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

Organisations all over the world invest a whole lot of resources, time and money in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). They are highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we are talking about. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated for very long?

 

Imagine a goldfish inside a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any heavy traffic road. Shoe polish beside fruit racks in a retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's precisely how hipots will feel should 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:

 

Take into consideration a situation where your hipot has to report to a supervisor who's low on general intelligence. The manager would most likely take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this additional time as waste and incapability of the manager. The hipot may well 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 would not like to be told. A hipot would hate being directed incessantly, and they enjoy being challenged cognitively. Usually they would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation and the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will likely 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 a way to repel the talent pool from the organisation. What is needed in such a situation usually is to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot will find being employed 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 try to find 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 buy it from the market? These are two different things. If 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 very long

• A Deputy Assistant VP grade won't 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 together with increase in 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 will have to make certain that 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. 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 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 grow

• Make the promotion criteria objective and transparent

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

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