Executive Recruiter News reports Growing global competition and an increasingly diversified workforce are challenging organizations to look at talent management as a means of ensuring quality and consistency within the workforce.

According to the 2006 Talent Management Initiatives Survey, conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, more than 75% of human resource (HR) professionals surveyed state that talent management initiatives are a top priority for their organization.

HR professionals further reveal that these initiatives would impact recruitment significantly by aligning employees with the organization's mission as well as providing professional development opportunities for employees. Furthermore, survey results indicate that it is important employees be trained to perform their jobs at a high level, and that ongoing training be budgeted to enhance employees' skills. Of the organizations that have talent management initiatives in place, 65% already have a formal budget for training.

Talent areas identified as having the greatest need for improvement include: creating a deeper reservoir of successors at each level; creating a culture that retains employees; decreasing existing gaps in employees' competency levels.

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