Organisations all over the world invest a great deal of resources, time and money in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These would highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we're speaking of. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated quite a while?
Imagine a goldfish inside a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any heavy traffic road. Shoe polish close to fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? This is exactly how hipots will feel in case they have to work in an environment that doesn't 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 manager who's 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 may 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 prefer not to be told. A hipot would hate to be directed all the time, and they wish to be challenged cognitively. They generally 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 considered one indicator of an organisation that lacks a high-performance culture.
ASPIRATION MISMATCH:
Tenure-based promotion is a good enough ground repel the talent pool farther from organisation. What is needed in such an environment is to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot could 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 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 get it from the market? These generally are two different things. If your organisation is attracting talent, 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 salary is not going to keep the hipot motivated quite a while
• A Deputy Assistant VP grade cannot 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 employee churn
Some pointers that 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 would have to make certain that they work with managers who can present the right environment
• Conduct surveys to see 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 in the organisation. An employee should enter, get promoted, and exit the organisation at the correct 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 must be based on talent pool bench-marking
