Talent Management, as defined by Wikipedia, is “the anticipation of required human capital for an organization and the planning to meet those needs.” That sounds a lot like what Human Resources does in an organization. But understanding the nuances between these two functions is imperative to better understanding your employees and meeting their needs on the job.

Businesses create processes and standards by which their employees are measured against to ensure that employees understand their role and job function, are competent in that role, and ultimately are an asset to the organization. This process is typically referred to as performance management. The idea of performance management and a review process is theoretically a good one. The best way to measure an employee’s performance is by asking their managers, peers, and subordinates how exactly the employee is performing in their job, what they can improve upon, and what they have mastered. Performance reviews can sometimes go as far as to determine when someone is up for a promotion or a raise - although tying reviews with compensation can be tricky (more on that in another blog).

Performance Evaluations can be tough to create, especially for the first time. If building off of a process that’s already in place, it’s easy to identify holes and areas of improvement to continue working towards a performance evaluation process that works for your organization’s culture and goals. However, building one from scratch can be significantly harder. Other than the obvious suggestion to remember that this process is iterative and can continue to be improved upon, the closer that you can get to an end result the first time around will help to ensure consistency over the years when evaluating an employee that has been around for that whole time.

In today’s Twitter-world, we don’t have time to read lengthy articles about processes that we should already know about. Unfamiliar with Performance Management? Here are three bite-sized definitions to help you get a little insight into performance management.

We came up with four different options to explain a learning management system in 140 characters or less:

Technology changes so rapidly these days it’s hard to predict what will be next and how it - whatever “it” is - will shape the way that we live. Social media has impacted the way that we communicate with old friends, catch up on news, and even do business, but 10 years ago, social media had a completely different landscape.

Growing up, my dad would always point out advertisements in a silly way. What I mean by this is: when he would see an advertisement for a tanning salon with really fit people, he would say “Wow, if I go in there - I’ll come out looking like that!” And he wasn’t just referring to the shade of the person’s skin. Advertisement is powerful and marketing departments work hard to showcase benefits - tangible or intangible, but sometimes that can set consumers up with high expectations that can’t be met. As much as I wish applying sunless tanner would then give me a six-pack, that’s an expectation that absolutely will come to actualization…. bummer.

Whether you’re already using a training database, looking to create your own from scratch, or shopping around for one for the very first time. We have created a list of the do-not-skip when purchasing (or even creating) a training database. These features and functions will make sure that no training is skipped, all employees have passed their respective trainings, managers are notified, and the process is repeatable - not to mention, scalable.

Microsoft Access, a software that comes within the Microsoft Office Suite, is known as an even better alternative to Microsoft Excel when it comes to creating a training database to track the training of your individual employees, monitor certification renewals, and more. While the software is robust enough to create tools to track other need-to-knows like job proposals, performance reviews, receipts and more, and can be used as a storage system for information that falls within these categories, the software can get just as cluttered as Excel. The information can become difficult to sort, search through, and ultimately loses its purpose other than a glorified holding place for lots of information that is important not to lose.

Across most businesses, there is some sort of training that takes place. Whether this training is to keep employees abreast of the latest trends across the industry, or simply onboarding an employee with relevant HR information or organizational practices, it doesn’t matter. Each and every training that is completed to advance careers or to remain informed of changes should be documented by the relevant personnel to ensure there is no oversight.