How to Perform Talent Mapping (+ Role of Org Chart Tool)

Do you have the right talent performing the right roles within your organization? Have you accommodated skills gaps within your workforce? Or are there areas you haven’t been able to fill? 

Finding, hiring, and developing an effective workforce can feel like a complex maze. That’s where talent mapping comes in. 

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll equip you with the knowledge and strategies to better map your organizational talent and design a robust talent development plan to achieve your goals. 

You’ll learn about the latest talent mapping strategies, best practices, and organizational charting tools that can make the planning and execution process faster and more effective.

In the end, you’ll develop the know-how to build a high-performing workforce to drive better business growth and achieve strategic objectives. 

What Is Talent Mapping?

Talent mapping is the process of identifying, assessing, and developing the skills and capabilities within your existing workforce. It involves a comprehensive analysis of employee skills, experience, and career aspirations, along with an assessment of the organization’s current and future talent needs.

In many cases, organizational leaders recognize the need to further develop their existing workforce or make the decision to look externally – whether that’s hiring independent contractors or proactively recruiting new talent. 

Depending on your needs, HR leaders can conduct a few different types of talent mapping, including:

• Internal Talent Mapping: Focuses on assessing the skills and potential of current employees within the organization.

• Competitive Talent Mapping: Involves researching and analyzing the talent pools of your competitors, identifying key skills and potential hires.

The Strategic Role of Talent Mapping

Most importantly, talent mapping plays a crucial role in aligning workforce capabilities with organizational goals. However, the talent mapping process can also provide additional advantageous outcomes, such as:

• Identifying High-Potential Employees: Talent mapping can help you recognize and develop top performers within your organization.

• Predicting Future Talent Gaps: With the help of talent mapping tools, leaders can anticipate and address potential skill shortages before they impact business operations.

• Supporting Succession Planning: Talent mapping should be performed alongside succession planning to identify and develop potential successors for critical roles.

• Improving Workforce Planning: Once skills deficits are identified, businesses can make informed decisions about recruitment, training, and development initiatives.

• Enhancing Employee Engagement: With the help of talent mapping, organizations can prioritize employee development, career progression, and appreciate the value of their employees.

• Gain a Competitive Advantage: Talent mapping is often the first step in building a highly skilled and engaged workforce, which can help you outperform competitors and achieve sustained success in the future.

Benefits of Talent Mapping

Talent mapping offers a wide range of benefits for organizations of all sizes. Let’s explore some specific advantages. 

Strategic and Targeted Recruitment

Recruiting and hiring new employees can be a significant financial burden for organizations. According to SHRM, the average cost to hire is about $4,700, depending on factors such as the position’s level, industry, and location. Plus, it can take weeks or months to fill a single position. 

That’s why businesses leverage talent mapping to identify workforce needs and to go out directly in search of the right talent. Let’s get into more detail:

• Targeted Hiring: By understanding the skills and experience gaps within your organization, talent mapping allows you to identify and recruit the specific talent you need to achieve your business objectives. This reduces the time and resources spent on unqualified candidates and increases the likelihood of hiring successful employees.

• Proactive Recruitment: Talent mapping enables proactive recruitment strategies. By identifying potential future skill shortages, you can begin searching for and developing talent in advance, ensuring you have the necessary skills when you need them.

• Reduced Time-to-Hire: With a clear understanding of your talent needs and a pre-defined pool of potential candidates, you can significantly reduce the time it takes to fill critical roles.

Effective Succession Planning

Succession planning is a strategic imperative for ensuring business success. It can also help mitigate risks, especially when a resignation is unexpected. 

Here are some ways the talent mapping process can help your succession planning process as well:

• Identify High-Potential Employees: Talent mapping helps you identify high-potential employees within your organization who have the potential to fill critical leadership roles in the future.

• Develop Future Leaders: By providing targeted development opportunities and mentoring programs, you can prepare high-potential employees for future leadership positions.

• Ensure Business Continuity: Succession planning ensures a smooth transition of leadership and minimizes disruption to business operations in the event of unexpected departures.

Improved Retention and Employee Engagement

When employees believe there is a straightforward path to career growth within the company, they are more likely to stay if it is a good fit. 

Talent mapping plays a crucial role in individual and organizational development plans, and it is often the first step in identifying areas of growth and improvement. Talent mapping can also benefit both your employees and the organization in the following ways:  

• Demonstrating Employee Value: By investing in employee development and providing clear career paths, talent mapping demonstrates to employees that their skills and growth are valued by the organization. This fosters a sense of loyalty and increases employee engagement.

• Personalized Development Plans: Talent mapping enables the creation of personalized development plans for each employee, aligning their career aspirations with organizational goals. This fosters a sense of purpose and motivation among employees.

• Reducing Employee Turnover: By addressing employee development needs and providing opportunities for career growth, talent mapping can help reduce employee turnover and retain top talent.

