Why Reskilling Might be the Solution to Avoiding Job Losses from Automation and Robots
The Gloom and Doom over Job Losses and How Reskilling can Help It has now become routine to read about how automation would result in widespread job losses and how robots would soon replace factory workers, drivers, and even white collar professionals as the Age of Machines arrives. Indeed, the negative reports that regularly appear […]
How Human Resource Managers can deal with Difficult Employees
Introduction One of the key challenges that HR (Human Resource) Managers face in any organization is how they respond to employees violating organizational policies and plain disgruntled employees who are angry with their appraisals and consequent pay hikes and bonuses. Indeed, how astutely and adroitly the HR Managers deal with such employees determines their competency […]
Workplace Health and Safety
Statistics show that every twenty seconds of every working minute throughout the world, someone dies as a result of industrial accident or poor safety conditions at workplace. Thousands of employees throughout the world lose their limbs, suffer from temporary or permanent disability or lose their lives due to insufficient arrangements for their health and safety […]
Youth Entrepreneurship Policy Making – A Perspective
Keeping in line with the ILO and UN Organizations focus and emphasis in the area of Youth Entrepreneurship, several countries have begun to work towards designing policy framework for developing Youth Entrepreneurship in the country. Academicians and several agencies have invested into studying and bringing out a lot of data and information defining Youth entrepreneurship […]
Compensation Management – Meaning and Important Concepts
“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings – and put compensation and rewards as a carrier behind it – you almost don’t have to manage them.” — Jack Welch Most of us would have heard the term “compensation” in the context of getting paid for the work […]
Not all of us are born geniuses or are child prodigies.
Just as not all sportspersons are not Michael Schumacher or all entrepreneurs are Bill Gates or the Late Steve Jobs, many of us have some innate talents that need to be catalyzed by nurturing, enabling, and empowering thereby making us flourish and prosper in our careers and personal lives.
When talking about talent management at the workplace, it is indeed important that organizations ought to ensure that they identify the high potentials and the rare breed of prodigies, and then mark out those who are steady but gifted who with a little coaching and mentoring can flourish, and then identify those who are followers meaning that they are better off taking orders from others rather than giving them, and finally, those who perform some skills in an outstanding manner but are poor in interpersonal communications and relationships so that they can be placed into roles where technical brilliance is needed.
To do all the things mentioned above, an experienced and astute HR (Human Resources) manager is needed in partnership with the line managers and top management so that organizations make best use of their employees.
Indeed, in addition to these requirements, identifying the different categories of performers needs the HR manager as well as the line manager to be insightful about human nature through which they can spot the difference between a born leader, a made leader, and a follower who can turn into a leader based on the circumstances.
This is the reason why many organizations have something called a list of employees identified accordingly and marked as high potentials, steady performers, technically brilliant employees, and followers who take time and patience to flourish.
Some organizations keep this list confidential with only the HR department and the middle and senior management being able to access this whereas other organizations inform the respective employees in an indirect manner that the organization values them and hence, would seek their response on what is needed from the organizations’ side to enable them to make the transition to middle and senior management.
Of course, not many organizations reveal these details unless the employees enter middle management since it can lead to both overconfidence on the part of the high potentials as well as resentment among those who have not been categorized as such.
However, it is indeed the case that such lists exist in each organization irrespective of the sector or the niche it operates since the new economy or the emerging economy places a premium on talent and hence, it is in the interests of the organization to retain the top performers and on the other hand, intimate the poor performers from time to time that they cannot have a free ride and that the organization is not a charity show.
Having said that, it must also be noted that current research in individual and organizational behavior seems to indicate that a better measure of the employees’ worth to the organization is the EQ or the Emotional Intelligence Quotient rather than the other attributes such as IQ (Intelligence Quotient) or flashes of brilliance that most employees exhibit at one time or the other. This is the reason why many contemporary organizations send their employees to leadership training programs where their ability as a leader of people rather than a follower can be gauged so that the organization knows whom to promote and whom to discard in the competitive climb of the corporate ladder.
Moreover, given the fact that the Pyramidal nature of organizational hierarchies means that only a few can reach each higher level and only one can be the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) means that such identification of talent is crucial as well as critical to the success of the organization.
Further, it is the fact that many employees leave their managers rather than due to the wider organizational ecosystem which means that it is important to have managers who are high on EQ rather than managers who are good only at the technical aspects of the job.
In addition, having lousy managers is a double whammy blow to the organization as it has not only ensured that the employees who are otherwise gifted get wasted and demoralized but also the manager is a liability to the organization since he or she is not an enabler of people or can empower and nurture talent. This is the reason why many organizations in recent years have started to invest time and resources on promoting the employees who are fit for managerial and leadership roles rather than be influenced by experience or technical brilliance.
Finally, talent management is also fraught with danger if the exercise to identify and nurture talent leads to some employees feeling neglected and thereby developing resentment.
As research shows, whenever organizations promote a certain employee or a group of employees, it invariably leads to those who have been left out protesting against the same thereby leading to attrition as well as demoralization.
As mentioned earlier, given the Pyramidal nature of the corporate hierarchy, organizations have to be very careful when undertaking these aspects of talent management and hence, a nuanced, subtle, and understated approach is needed when promoting some employees over others.
In conclusion, talent management is both an art and a science and the specific aspect of identifying leaders and potential leaders as well as marking others as followers is a task that is fraught with risk and at the same time, yields rewards to the organization if done skillfully.
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