Talent Management Strategy: Practices 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). These would 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 with lots of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe polish beside fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's precisely how hipots will feel they were 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 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 her manager. The hipot will not find enough motivation to sit through the future meetings with the manager or not look forward to learning from the manager.

 

 

CULTURE MISMATCH:

 

Everyone knows that adults prefer not to be told. A hipot would hate for being directed all the time, and they want to be challenged cognitively. They might prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or maybe the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures do 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 good enough ground repel the talent pool farther from organisation. What is needed in such an environment is usually to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot may find employed 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 look 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 get it from the market? These generally are two different things. If your organisation is attracting talent, you are sure to always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the market condition is. If you're 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 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 may lead to interpersonal challenges as well as an increase in 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 might have to make sure 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. 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 in the organisation. The employee should enter, get promoted, and exit the organisation at the right 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 develop

• Make the promotion criteria objective and transparent

• It is totally ok not to recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision must be based on talent pool bench-marking

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