Talent management refers to the entire scope of the human resources (HR) process. This includes attracting, developing, motivating, and the retention of high-performing employees.
Simply put, talent management is a process with the set goal of maintaining a high-performing workforce through the management of employees.
Talent management encompasses much more than the sum of its parts. For example, one aspect of talent management is retention of employees. However, this does not simply mean reactively offering employees more money as they announce their departure, but rather fostering a thriving workforce filled with happy employees through company culture, diversity, and values.
Talent management includes a wide variety of processes and functions that range from recruitment to employee retention. Below are some of the processes involved in talent management:
Before diving into the comparison of talent management vs. talent acquisition, let's define talent acquisition, since we have already done so for talent management.
Talent acquisition relates to the long term health of your organization. Unlike recruitment, talent acquisition is not solely focused on hiring talent. Talent acquisition focuses on long term human resource strategy. It involves building a brand, culture, and company values that employees want to work for, as well as hiring talent with the potential to grow into unicorns.
Now back to the comparison between talent management and talent acquisition. Simply put talent acquisition is involved with all the processes that enable you to hire top talent (employer branding, company culture, mission statements, job advertisements), while talent management is involved in making sure that once talent is hired that newly acquired talent is developed and nurtured to ensure increased business growth and employee productivity and performance. In short, talent acquisition is the strategy to recruit the most sought after applicants in your talent pool, while talent management is the process of retaining and growing the employees you hired from your talent pool.