People – Exploring the Potential

Talent in an organisation is susceptible to inconsiderate handling. An ill-managed talent will always contribute to the regretted attrition levels of the organisation. The widely used saying ‘Employees quit bosses, not organisations!’ drives home this point all too clearly.

Talent in any organisation is the ability of its workforce to exceed expectations and deliver value consistently. In an era when technology, strategy or quality benchmarks can be emulated, it is the talent that provides the requisite sustainable competitive advantage for the organisation. In this ‘war for talent’ that has gripped organisations, it is becoming increasing critical to identify the blockages of talent and address them before the actual damage is caused. Conversely it is equally important to identify the talent accelerators to recognize them and reward them for their efforts in developing a robust talent pipeline with a considerable level of stability.

This article in a series, attempts to look at the ‘Satans’ and the ‘Gods’ of Talent Development & Retention in organisations today.

TALENT BLOCKERS!

 The dubious distinction of ‘Talent Blocker’ is attributed to those managers who end up in stifling talent and thereby failing to contribute to developing an organization wide talent pipeline. Most times, the talent blockers are not aware of the damage they are causing to the talent ecosystem. It is more to do with the comfort levels and the lack of mentoring and coaching from senior management in terms of fostering talent in the organization. To broadly lay down specific situations when talent blockers thrive, certain obvious areas that result in the blockage of talent have been pointed out:

Recruiting and selecting easy-to manage people

The process of talent blockage manifests at the very beginning of the employee life-cycle when managers tend to recruit candidates who they think will be easy to manage and will be ‘tooth-less’. This happens because a lot of focus is laid down by the senior management on the working relationship between a manager and his subordinates. Having recruited a candidate who will be easy to manage, the manager tends to overshadow the existence of that candidate in the organization there by maintaining a smooth relationship without any ‘ripples’. This is a sub conscious effort by the talent blocker (manager) to ensure his importance in the setup is not undermined and that he continues to call the shots.

Not coaching or mentoring effectively

 A majority of successful individuals attribute their professional success to the presence of a coach or a mentor who guided them through rough times. It is this quality that is found missing in a talent blocker. Absence of effective coaching and mentoring practices by managers results in a slow development of the talent under them and there is always a possibility of a stunted career growth for the subordinates in an organization under a manager who is indifferent to the growth and development of individuals.

 Lack candor in their feedback 

Feedback is a critical tool of correction.  But it takes a lot of heart to have your subordinates critique your style of management and to give a frank opinion on the subordinates/ performances. Having said that, a manager who does practice candid feedback programmes benefits not only in improving his own management style but also improves the engagement levels of the employees reporting to him. A talent blocker on the contrary is reluctant to indulge in feedback practices as it involves giving frank opinions on sensitive and personal issues and the blocker is hesitant on issues. It requires getting feedback yourself – and this may not be welcome!

Do not reward differentially for success

Performance if not suitably rewarded will result in demotivation and dip in performance levels. But a talent blocker does not believe in this philosophy. He tends to overlook good performances and believes that such performances will sustain only if the expectations of subordinates are kept in check. This results in the absence of any incentive for the subordinates to perform for the manager or the business and in spite of having promising potential, the subordinates end up as work horses or ‘solid-citizens’ under the talent blocker and eventually quit as a result of pent up frustration.

Horde the people who get the job done

The most common characteristic of a talent blocker is the hoarding of talent and masking it from getting exposed to the talent exchange process. In his selfish bid to maintain performance, a talent blocker tends to horde the talent under him and thereby prevents their progression to lateral movements or promotions. This is the most critical blow that an organisation suffers. On the talent being blocked from further growth by the talent blocker, the subordinates (talent in discussion) tend to get frustrated and end up either as workhorses devoid of any enthusiasm or in more critical cases quit the organisation.

Reference:

Talent Development, Jeffrey Gandz, Ph.D. Professor, Managing Director – Program Design, Richard Ivey School of Business, September 2006, Ivey Executive Development

Contrary to the positive connotation given to the clichéd “Well begun is half done” this article intends to generate curiosity to look at the other half as far as talent management is concerned. Organisations all over have been openly supportive of driving a performance based culture where the best are treated the best. Talent assessment activities are being carried out on a war footing at many an organisation, taking stock of talent issues if any and drawing out comprehensive plans to improve the pitfalls. Corporate world is caught in a frenzy to identify its top-class talent and quarantine the grey areas to ensure that priorities and privileges are set realistically. Half job well done. It is the other half that bothers.

If many have not guessed yet, it is the set of activities that succeed the assessment. All the reports generated, information gathered and plans drawn are not finding the light of day thanks to the absence of robust talent development strategies at the desired levels. Organisations finding gaps in competencies and performance are lacking in developing training programs that result in an effective plugging of these drawbacks. The importance of strategic talent development is overshadowed by the day-to-day activities in the organisation today. Companies are so engrossed in tying the loose ends up that no alignment of strategic training and development with the business requirements is ever attempted in an earnest manner. Any lack of competency is nullified by ushering in requisite talent from external sources. And at what cost!

