Organisations throughout the world invest a considerable amount of resources, money and time 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 hold them motivated all the way?
Visualize a goldfish inside a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any high-traffic road. Shoe polish besides fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? This is precisely how hipots will feel when they have 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's low on general intelligence. The manager would likely spend 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:
Everybody knows that adults don't wish to be told. A hipot would hate being directed at all times, and they want to be challenged cognitively. They'd prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will likely 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 good enough reason to repel the talent pool from your organisation. All it takes in such a situation will be to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot might find operating 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 get it from the market? These generally are two different things. In case your organisation is attracting talent, you 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 salary is not going to keep the hipot motivated all the way
• A Deputy Assistant VP grade won't 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 may result in interpersonal challenges and an spiking of 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 sure that they work with managers who can provide 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 in 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
No comments:
Post a Comment