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

Organisations across the world invest lots of resources, time and money in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). You will see these are highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we're discussing about. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation place them motivated all the way?

 

Visualize a goldfish in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a high-traffic road. Shoe polish beside 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:

 

Take into consideration a situation where your hipot has to report to a manager who seems to be low on general intelligence. The manager would likely spend more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra time as waste and incapability of the manager. The hipot won't find enough motivation to sit through the future meetings with the manager or not really look forward to gaining knowledge from the manager.

 

 

CULTURE MISMATCH:

 

We all know that adults usually wouldn't want to be told. A hipot would hate being directed repeatedly, and they like to be challenged cognitively. Typically 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 won't support nurturing a talent pool. ‘Telling approach' is definitely 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 farther from organisation. Precisely what it takes in such an environment usually is to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot could find doing work 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 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. Chances are 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. Should you be buying talent from the market, you may consider the following thoughts:

 

• Increased wages are not going to keep the hipot motivated quite a while

• 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 cause interpersonal challenges and an increase in 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 would 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. 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. 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 certainly ok to not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision needs to be based on talent pool bench-marking

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