Your 2026 Talent Strategy

Organization-wide strategic plans

Capital spending plans.

Technology plans.

Staffing plans.

Productivity plans.

Buildings and grounds plans.

Clinical service line plans.

Expense plans.

Perhaps even a change management plan (I might be reaching here.)

So many plans…and they turn to vapor if you’re not integrating the most essential of them all.

Your talent strategy.

The following list outlines a few elements of what you should include in your people strategy for 2026.

A robust talent acquisition strategy…that consistently emphasizes your employer brand. Weekly content (blog posts and video) highlighting staff members as front-line bloggers documenting their journey working for you; a technology stack that actually accelerates time to fill; and high accountability between the recruitment team and the hiring managers to ensure candidates are not waiting for feedback, but are getting hired.

An individualized talent development strategy…that ensures two primary targets are met: initial competencies and organization-wide expectations are established, and then individualized learning plans are put in place to dramatically improve development of the leadership team without sending everyone through the same old ‘training programs’ that are rarely evaluated for effectiveness and impact.

An employee experience and employee relations culture strategy…that supports HR Business Partners, Managers, and Employees in a coordinated and thoughtful way. Each of these customer groups must feel valued in order for the hard work to get done. Employee parties and special weeks do not build corporate culture. Real engagement…real conversations…and investing the time and energy to address issues will always drive results.

A comprehensive people analytics strategy…that brings to light employee voice across the organization. Integrating multiple listening systems and data analytics to fully understand the various personas of the workforce is not only helpful…it is one of the only ways to move from a retrospective look at data to a more informed predictive view of where vulnerabilities lie.

An employee-focused communications strategy…that leverages multi-channel options to engage employees regardless of where they are in their employee experience journey. When there are gaps in communication, employees will fill in the gaps. It is important to ensure you proudly tell your employer story.

An efficient and centralized support function…that allows employees to get timely answers to questions, help with routine challenges (policy, benefits, payroll issues, etc) in a consistent way across the organization. Leveraging employee self-service tools with on-demand support both with a live person as well as technology solutions will create another positive data point for the employee experience.

Audit everything…from your employee and labor relations vulnerabilities to whether or not your communications are actually being read and internalized. If you don’t have a data-driven foundation, how can you possible make the proper strategic decisions?

This is clearly just a starter list; however, investing the time, energy and resources to bring these people strategies to life will have a dramatic impact on the life, and success, of your organization in the coming year.

Thanks for being here.

Jay

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