By 2012, nearly 10,000 American workers will turn 65 every day. To make the resulting labor shortage worse, fewer potential employees will be entering the workforce with the skills needed to manage and innovate. 

So, at a time when good employees will be harder to find, businesses will not be able to afford having their people looking for advancement elsewhere.

The good news is that the companies that develop talent management initiatives now can avert many of the challenges facing them in the very near future. Even better, talent management is not only the key to keeping good people, it's also an affordable solution. Clearly, it is a lot less expensive to cultivate and keep talent than it is to recruit and train it.

When it comes to Talent Management, doing it right involves keeping a few basic precepts in mind. Aquire, the global leader in workforce modeling and management solutions, has outlined the most important elements every company should know before embarking on a Talent Management initiative.

1. Know the Workforce: Companies that want to successfully align the goals of employees with their own must first be able to effectively evaluate and utilize their workforces. Talent management is about finding, grooming, training and encouraging "A players - and getting them into the right positions at the right time. When approached correctly, talent management is holistic and integrated. It includes attracting and selecting candidates wisely, retaining and developing leaders, and even helping employees transition out of the company. It's a strategic approach to managing human capital throughout the career cycle.

2. Understand Position Management: An often forgotten element of talent management is position management, which determines the need, kinds and number of positions within an organization. Position management is vital for initiatives such as succession planning and instituting a robust 360-degree feedback program where managers clearly understand who reports to whom. Talent management is about figuring out how to get the best performance out of the workforce, and that can't happen unless the right people fit properly into carefully selected positions.

3. Upgrade Existing HR Systems: By better-utilizing using and leveraging existing HR systems for talent/position management, companies can save both money and effort. Many companies have HR systems more than five years old, and although they are fine for basic, transactional work, they do nothing to leverage investment and make the business run better. After all, the "Promised Land of HR and ERP isn't about transactions, it's about being able to better manage and utilize the workforce. To get to the next level, companies must integrate talent/position management best practices and systems/software into their existing HR system.

4. Start with Solid Data: The path to proper talent management is paved by solid data. HR data must be accurate, easily obtained and unencumbered by silos. It also must be able to flow through and across organizations on a real-time basis. After all, talent management decisions based on inaccurate or old data are bound to fail or under-perform. One of the keys to enabling access and visibility of accurate workforce information is Visual Workforce Modeling & Management - a vital application that provides the tools that enable managers to easily manage the positions they run. Visual Workforce Management is the link between "plain old HR systems and those that support talent and position management systems and best practices.

5. Utilize an Easy Interface: Another key to implementing a successful talent management initiative is an easy interface. As with any solution, if it is difficult to use, adoption will not succeed. Visual Workforce Modeling & Management solutions enable organizations to standardize on a single visualization and modeling platform, set clear transformation goals and track progress toward those goals, and view accurate up-to-date org structures to model realignments.

6. Choose the Right Talent Management Software: With data and interface considerations addressed, Talent Management Software will help integrate and expose relevant information to everybody with an interest in the success of the talent, which is the entire organization. As such, the software needs to expose crucial HR and performance information to employees, managers and executives. It also needs to integrate across applications that handle learning plans, performance reviews, career development and succession planning. When this is accomplished, management objectives are clearly spelled out, and how employees fit into those objectives is also more clearly defined.

7. Reap the Benefits: By extending human capital management functions, talent and position management systems - augmented by Visual Workforce Modeling & Management - are a valuable asset for human resource organizations. Expect morale to increase, since employees have better visibility into their future and the corporate expectations, and expect to see productivity increase as a result as well. Talent will stay around longer, too.

This informational data sheet has been developed by Irving, Texas-based Aquire, Inc., the leader in visual workforce management solutions. The original is available at https://crm.hr.com//en?i=1116423256281&s=&t=/Default/openExternalURL&url=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5hcXVpcmUuY29tL3ByZXNzL2RhdGFzaGVldHMvdGFsZW50X21hbmFnZW1lbnRfZGF0YV9zaGVldC5wZGY%3D". For more information on Aquire, visit www.aquire.com or www.orgpublisher.com.