Workforce Optimization

As we’ve mentioned, talent management is primarily used to optimize the skills and capabilities of your workforce. More specifically, company mapping is very useful for:

• Identifying Skill Gaps: Talent mapping helps identify critical skill gaps within the organization, allowing you to address them proactively through training, upskilling, or recruitment initiatives.

• Improving Workforce Efficiency: By optimizing the allocation of talent across the organization, you can improve overall workforce efficiency and productivity.

• Adapting to Change: Talent mapping helps organizations adapt to changing business needs and market conditions by ensuring they have the necessary skills and capabilities to thrive in a dynamic environment.

Cost Savings

Optimization of your workforce can also yield financial benefits and better operational efficiency, such as:

• Reduced Recruitment Costs: Talent mapping can significantly reduce recruitment costs. When businesses use data-driven talent mapping tools, they can improve the quality of their hiring decisions and reduce time-to-hire.

• Reduced Training Costs: Talent mapping helps to assess weaknesses and skill gaps within the organization. In many cases, these detailed insights can inform internal career development training, which significantly reduces the need for costly external training programs. 

• Reduced Dependency on Contractors: A downside to contract hiring can be the higher costs associated with specialized skillsets. With talent mapping, however, your organization can better develop internal talent and reduce dependency on hiring out. 

Talent Mapping Process: A Step-by-Step Guide

Next, we’ll discuss a step-by-step process that HR and organizational leaders can use to start building their talent map. We’ll also include some key concepts and talent mapping definitions that are helpful to know as you go through the process. 

For additional help with talent mapping, consider using an org chart creation tool like OrgChart. 

Step 1: Define Clear Objectives

First and foremost, you’ll need to understand what insights you want to glean from talent mapping. You’ll also need to ensure these objectives align with the organization’s overarching goals. 

Some example objectives could be:

• Role or Project-Based: Am I focusing on recruitment for a specific role or project?
• Development-Based: Am I aiming to identify and develop high-potential leaders?
• Hiring or Training-Based: Am I trying to address potential skill gaps within the organization?

Step 2: Collect and Organize the Data

When conducting talent mapping, try to leverage available data as much as possible. There can be some opportunities for subjective recommendations, but the most actionable insights come from your organizational data. 

Some talent mapping tools like OrgChart can help you integrate your HR data systems automatically. However, here are data sources to reference during the process:

• HR Information Systems (HRIS): Utilize data from your HRIS, such as employee demographics, job titles, performance reviews, and training records.

• Performance Reviews: Analyze past performance reviews to identify top performers, identify areas for improvement, and assess employee potential.

• Manager Interviews: Conduct interviews with managers to gather insights into employee performance, skills, and development needs.

• Skills Assessments: Conduct skills assessments, such as aptitude tests or competency assessments, to evaluate employee capabilities.

• Employee Surveys: Gather employee feedback on their career aspirations, development needs, and engagement levels.

Step 3: Segment Your Workforce

(visuals for this section?)

One way to do this is via the “skills vs. potential” matrix. This matrix is a valuable tool for segmenting your workforce based on their current skills and future potential. 

When using this organizational matrix, note that the x-axis represents current skills and competencies, and the y-axis represents the potential for growth and development.

You can also categorize your workforce into quadrants. Here is a chart to help visualize this concept with further explanation below:

	High Potential	Low Potential
High Skills	Top talent (future leaders, key contributors)	High performers (valuable in current roles but may be best in lateral moves)
Low Skills	Emerging talent (requires development and training)	Needs improvement (significant development is needed, and reassignment should be considered)

• Top Talent (High Skills, High Potential): These individuals are your future leaders and key contributors. They possess strong skills and demonstrate a high capacity for growth and development.

• Emerging Talent (Low Skills, High Potential): These employees have significant potential but require development and training to reach their full capabilities. Investing in their growth can yield substantial returns.

• High Performers (High Skills, Low Potential): These employees excel in their current roles due to their strong skill set. However, they may have limited potential for upward mobility within the organization. Consider lateral moves or enriching their current roles to keep them engaged.

• Areas for Development (Low Skills, Low Potential): These employees require significant development to improve their skills and performance. Reassignment to roles that better match their abilities may also be considered.

Creating a skills vs. potential matrix can be difficult to do manually. When you integrate your HRIS with OrgChart, our software can automatically populate this matrix for you. Quickly visualize employee data, and create filters based on desired criteria and perspectives.

Step 4: Visualize Talent within an Org Chart

Compared to manual org chart creation (e.g., by hand, spreadsheets, presentation slides), org chart software designed for talent mapping can significantly accelerate the process and eliminate much of the work. 

For example: OrgChart helps you visualize your workforce and identify key talent pools. You can color-code employees using different colors or icons to visually represent employee segments. Plus, you can map out potential career paths for employees within the organization, demonstrating opportunities for growth and development.

