Organisations around the world invest a lot of resources, money and time in Talent Management to retain High Potentials (HIPOTs). These are generally highly capable, intelligent, and quick learning resources that we are discussing. Would a hike in salary package, grade, or designation hold them motivated quite a while?
Visualize a goldfish in a tank full of fighter fish. A formula1 car on a heavy traffic road. Shoe polish besides fruit racks in the retail outlet. How repulsive are these images? This is simply 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:
Consider a situation where your hipot has to report to a supervisor who is low on general intelligence. The manager would most probably take more time concluding a brainstorming session. The hipot may see this extra time as waste and incapability of her manager. The hipot may well 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 simply don't like to be told. A hipot would hate being directed always, and they like to be challenged cognitively. Typically they would prefer guidance only after trying out things on their own. An environment where the organisation or maybe the managers are less tolerant towards learning through experiments and failures won't 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 from your organisation. Precisely what it takes in such a situation usually is to manage somehow and stay put for the promotions to happen. A hipot may find working 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 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. If by chance 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 wages are not going to keep the hipot motivated lastingly
• A Deputy Assistant VP grade cannot 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 cause interpersonal challenges together with increasing 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 the organisation
• Define the strategy to recruit hipots. You would have to make sure that they work with managers who can present the right environment
• Conduct surveys to ascertain 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 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 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 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
