Talent Management Strategy: Practices Which Makes Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool

Organisations throughout the world invest considerable resources, money and time in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These generally are highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we're dealing with. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated for very long?

 

Imagine a goldfish in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any high-traffic road. Shoe polish adjacent to 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 does not 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 supervisor who seems to be low on general intelligence. The manager would likely take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this additional time as waste and incapability of their manager. The hipot may well 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 simply don't like to be told. A hipot would hate for being directed at all times, they usually wish to be challenged cognitively. They would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation and the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will not likely 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 the organisation. Precisely what it takes in such a situation would be to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot may find working in such an environment insulting. Hipots anticipate 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 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 purchase it from the market? You will see these are two different things. When your organisation is attracting talent, you certainly will 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 permanently

• A Deputy Assistant VP grade is not going to 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 cause 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 the organisation

• Define the strategy to recruit hipots. You'll have to make certain that they work with managers who can provide the 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 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 certainly ok not to recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision needs to be based on talent pool bench-marking

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