Talent planning is essential for an organization's 'Skills-first' journey. It serves as a strategic priority for HR teams, allowing them to optimize employee performance and development, identify skills gaps, and improve mobility for open job roles and requisitions.
In a recent survey by The Predictive Index, 600 CEOs and VPs of leading enterprises were asked to share their top business priority from a list of six options.
The most common answer was Talent Analytics: how you hire, organize, and manage your people (36%), followed by Strategy Development: building the right business strategy year after year (27%).
However, manual talent planning is a task that encompasses various factors that are often overlooked by manually managing employee skills data and skills proficiency.
This is where Talent Planning Software comes in.
What is Talent Planning software?
Talent planning software, also known as workforce planning or talent management software, is a type of application designed to help organizations manage their human resources effectively. These tools are essential for strategic HR management and aim to optimize the performance and development of employees.
Key features and functionalities typically include:
- Talent Acquisition: Developing strategies to attract and recruit the necessary talent to fill identified gaps.
- Workforce Analysis: Assessing the current workforce to understand the skills, capabilities, and demographics of employees.
- Skills Gap Analysis: Identifying discrepancies between current workforce capabilities and future needs.
- Talent Forecasting: Predicting future talent needs based on business goals, market trends, and workforce demographics.
- Succession Planning: Preparing for future leadership needs by identifying and developing internal candidates for key positions.
- Performance Management: Continuously assessing and managing employee performance to ensure alignment with organizational goals.
- Talent Development: Implementing training and development programs to enhance the skills and capabilities of the existing workforce.
- Retention Strategies: Creating initiatives to retain top talent and reduce turnover.
In this article, we’ll discuss the Top 5 Talent Planning Platforms that are a must-have for any organization. Let’s get started!
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Top 5 Talent Planning Software for 2025
1. iMocha
iMocha is an AI-powered Skills Intelligence platform that simplifies talent planning using a combination of Job Architecture, Multi-channel Skills Validation, Skills Benchmarking, and more.
iMocha helps enterprises break down each organizational function into job roles using skills taxonomies and then further dissects these job roles into the required primary and secondary skills using AI-generated skills ontologies.
This breakdown helps organizations create detailed job and skills architecture to gain better visibility into employee skills and their proficiency and helps CHROs and other key decision-makers simplify talent planning based on data over speculation.
Key Features:
- Skills Taxonomy & Ontology: Utilize industry-standard taxonomy with an innovative approach to implement your organization’s job architecture.
- Skill-gap Analysis: Execute effective up-skilling and re-skilling programs while measuring the ROI of your learning initiatives.
- Skills Matching: Validate primary skills in your system and align them with your business demands.
- Skills Benchmarking: Benchmark skill proficiency across primary, secondary, and soft skills, evaluating skill mix and proficiency levels within your organization and industry.
- Skills Insights: Gain qualitative insights to enhance your employees’ career profiles, and effectively plan compensation, benefits, and rewards.
- Executive Dashboards: Analyze your workforce to make informed decisions for your customers, partners, and employees.
G2 Rating: 4.4/5 (261 reviews)
Founding Year: 2015
Pricing: Contact an iMocha rep for a free trial.
2.Workday
Workday is a cloud-based talent planning tool that provides a unified solution for managing human resources, payroll, talent, and workforce planning. This system offers the agility to move quickly and the flexibility to meet the needs of all types of workers. With Workday, you can manage your workforce effectively and efficiently within a single system.
Key Features:
- Intelligent Automation: Harnesses intelligent automation to save time by empowering your workforce and automating managerial processes. This enhances efficiency, allowing you to focus on productivity and engagement.
- Flexibility: Features a flexible system that enables easy resource reallocation and the establishment of new processes.
- Actionable Data: Delivers actionable insights for quicker decision-making. Visualize workforce costs and trends, identify root causes, and take action—all within a single platform.
- Worker-first: Prioritizes frontline workers by offering personalized and flexible experiences, empowering them with greater control over their work.
G2 Rating: 4/5 (1524 Reviews)
Founding Year: 2005
Pricing: Contact Workday for pricing
3. Sympa
Sympa is a flexible and user-friendly talent planning tool designed to centralize all your people data and automate routine HR tasks, freeing up your HR teams for more strategic work. Whether your company operates locally or internationally, Sympa ensures you stay ahead of your future needs, so changes in your business or organization never catch you off guard. Sympa HR enables you to identify current and future skill and employee gaps, allowing you to prepare proactively.
Key Features:
- Map and develop the competencies essential for your organization’s success.
