Organisations throughout the world invest plenty of resources, money and time in Talent
Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These are highly
capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we are
discussing about. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or
designation hold them motivated for long?
Imagine
a goldfish inside a tank with lots of fighter
fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe
polish besides fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these
images? This is exactly how hipots will
feel when they have 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:
Think
about it as a situation where your hipot has to
report to a supervisor who's 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 may well not find enough motivation to sit through the future meetings with
the manager or not really look forward to
gaining knowledge from the manager.
CULTURE MISMATCH:
We all
know that adults often choose not to be told. A hipot would hate for
being directed repeatedly, they usually enjoy
being challenged cognitively. Typically 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 popular enough ground repel the
talent pool farther from organisation. Precisely what it takes in such an environment is
to manage somehow and stay
put for the promotions to happen. A hipot may find being
employed in such an environment insulting. Hipots expect 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 buy it from the market? You will see these are two
different things. Should
your organisation is attracting talent, you may 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 for too long
• 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 lead to interpersonal challenges with
an increased 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 might have to make
certain that they work with managers who can provide them the right environment
• Conduct surveys
to ascertain 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
accountable for talent management and review them regularly
• Define a career
path for all roles in the organisation. Employees 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 develop
• Make the
promotion criteria objective and transparent
• It is
absolutely ok to
not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision needs to be based on talent pool bench-marking
management consulting
