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

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

 

Imagine a goldfish in a tank with lots of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any high-traffic road. Shoe polish besides fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's simply how hipots will feel when 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 manager 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 the manager. The hipot might 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 don't want to be told. A hipot would hate to be directed incessantly, they usually want to be challenged cognitively. They might 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 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 good enough ground repel the talent pool from your organisation. What is needed in such an environment would be to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot will find doing work in such an environment insulting. Hipots intend 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 check for 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. If by chance your organisation is attracting talent, you might 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 salary is not going to keep the hipot motivated lastingly

• A Deputy Assistant VP grade will 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 can result in interpersonal challenges together with increased employee churn

 

 

Some pointers which 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 may have to ensure they work with managers who can offer them the right environment

• Conduct surveys to ascertain 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 accountable for talent management and review them regularly

• Define a career path for all roles in the organisation. The 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 not to recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision should be based on talent pool bench-marking

organisation development