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

Organisations throughout the world invest a whole lot of resources, time and money in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These are 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 very long?

 

Imagine a goldfish in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a high-traffic road. Shoe polish alongside fruit racks in a retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? This is precisely how hipots will feel in case they have 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:

 

Consider a situation where your hipot has to report to a supervisor who is low on general intelligence. The manager would most probably take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra time as waste and incapability of their manager. The hipot would possibly 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 simply don't like to be told. A hipot would hate for being directed constantly, plus they want to be challenged cognitively. They generally 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 won't 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 reason to repel the talent pool farther from organisation. All it takes in such a situation would be to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot might find doing work in such an environment insulting. Hipots anticipate 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 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. Chances are if your organisation is attracting talent, you are sure to 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 too long

• A Deputy Assistant VP grade will likely not 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 together with 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 the organisation

• Define the strategy to recruit hipots. You would 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 within 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 totally ok to not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision needs to be based on talent pool bench-marking

growth hacking