- Understand your employees' skills and motivations.
- Conduct effective appraisals and performance development reviews (PDRs).
- Establish clear, organization-wide appraisal processes and ensure compliance.
- Identify where new talent is needed through gap analysis.
- Plan your talent development using reliable KPIs available through our powerful reporting tools.
G2 Rating: 3.5/5 (2 Reviews)
Founding Year: 2005
Pricing: Sympa has three pricing options: Grow, Essential, and Flex
4. MyTalentPlanner
MyTalentPlanner is a talent planning tool designed to help organizations optimize their talent through a three-step process. First, develop a three-year strategic and financial vision to guide all talent decisions. Next, define the talent required to achieve this vision by creating detailed three-year talent plans. Finally, execute these plans by setting company goals and implementing ActOn plans in four-month sprints, each one bringing you closer to your strategic vision.
Key Features:
- Obtain strategic vision, financial vision, and other essential strategy documents.
- Gain visibility into your current organizational structure, talent vision, and talent plans.
- Enhance your ability to execute your strategy and talent plan through four-month sprints using Sprint Goals, ActON Plans, and Meetings.
- Conduct consistent and focused meetings to improve communication, transparency, accountability, and execution of your plans.
- Develop comprehensive talent plans at every level of the organization to nurture employees.
G2 Rating: NA
Founding Year: 2021
Pricing: Free demo available
5. Horsefly
Horsefly Analytics provides global talent analytics through an easy-to-use talent planning platform. Horsefly gathers labor market data from around the globe to quickly create a real-time picture of the talent market. With its platform, users can rapidly and accurately benchmark gender gaps, understand supply and demand, and find hidden talent pools for any position or skill set their business needs.
Key Features:
- Gain insights into talent availability and supply/demand in specific areas when considering new clients.
- Collaborate with hiring managers to develop market-appropriate remuneration and benefit packages.
- Obtain an overview of competitor activity in a particular geography.
- Utilize labor analytics software to gather valuable insights into employee performance, career aspirations, and development needs, fostering a culture of continuous learning and development within the organization.
G2 Rating: 5/5 (1 review)
Founding Year: 2011
Pricing: Custom packages based on organizational needs.
Conclusion
An ideal Talent Planning Tool should encompass all aspects of the talent cycle, including Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, and Talent Management. Skills intelligence tools, such as iMocha, are essential for accurately planning talent based on job role-specific skills. These tools offer capabilities across:
- Skills Assessment: Assess the current skills and competencies of the workforce, providing insights into strengths and areas for improvement.
- Skills Mapping: Map employee skills to job roles and future organizational needs, helping to identify skill gaps and potential training requirements.
- Talent Identification: Analyze skill sets to identify high-potential employees for leadership roles or specialized projects.
- Succession Planning: Facilitate succession planning by identifying employees with the necessary skills and potential to fill key positions in the future.
FAQs
1. What is Talent Planning Software and who uses it?
Talent planning software, or workforce management software, helps organizations optimize human resources by providing tools for recruitment, employee development, performance management, succession planning, and workforce analytics.
Used by various teams, HR manages records and training, recruiters streamline hiring, managers track performance, executives make strategic decisions, development specialists create training programs, and compensation managers oversee pay structures.
2. How does Talent Planning Software help the organization?
An ideal talent planning tool helps organizations across various functions, such as recruitment and onboarding by streamlining the process of attracting, hiring, and integrating new employees.
It assists in performance management by tracking and assessing employee performance through reviews, feedback, and goal setting. For succession planning, it identifies and develops internal candidates for key leadership positions.
It supports learning and development by providing platforms for training and skill development. Workforce analytics analyze workforce data to make informed decisions about hiring, training, and retention. Compensation management involves managing employee compensation, including salaries, bonuses, and benefits. Additionally, it measures and improves employee satisfaction and engagement.
3. What is the difference between talent planning and talent mapping?
Talent planning and talent mapping serve distinct purposes in HR management.
Talent planning is a strategic, long-term process ensuring the right people with the right skills are in the right roles, involving workforce forecasting, succession planning, performance management, skills gap analysis, talent development, and recruitment strategies. It is used by executives, HR professionals, and managers.
Talent mapping, on the other hand, is a tactical, short-term process identifying and analyzing current and potential talent within and outside the organization. It includes skills inventory, competency mapping, external talent identification, benchmarking, and talent pool analysis, mainly utilized by HR professionals, recruiters, and talent acquisition teams. While talent planning provides a broad, strategic view of workforce needs, talent mapping offers a detailed, immediate overview of the talent landscape.
