Talent Management: The Dos And Don'ts Which Makes Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool

Organisations worldwide 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 referring to. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated for long?

 

Visualize a goldfish in a tank with lots of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe polish adjacent to fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's precisely how hipots will feel when 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 seems to be low on general intelligence. The manager would most likely spend more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra time as waste and incapability of her 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:

 

Everyone knows that adults don't wish to be told. A hipot would hate being directed constantly, plus they enjoy being challenged cognitively. Usually they would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or even the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will not likely 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 ground repel the talent pool from your organisation. All it takes in such a situation would be to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot can find operating 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 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 buy it from the market? You will see 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. 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 all the way

• 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 can lead to interpersonal challenges as well as an 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 your organisation

• Define the strategy to recruit hipots. You may have to make sure that they work with managers who can provide them the right environment

• Conduct surveys to ascertain 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 within the organisation. Employees 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 should be based on talent pool bench-marking

management consulting