Talent Management Insights: Practices Which Makes Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool

Organisations throughout the world invest lots of resources, money and time in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). You will see these are highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we're talking about. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation keep them motivated all the way?

 

Imagine a goldfish in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any high-traffic road. Shoe polish just beside fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? This is precisely how hipots will feel should they have to work in an environment that does not suit their culture, aspirations, and capabilities. They will feel suffocated and what follows next is the hipot going in search of fresh air.

 

 

CAPABILITY MISMATCH:

 

Think about it as a situation where your hipot has to report to a manager who seems to be low on general intelligence. The manager would likely spend more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this additional time as waste and incapability of their manager. The hipot might not find enough motivation to sit through the future meetings with the manager or not look forward to gaining knowledge from the manager.

 

 

CULTURE MISMATCH:

 

We all know that adults would not like to be told. A hipot would hate being directed all the time, plus they like to be challenged cognitively. Usually they would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation as well as managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures cannot support nurturing a talent pool. ‘Telling approach' is one indicator of an organisation that lacks a high-performance culture.

 

ASPIRATION MISMATCH:

 

Tenure-based promotion is a good enough a way to repel the talent pool from the organisation. What is needed in such a situation usually is to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot can find working in such an environment insulting. Hipots intend to grow based on performance, effort and demonstrated capability.

 

Organisations can't expect hipots to wait patiently for their turn of promotion. The irony is that the organisations don't pay attention to their patience while recruiting them. The talent management strategy must be in line with the intent to nurture and retain the talent pool.

 

“At companies with very effective talent management, respondents are six times more likely than those with very ineffective talent management to report higher 'Total Returns to Shareholders' than competitors.”

 

“Only 5 per cent of respondents say their organizations' talent management has been very effective at improving company performance”.

 

Source - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/winning-with-your-talent-management-strategy

 

 

ATTRACTING VS BUYING TALENT:

 

Does your organisation attracts talent or get it from the market? You will see these are two different things. If by chance your organisation is attracting talent, you'll always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the market condition is. Should you be buying talent from the market, you may consider the following thoughts:

 

• Increased wages are not going to keep the hipot motivated for very long

• A Deputy Assistant VP grade cannot mean much for a longer duration

• If there's a mismatch between expectations and reality, the hipot may regress in performance after joining your organisation

• Recruiting hipots may lead to interpersonal challenges with an increasing amount of employee churn

 

 

Some pointers which will help in making informed decisions about attracting, recruiting, and retaining the talent pool:

 

• Define the DNA of hipots for your organisation

• Define the strategy to recruit hipots. You may have to ensure that they work with managers who can present the right environment

• Conduct surveys to ascertain if your organisation's culture is conducive for nurturing the talent pool. Should there be shortcomings, including organisational culture and practices, address them through a robust learning architecture

• Make leaders answerable for talent management and review them regularly

• Define a career path for all roles in the organisation. The employee should enter, get promoted, and exit the organisation at the right time

• Make people development a default competency for managers and leaders. Organisations should give talent management competency enough weightage for making their promotions decisions

• Provide equal opportunity for all employees to learn and develop

• Make the promotion criteria objective and transparent

• It is definitely ok to not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision needs to be based on talent pool bench-marking

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