Step 5: Identify Gaps and Opportunities

Based on the data and your previous research, determine which skills are in high demand within the organization and where significant shortages exist. Next, determine if you have the necessary internal talent to fill critical roles or if you need to recruit externally.

If internal talent has the potential to fill leadership roles or critical skills gaps, make note of these individuals for further development. Typically, these are your high-potential employees.   

Step 6: Build Out Development Plans

Internally, create individualized development plans for each employee based on their skills, potential, and career aspirations. Plus, you’ll need to address critical skill gaps through targeted training programs, workshops, and mentorship programs.

Externally, begin to refine your recruitment process using your skill gaps and deficits as a guide. Proactively begin to attract, recruit, and hire top talent based on your needs. 

Alongside these talent management processes, be sure to update and refine your succession plans for key leadership roles. 

Talent Mapping Tools and Technologies

Effectively mapping talent requires the right tools and technologies to collect, organize, analyze, and visualize data. Here’s an overview of some key tools that can aid your talent mapping efforts:

HR Information Systems (HRIS)

Your HRIS acts as the central hub for employee data, including demographics, job history, performance reviews, training records, skills, and certifications. This centralized data is essential for building a comprehensive talent map.

Most HRIS systems also offer reporting and data extraction capabilities, allowing you to pull the necessary information for talent analysis. You can often customize reports to focus on specific data points relevant to your talent mapping objectives.

Org Chart Visualization Software

OrgChart software goes beyond static org charts, allowing you to create dynamic and interactive visualizations of your workforce. This includes the ability to map reporting structures, teams, skills, and other relevant data points.

Here are some other notable features to look for in your chosen org chart software: 

• Talent Segmentation and Visualization: Certain tools like OrgChart enable you to segment your workforce based on criteria like skills, performance, and potential. You can then visually represent these segments within your org charts using color-coding, icons, or other visual cues.

• Skills Matrix Integration: Some org chart tools integrate with skills matrices, allowing you to visually map skills against roles and identify potential skill gaps within teams or departments.

• What-If Analysis: Advanced org chart tools allow you to model “what-if” scenarios, such as the impact of employee departures or promotions on team structure and skill availability. This is highly valuable for proactive talent management.

Predictive Analytics Tools

As the name suggests, predictive analytics tools use data and algorithms to forecast future talent needs based on various factors, such as business growth projections, industry trends, and employee attrition rates.

They can also help identify potential risk factors, such as employee flight risk or skill obsolescence, allowing you to take proactive measures to mitigate these risks. While there are various predictive analytics platforms on the market, many of which are housed within larger HRIS solutions.

Overcome Talent Mapping Challenges (Solutions Provided)

Talent mapping is a very complex process that can be riddled with challenges. To remedy these issues, we’ve put together a comprehensive table of potential challenges and their solutions to fix or avoid them altogether. 

Challenge	Solution
Inconsistent or Incomplete Data	Use integrated tools like HRIS and OrgChart.  Inconsistent data from disparate sources can hinder accurate talent mapping. Integrating your HRIS with your org chart software creates a single source of truth for employee information.  This ensures data consistency and completeness, providing a reliable foundation for your talent mapping efforts.  For example: If employee skills are tracked in the HRIS, automatically syncing this data with OrgChart avoids manual entry and reduces the risk of errors.
Difficulty Visualizing Large-Scale Workforce Data	Leverage your org chart for clear insights. Analyzing large amounts of employee data can be overwhelming. Org charts provide a visual representation of your workforce, making it easier to identify trends, patterns, and potential talent gaps.  Segment your workforce visually based on various criteria (skills, department, performance, etc.), all of which can help you gain valuable insights that would be difficult to extract from raw data alone.  For example: You could color-code employees based on their potential rating, quickly identifying high-potential individuals across the organization.
Resistance to Change	Educate stakeholders on benefits.  Introducing a new process like talent mapping can sometimes meet with resistance from employees or managers who are accustomed to existing practices.  Emphasize how talent mapping can improve workforce planning, support employee development, and contribute to organizational success. Highlight the individual benefits for employees such as clear career paths and development opportunities.
Difficulty Keeping Data Updated	Automate updates with real-time tools.  Talent mapping requires ongoing maintenance to remain effective. Manually updating talent maps can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Automating data updates through integrations between your HRIS, performance management systems, and org chart software ensures that your talent maps are always current. It also will drastically reduce the administrative burden. For example: When an employee completes a training course or receives a promotion, this information is automatically reflected in the talent map, providing a real-time view of your workforce’s skills and capabilities.

Streamline Talent Mapping with OrgChart

A well-executed talent mapping process aligns workforce capabilities with strategic objectives, ensuring the right people are in the right roles at the right time.

OrgChart Software provides innovative solutions enabling our clients to successfully manage organizational change and build talent maps that align with organizational goals.

Schedule a free demo to discover how our powerful tools can transform your talent mapping, helping you overcome challenges and gain the insights needed to drive organizational success.