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

Organisations around the world invest a great deal 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 are
handling. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or
designation place them motivated quite a while?

Imagine
a goldfish inside a tank full of fighter
fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe
polish alongside fruit racks in a retail outlet. How repulsive are these
images? That’s simply how hipots will
feel if they’ve got 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 supervisor who is low on
general intelligence. The manager would most likely take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see
this additional 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:

Everybody knows that adults don’t want to be told. A hipot would hate for
being directed constantly, they usually like to be challenged cognitively. Generally they
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 definitely one indicator of an
organisation that lacks a high-performance culture.

ASPIRATION
MISMATCH:

Tenure-based
promotion is a good enough a way to 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 might find working in such an environment insulting. Hipots intend
to grow according 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 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 get it from the market? These
are two
different things. Should
your organisation is attracting talent, you are sure to 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 lastingly

• A Deputy
Assistant VP grade will not likely 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 could lead to interpersonal challenges along with an 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 your organisation

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

• Conduct surveys
to check 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
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 definitely ok to
not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision must
be based on talent pool bench-marking

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