Talent Management Insights: The Dos And Don'ts That Can Make Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool

Organisations worldwide 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're handling. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation place them motivated all the way?

 

Imagine a goldfish inside a tank with lots of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any high-traffic road. Shoe polish besides fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's simply how hipots will feel if they have 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's low on general intelligence. The manager would most probably spend more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this additional time as waste and incapability of their manager. The hipot will 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:

 

Everyone knows that adults don't want to be told. A hipot would hate to be directed always, plus they want 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 won't 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 ground repel the talent pool from the organisation. Precisely what it takes in such a situation would be to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot could find working in such an environment insulting. Hipots expect 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 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 are generally two different things. But if your organisation is attracting talent, you certainly will 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 salary is not going to keep the hipot motivated for very long

• A Deputy Assistant VP grade cannot 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 increase in employee churn

 

 

Some pointers that will 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 will have to make certain that they work with managers who can give them the right environment

• Conduct surveys to check if your organisation's culture is conducive for nurturing the talent pool. If 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 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 grow

• Make the promotion criteria objective and transparent

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

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