Organisations all over the world invest plenty of resources, money and time in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These generally are highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we are talking about. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated for very long?
Visualize a goldfish in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a high-traffic road. Shoe polish besides fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? This is simply how hipots will feel if they've got 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:
Take into consideration a situation where your hipot has to report to a supervisor who is low on general intelligence. The manager would likely take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra 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 look forward to learning from the manager.
CULTURE MISMATCH:
Everybody knows that adults would not like to be told. A hipot would hate for being directed repeatedly, plus they wish to be challenged cognitively. They might prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation and the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures do 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 reason to repel the talent pool from your organisation. All it takes in such a situation is usually to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot might find doing work in such an environment insulting. Hipots intend to grow in accordance 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 check 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 get it from the market? These are two different things. If by chance your organisation is attracting talent, you'll always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the market condition is. If you are buying talent from the market, you may consider the following thoughts:
• Increased wages are not going to keep the hipot motivated for very long
• A Deputy Assistant VP grade will not likely 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 can result in interpersonal challenges as well as an increased amount of employee churn
Some pointers to help in making informed decisions about attracting, recruiting, and retaining the talent pool:
• Define the DNA of hipots for your organisation
• Define the strategy to recruit hipots. You'll 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. 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. The 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 grow
• Make the promotion criteria objective and transparent
• It is definitely ok to not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision need to be based on talent pool bench-marking
