Unutilized Potential: Why it's important to address it?

Hi all!

Thank you for all the enthusiastic responses to my previous article. It was quite encouraging and here’s my next one.

In the last two decades, I've attended several employee retention meetings and, on several occasions, have helped the HR and the Leadership teams in retaining talent.

What I have observed is if the resignation is motivated by commercials, then the retention is easy to handle. However, retaining the talent is difficult if the departing person is either unhappy with some unnecessary suffering or has reached a saturation point with the organization. In this post, I'm going to talk about the individual's reaching saturation.

What happens exactly?

Have you ever had the feeling that you have a lot more skills, passion, or ideas but are restricted by people, systems, or a simple lack of guidance?

Remember the example below and what occurred afterward.

You've probably seen a colleague leaving for a higher-paying job with unimaginable packages.?Ever wondered, how did that happen?

If you look closely on LinkedIn, you will find much higher levels of progression in some of your ex-colleagues’ careers, and you may not be able to picture that individual in that position and growth as you've normally seen him or her in roles with smaller responsibilities while together in past.

Following Scenarios occur post such attrition.?

• Many times, a person goes for the same role/responsibility with a better organization that can generate more value from his efforts. It depends not just on the individual's skill, but also on the organization's ability to maximize that individual's potential by allowing them freedom and recognition.

Or

• The individual moving to a higher position (designation/role) where the other organization sees a different potential in that person, capitalizes on it and creates a win-win situation for everyone.?

The above instances are more common after appraisal cycles, due to the following reasons:

• A person receives a salary increase, but the organization believes that the person is just working for money and eventually forgets, ignores, or puts a low priority on promoting him/her.
• A person is promoted but the promotion isn't acknowledged in practicality like relevant duties aren't upgraded. For example, a person may be promoted, but his role, duties, and corporate privileges/rights remain the same.

Why does it require fixing?

A kid begins to sit at the age of six months, starts crawling at eight months, stands at nine months, walks at twelve month, and runs a few months later. Humans who are proactive are always learning new things and developing new skills, whether they are at work or outside.

For most people, learning never stops, and for them, it is a way of life.

When a person does the same thing over and over, his cost (CTC) increases and motivation decreases. Lack of excitement results in a bad attitude, boredom, and a reduction in performance for the same job. This may result in separation or some form of suffering (we will talk about that later in a separate post).

Beyond financial considerations, it is also critical for a person, manager, leader, or organization to recognize such potentials and put them to good use, as it benefits not just the individual, but also the company, country, industry, and environment. A person who does not contribute substantially?also uses the same number of resources similar to their productive counterparts. ??

How to fix?

Accepting that others around you are talented is the first step. The next step is to establish a culture of confidence in which people can come forward and express their capabilities and accept more responsibilities. Forming some strategies, encouragement, allocating tasks in that direction, or offering liberty to make decisions can all help you go further. Giving people a chance to succeed and acknowledging/rewarding favorable outcomes is more important.

Human capital with the right mindset can do miracles if you trust them. (We will talk about #Trust in much detail later in another post)

?Conclusion:

Although the above was written in the context of human capital, the concept also holds true for geographic locations, people, assets, and the entire population of a country.

Organizations and their leaders play a larger part in the overall ecosystem or industry, and it is critical for the industry's best interests that they address such challenges on time.

# Every attrition is a national leakage since it affects productivity and forces many businesses to incur unnecessary expenses.

# As leaders, we must ensure that people grow and develop within our organization, as well as that we build a younger workforce by hiring fresh graduates regularly. We must develop/shape young minds by training them appropriately in a positive and productive environment.

?A small idea along the same lines:

Why don't we collect old dusty rusted abandoned bicycles lying idle in our apartments and fix them to offer them to girls in rural communities where owning а bicycle is a dream?

Anyone willing to volunteer should grab this idea and make that happen.?I promise I won't take credit for it. ??

Can you identify some of this wastage of potential in your organization and detail them to me so that we can identify them and solve them as we really want to.

Once again Learning is a never-ending process, and any recommendation is appreciated in the comments section.

?-Varix (Trying to lead an upcoming playground for Tech Enthusiasts)

(Like a person, Organization also has a character - #vxQuote)

P.S. The banner for this post is of the "Great Rann of Kutch," which is an excellent example of utilizing unusable terrain. *Taken from the Internet.