Talent Management Insights: Practices That Can Make Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool

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

 

Imagine a goldfish inside a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any heavy traffic road. Shoe polish just beside fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's exactly how hipots will feel they were to work in an environment that does not 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:

 

Take into consideration a situation where your hipot has to report to a supervisor who is low on general intelligence. The manager would most likely take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra 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 don't want to be told. A hipot would hate for being directed repeatedly, they usually wish to be challenged cognitively. Usually they would 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 popular enough ground repel the talent pool farther from organisation. All it takes in such a situation is to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot will find employed 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 purchase it from the market? These are two different things. When your organisation is attracting talent, you'll always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the market condition is. In case you are buying talent from the market, you may consider the following thoughts:

 

• Increased wages are not going to keep the hipot motivated for too 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 may result in interpersonal challenges as well as an increased 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'll have to make sure that 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. 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. 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 grow

• Make the promotion criteria objective and transparent

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

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