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

Organisations across the world invest plenty of resources, money and time in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These would highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we are discussing. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation keep them motivated quite a while?

 

Visualize a goldfish inside a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any high-traffic road. Shoe polish close to fruit racks in a retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's precisely how hipots will feel if they've got to work in an environment that doesn't 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:

 

Consider a situation where your hipot has to report to a supervisor who is low on general intelligence. The manager would likely take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra time as waste and incapability of the manager. The hipot won't 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 don't want to be told. A hipot would hate for being directed all the time, plus they love to be challenged cognitively. They might prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or maybe the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures do not support nurturing a talent pool. ‘Telling approach' is considered one indicator of an organisation that lacks a high-performance culture.

 

ASPIRATION MISMATCH:

 

Tenure-based promotion is a good enough reason to repel the talent pool from the organisation. Precisely what it takes in such an environment would be to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot may find operating in such an environment insulting. Hipots intend to grow according to 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 carefully consider 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? These generally are two different things. When your organisation is attracting talent, you might always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the market condition is. When you are buying talent from the market, you may consider the following thoughts:

 

• Increased salary is not going to keep the hipot motivated lastingly

• A Deputy Assistant VP grade is not going to mean much for a longer duration

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

• Recruiting hipots may result in interpersonal challenges along with an increasing amount of employee churn

 

 

Some pointers to 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 they work with managers who can provide the the right environment

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

• Make leaders accountable for talent management and review them regularly

• Define a career path for all roles within the organisation. An employee should enter, get promoted, and exit the organisation at the correct 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 completely ok to not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision need to be based on talent pool bench-marking

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