Organisations across the globe invest a lot of resources, money and time 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 in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on any high-traffic road. Shoe polish close to fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? That's exactly how hipots will feel when 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 supervisor who is low on general intelligence. The manager would most likely spend more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra time as waste and incapability of her manager. The hipot would possibly not find enough motivation to sit through the future meetings with the manager or not look forward to learning from the manager.
CULTURE MISMATCH:
We all know that adults often choose not to be told. A hipot would hate to be directed all the time, they usually wish to be challenged cognitively. Typically they would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or even the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures will 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 the organisation. Precisely what it takes in such a situation is to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot might find working 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 look out 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 purchase it from the market? These are generally 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. Should you be buying talent from the market, you may consider the following thoughts:
• Increased salary is not going to keep the hipot motivated for very long
• 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 bring about interpersonal challenges and an increase in employee churn
Some pointers that can 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 them with the right environment
• Conduct surveys to check if your organisation's culture is conducive for nurturing the talent pool. Should there be shortcomings, including organisational culture and practices, address them through a robust learning architecture
• Make leaders answerable for talent management and review them regularly
• Define a career path for all roles within 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 completely ok to not recruit hipots for your organisation, but this decision need to be based on talent pool bench-marking
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