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

Organisations worldwide invest a large amount 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 dealing with. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated for long?

 

Visualize a goldfish in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a high-traffic road. Shoe polish next to fruit racks in a retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's exactly how hipots will feel if they've 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 is low on general intelligence. The manager would most probably spend more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra 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 really look forward to learning from the manager.

 

 

CULTURE MISMATCH:

 

Everyone knows that adults often choose not to be told. A hipot would hate to be directed incessantly, they usually enjoy being challenged cognitively. They generally would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation as well as managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will not support nurturing a talent pool. ‘Telling approach' is 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 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 will find working in such an environment insulting. Hipots expect 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 purchase it from the market? These are generally 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. When 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 won't 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 lead to interpersonal challenges together with increased 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 will have to make certain that they work with managers who can provide them with 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 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 absolutely ok not to recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision should be based on talent pool bench-marking

organisation development