Oatmeal Coma Not An Ounce Of Oatmeal On This site
Organisations globally invest considerable 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 are
discussing. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or
designation place them motivated lastingly?
Visualize a goldfish in a tank full of fighter
fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe
polish alongside fruit racks in a retail outlet. How repulsive are these
images? This is precisely how hipots will
feel when they have to work in an environment that does
not 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 is low on
general intelligence. The manager would likely take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see
this additional time as waste and incapability of their manager. The hipot may well not find enough motivation to sit through the future meetings with
the manager or not look forward to
gaining knowledge from the manager.
CULTURE MISMATCH:
Everyone knows that adults don’t want to be told. A hipot would hate being directed incessantly, and they wish to be challenged cognitively. Usually they would 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 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 from the organisation. Precisely what it takes in such a situation usually is to manage somehow and stay
put for the promotions to happen. A hipot can find being
employed in such an environment insulting. Hipots intend
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 try to find 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? These
are two
different things. When your organisation is attracting talent, there is no
doubt that you will always have a talent surplus situation, no matter what the
market condition is. If you’re 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 is
a mismatch between expectations and reality, the hipot may regress
in performance after joining your organisation
• Recruiting
hipots could lead to interpersonal challenges together with increase in 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 your organisation
• Define the
strategy to recruit hipots. You might have to ensure that they work with managers who can provide the the right environment
• Conduct surveys
to check if your organisation’s culture is
conducive for nurturing the talent pool. If 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 develop
• Make the
promotion criteria objective and transparent
• It is certainly ok not to recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision need to be based on talent pool bench-marking