Organisations throughout the world invest a lot of resources, money and time in Talent
Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). You will see these are highly
capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we're
referring to. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or
designation place them motivated for long?
Visualize a goldfish inside a tank full of fighter
fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe
polish at the side of fruit racks in a retail outlet. How repulsive are these
images? This is exactly how hipots will
feel if they've got to work in an environment that does
not 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 seems to be 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 really look forward to
learning from the manager.
CULTURE MISMATCH:
Everyone knows that adults prefer not to be told. A hipot would hate to be directed always, they usually enjoy
being challenged cognitively. Generally 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 one indicator of an
organisation that lacks a high-performance culture.
ASPIRATION
MISMATCH:
Tenure-based
promotion is a popular enough a way to repel the
talent pool farther from organisation. Precisely what it takes in such a situation will be to manage somehow and stay
put for the promotions to happen. A hipot can find 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 pay
attention to 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? These are generally two
different things. When your organisation is attracting talent, you may always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the
market condition is. When
you are buying talent from the market, you may consider the following
thoughts:
• Increased
wages are not going to keep the hipot motivated quite a while
• A Deputy
Assistant VP grade will not 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 together with increase in employee churn
Some pointers
to
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 make
certain that they work with managers who can offer them the right environment
• Conduct surveys
to see 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 within the organisation. An 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 to
not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision need to be based on talent pool bench-marking
management consulting