Having the right people with the right skills is crucial for business success. As your organization sets new objectives each year, it's equally important to consider the talent that will drive, sustain and support your progress.

This is where talent mapping becomes essential.

Talent mapping is the process of assessing your workforce’s skills and potential so you can place the right people in the right roles to support greater business objectives. With talent mapping, you can better plan for future external hiring needs and even identify high-potential talent to develop and fill positions from within. 

Talent mapping is a key aspect of a greater talent management strategy, which means it likely touches multiple job functions:

When done right, talent mapping gives you a clear view of your current and future talent needs. HR leaders can use this information to make more strategic decisions, leading to a positive and lasting impact on the organization.

Talent mapping involves identifying the skills your employees need to meet your business objectives. By understanding the gap between the desired skills and those currently present in your workforce, you gain the insight needed to develop a strategy to bridge this gap and equip your employees with more relevant skills.

When you have a deep understanding of the skills required for your most critical roles and a pipeline of high-potential talent ready to fill them, succession planning becomes a much easier feat. Talent mapping ensures that high-potential employees are identified and developed early on, so that they are proactively prepared to take on a new role when the time comes.

It's essential for your company's growth that employees continuously build and update their skill sets.

Employees may lose enthusiasm for learning if they don't see personal benefits. Talent mapping addresses this by showing them how gaining new skills can help them advance along their desired career paths. It also helps your L&D team create more relevant learning opportunities that inspire engagement and support employee development. Critically, these investments also mean that your people stick around for the long term.

So, what does talent mapping look like in practice? Here are four steps you can take for an effective process.

The first step is to understand what skills and competencies are needed for all of the roles in your business, as well as any future roles you anticipate hiring for to meet business objectives. There are several ways to do this: 

Once you've identified the skills your business needs for success, the next step is to assess your current workforce's capabilities and pinpoint any gaps. Review performance evaluations, collect employee skills assessment results and meet with managers to gather qualitative feedback about their teams. This data will help you form a comprehensive understanding of your workforce's skills.

At this stage, it’s also important to collaborate with your L&D team to understand what existing training and education initiatives are already in place to address these skills gaps.

Now that you’ve uncovered critical skills gaps, you can use those findings to assess your talent pool. This is a key stage where you identify high-potential employees that you want to invest in and low-performing employees that may be hindering your organization’s success.

A popular framework to assess your talent pool is the 9-box grid where you map employees out along two axes: performance and potential. The grid gives you a visual reference for how your employees are currently performing and what future potential they hold, which you can then align to your organization’s goals.

Now that you've completed the talent mapping process, it's time to review your findings and take action. Here are a few suggested steps:

Talent mapping requires some upfront work, but it’s a worthwhile investment that will save you significant time and resources down the road. If you get in the habit of doing your talent mapping along your annual goal setting, you’ll make strategic decisions that align your talent with your business goals.

Concerning skills gaps in your workforce? Download this guide for actionable tips on how to fast-track upskilling within your organization.