Talent Management Strategy: The Dos And Don'ts Which Will Make Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool

1. Talent Management Insights: Practices Which Makes Or Break Your Organisation's Talent Pool Organisations around the world invest lots of resources, time and money in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). You will see these are highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we're handling. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation place them motivated for very long? Imagine a goldfish in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe polish beside fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's exactly how hipots will feel they were 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 supervisor 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 their manager. The hipot might 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 would not like to be told. A hipot would hate to be directed constantly, they usually enjoy being challenged cognitively. They might 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 cannot 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 good enough reason to repel the talent pool farther from organisation. What is needed in such an environment will be to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot may find doing work in such an environment insulting. Hipots expect to grow based on 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 get it from the market? These are two different things. When your organisation is

2. attracting talent, you will 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: G Increased wages are not going to keep the hipot motivated all the way G A Deputy Assistant VP grade cannot mean much for a longer duration G If there is a mismatch between expectations and reality, the hipot may regress in performance after joining your organisation G Recruiting hipots can result in interpersonal challenges together with increasing amount of employee churn Some pointers that can assist in making informed decisions about attracting, recruiting, and retaining the talent pool: G Define the DNA of hipots for your organisation G Define the strategy to recruit hipots. You may have to make sure that they work with managers who can present the right environment G Conduct surveys to check 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 G Make leaders accountable for talent management and review them regularly G Define a career path for all roles in the organisation. An employee should enter, get promoted, and exit the organisation at the right time G Make people development a default competency for managers and leaders. Organisations should give talent management competency enough weightage for making their promotions decisions G Provide equal opportunity for all employees to learn and develop G Make the promotion criteria objective and transparent G It is totally ok to not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision should be based on talent pool bench-marking