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

Organisations across the world invest plenty of resources, money and time in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These are generally highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we are talking about. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated lastingly?

 

Imagine a goldfish in a tank with lots of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe polish close to fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's simply how hipots will feel they were 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 manager who is low on general intelligence. The manager would likely spend 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 look forward to learning from the manager.

 

 

CULTURE MISMATCH:

 

Everyone knows that adults usually wouldn't want to be told. A hipot would hate being directed constantly, plus they like to be challenged cognitively. Typically they would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or perhaps the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will not 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 a way to repel the talent pool from your organisation. What is needed in such a situation is to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot can find doing work 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 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 buy it from the market? These generally are two different things. If 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 for too long

• 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 can result in interpersonal challenges along with an increase in employee churn

 

 

Some pointers that can 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 would have to ensure they work with managers who can provide them with the right environment

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

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