The 2006 talent management survey, conducted by IHRIM and Knowledge Infusion, found that 77% of the HR professionals think that talent management will only increase in importance over the next three years.

Some of the factors, according to Jason Averbrook of Knowledge Infusion, are “the looming talent shortage, the increased focus on redeploying internal employees rather than recruiting and the realization that organizations must link training, knowledge and performance.”

The most interesting piece, I thought, was this quote from Averbrook: “Many organizations roll out a performance management system or workforce analytics system and simply just put it out there. They don’t do a good job of making sure that people know why these systems are implemented, show people the value of the systems, etc. So if organizations don’t market these systems to their employees, the employees will just think of them as another online tool and won’t actually use them to their full advantage.”

Employees can themselves get real benefits from performance management initiatives. And there’s far more to it than just making reviews easier. ( I refer you to a previous post on the topic.) But making those benefits clear to employees and explaining why usage of the system will help THEM is an important part of a successful deployment and not to be overlooked.