis, and social networks. This paper discusses the morphing of traditional talent management into a more sophisticated, collaborative method of cultivating employee skills using Web 2.0 technologies.

Transforming traditional Talent Management
Talent management—the acquisition and development of employee talent—has become somewhat of a buzzword due to factors such as globalization and outsourcing to foreign markets. One key aspect of talent management is performance management: how companies develop and rate individual employee performance. Yet talent management equates to far more than performance management. It is an overarching umbrella that encompasses the means by which companies attract, develop, promote, and retain their employees. The components of talent management generally include:
Acquisition Management. Attracting and recruiting qualified candidates; screening for required competencies; hiring based on successful profiles.
Performance Management. Evaluating employee performance and determining employee strengths and weaknesses; develop succession plans.
Learning Management. Training employees in corporate policies, industry standards, and best practices; develop employee competencies for optimizing efficiency and productivity.
Compensation Management. Establishing, managing and planning competitive salaries; creating and managing pay-for-performance initiatives.

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