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

Organisations worldwide invest a lot of resources, time and money in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These are generally highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we are discussing about. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated for long?

 

Imagine a goldfish inside a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a high-traffic road. Shoe polish at the side of fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? This is precisely how hipots will feel when they have to work in an environment that doesn't suit their culture, aspirations, and capabilities. They may 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 supervisor who seems to be low on general intelligence. The manager would likely take 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 really look forward to learning from the manager.

 

 

CULTURE MISMATCH:

 

We all know that adults simply don't like to be told. A hipot would hate being directed at all times, they usually love to be challenged cognitively. Generally they would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or perhaps the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will not likely 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 popular enough reason to repel the talent pool from the organisation. All it takes in such a situation is usually to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot will find operating in such an environment insulting. Hipots anticipate to grow in accordance 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 check for 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 are generally two different things. When your organisation is attracting talent, you will always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the market condition is. If you are buying talent from the market, you may consider the following thoughts:

 

• Increased wages are not going to keep the hipot motivated for 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 can lead to interpersonal challenges and an increasing amount of employee churn

 

 

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

 

• Define the DNA of hipots for the organisation

• Define the strategy to recruit hipots. You'll have to ensure they work with managers who can give them the right environment

• Conduct surveys to see 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 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 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 grow

• Make the promotion criteria objective and transparent

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

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