Talent Management Insights: Practices Which Makes Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool
Organisations across
the globe invest large amounts
of resources, time and money in Talent
Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These are generally highly
capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we’re
handling. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or
designation place them motivated for long?
Visualize a goldfish in a tank full of fighter
fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe
polish next to fruit racks in a retail outlet. How repulsive are these
images? That’s simply 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:
Consider 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 additional time as waste and incapability of her 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:
We all
know that adults wouldn’t
want to be told. A hipot would hate for
being directed always, they usually want to be challenged cognitively. They’d 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 do not 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 popular enough a way to repel the
talent pool from the organisation. All it takes in such a situation will be 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 generally are two
different things. When your organisation is attracting talent, you are sure to always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the
market condition is. When
you are 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’s a mismatch between expectations and reality, the hipot may regress
in performance after joining your organisation
• Recruiting
hipots can result in interpersonal challenges as well as an increased 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 your organisation
• Define the
strategy to recruit hipots. You might have to ensure they work with managers who can provide them the right environment
• Conduct surveys
to check 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. 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 completely ok not to recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision needs to be based on talent pool bench-marking