There is a visible lack of drive and initiative in presenting a sound case for developing a strategic learning and development wing at organisations to ensure the prime-mover churns out talent to sustain a long term competitive advantage.  Barring firms like Deloitte PLC (featured in the Top 10 Training Hall of Fame, Business Source Corporate, February 2009) who seamlessly integrate training programs with individual’s job requirements, there are many firms who either do not see sense in spending to develop their workforce’s competencies or develop ‘one-size-fits-all’ plans that are unable to address specific competency gaps in individuals.

The problem stems from the lack of leadership in senior management positions that can drive this initiative. There is no idea buy-in when it comes to identifying training and development as a strategic concern. Training and development (T&D) always contributes to a lag effect and thus is inadvertently thrown to the backburners. Insufficient indicators in real time that can reaffirm the importance of T&D lead to this aspect of talent management ending up in mere lip talk than action. Top thinkers and management moguls have always voiced their support in favour of talent development & training programs as an effective tool to improve business performance. So much so that, IT majors like Infosys and Wipro have dedicated training centres with world class facilities to foster training and employee development in a comprehensive manner. These efforts have paid rich dividends in developing talent bench that is ready to take up challenging assignments thanks to the developed capabilities and more importantly the developed competencies to deliver value.

There is a compelling need for leaders in senior management to focus on not just assessing the talent but invest in developing the same inside out. This will take patience, spending and a long-term view in copious quantities. 

The world is changing! And the corporate world is changing its outlook towards HR. Amongst all the metamorphosis that is happening around us, one prominent element that stands out is the focus on people…. The ‘Right’ people.

The old notion of people being an asset to an organisation has undergone a paradigm shift. Today is the era of lean mean fighting machines and in such a competitive environment the onus on organisations is to cut out the flab and maintain and flexible and value adding work-force. There is no room for mercy or charity in this race to be the most efficient and effectively managed institution. Companies around the globe are today focussed on restructuring their three Ps – Process, Performance and People. Bouts of ‘right sizing’ and layoffs have hit the headlines of many a newspapers recently. In this context it comes extremely critical for an HR practitioner to objectively identify the ‘right’ workforce in terms of quality, quantity and mix. Age, ethnicity and value alignment are of critical importance as HR around the globe tries to tackle workforce aspirations and business performance in multinational organisations.

Talent Management has become a burning topic of discussion at coffee tables across. A very reputed HR portal (Bersin & Associates) has voted talent management enabling issues as the Top 22 among a list of 62 issues identified. This just goes to accentuate the huge impact talent management has on business performances of corporations globally.

Talent Management is a stratified into talent acquisition, talent auditing & assessment, talent retention and talent development. All these set of activities are used to ensure that the machine is kept running through out the life-span of an employee in the organisation. Beginning with getting the right people in, the talent management practice begins to support the business practices. Identifying the right candidates using various assessment tools like competency based interviewing and psychometric tests etc, the people with the right attitude and aptitude are inducted in. The recruitment and selection process is followed by a well planned induction and on-boarding process that ensures that the new recruits are exposed to the culture, values and systems of the organisation. The talent prevalent in the workforce is consistently being assessed using various tools like assessment centres, talent reviews etc to ensure that the rotting apples are identified and proactively repositioned to ensure that productivity doesn’t suffer. In this regard, a renewed focus is being laid on lead indicators to ensure that modifications are carried out proactively. This calls for metrics that can be tracked and constantly monitored on dashboards by senior management. HR metrics hereby are the drivers of the talent management practices. This attempt to quantify and assess HR performance in terms of talent management has resulted in C-level Business leaders acknowledging HR as a strategic partner in their business vision.

Finally based on the talent levels of the workforce and the criticality of the roles, development programs are sketched out to ensure that the employees are being groomed into becoming future business leaders with the right mix of values, competencies and performance potential. Succession planning is an obvious next step in ensuring that the critical positions do not go unfed in the event of talented workforce leaving the organisation. To facilitate a robust succession planning exercise, organisations around the world are ensuring that the critical roles are identified and the required ingredients in terms of the competencies are chalked out in an objective fashion. Once the roles are identified, the challenge is then to assess the workforce and identify a talent pool that fits the bill. Talent pool depth and coverage play a crucial role in justifying ROI on the entire gamut of talent management activities being carried out in an organisation. A visible spin off of a robust ROI in terms of human capital management is a healthy sense of engagement among employees. An employee looks for good career opportunities, a compensation that suits the effort and the outcomes he delivers and an opportunity to develop his competencies to move to bigger and better things. An employer who facilitates these opportunities for its employees has reason enough to believe that his business stands to perform exceptionally.

“Henry Ford, Jack Welch, Bill Gates….. All practitioners of Talent Management.”