Talent Management: Practices Which Will Make Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool

Organisations across the globe invest considerable resources, time and money in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These are highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we are talking about. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation keep them motivated for very long?

 

Visualize a goldfish inside a tank with lots of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a high-traffic road. Shoe polish at the side of fruit racks in a 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 are going to 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 manager 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 their manager. The hipot may well not find enough motivation to sit through the future meetings with the manager or not look forward to learning from the manager.

 

 

CULTURE MISMATCH:

 

We all know that adults prefer not to be told. A hipot would hate for being directed constantly, plus they like to be challenged cognitively. They'd prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or even the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will not likely 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 your organisation. All it takes in such a situation is usually to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot may find being employed in such an environment insulting. Hipots expect 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 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? These are two different things. But if your organisation is attracting talent, there is no doubt that you will 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 for very long

• A Deputy Assistant VP grade will not likely 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 increased amount of employee churn

 

 

Some pointers that can assist 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'll have to ensure they work with managers who can provide them the right environment

• Conduct surveys to see 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 answerable for talent management and review them regularly

• Define a career path for all roles in the organisation. Employees 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 absolutely ok to not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision needs to be based on talent pool bench-marking

organisation development