Not by money alone: the emotional wallet and talent management
Authors: Kumar Hari , Raghavendran Satish 
Published: May 2013

Purpose

The conventional talent management approach views human relationships as transactional, akin to the commodities that traverse through the supply chain maze. In short, there is a quid pro quo relationship between wage and services, depriving any role for other non‐monetary influences on this relationship. This naïve view of human behavior has distracted the fundamental purpose of talent management – to unlock the value of talent to organizations. Two fundamental drivers that have challenged this transactional view espoused by HR include technology and advances in neuroscience. The technological advancements have created a demand for highly skilled professionals who value autonomy and meaningful engagement. This has brought employee engagement within the focus of managers – a topic that had less significance in earlier decades. The transactional view of workplace relationships has been challenged by discoveries of human behavior by neuroscience. Human beings are wired to have emotions and perceptions, and a workplace is no exception. Reframing the issue through a simple‐yet‐powerful framework, fundamentals of talent management can be restored, paving the way for a meaningful design of organizations. This paper seeks to address these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Using rigorous in‐depth secondary research about current talent practices, the report offers a novel framework to unlock the drivers of employee's motivation and performance. The framework serves as a diagnostic leadership tool to identify breakdowns and foster a meaningful conversation to restore the organization back to equilibrium. A holistic alternative that is agnostic to the rank of the employee, job role, and geography offers promise over the current practice of dealing with employee issues in fragmented manner.

Findings

The proposed framework helps identify the sweet‐spot that lies at the intersection of three fundamental drivers; employee's preferences on the type of work, employee's core competency and activities that are value‐adding to the organization. The sweet‐spot is the employee's emotional wallet that the organizations must proactively capture to unlock the true drivers of motivation and performance. The proposed framework serves as a diagnostic tool to meaningfully tackle breakdowns and restore organizations to equilibrium. The sweet‐spot provides the clue to design an effective organizational structure, identify the enablers and catalyst that can unlock employee motivation and performance.

Practical implications

There is a compelling need for today's organizations to refocus their energies to unlock the value of their talent to drive higher performance and motivation. Deploying the proposed framework will empower organizations to capture the “share of emotional wallet” that is critical to drive higher levels of employee engagement and motivation. Smarter organizational structures and job role can be meaningfully designed.

Social implications

The proposed framework challenges conventional talent management views of human relationships as transactional akin to the commodities that traverse through the supply chain maze. This blind spot has deprived the organizations in unlocking the drivers of employee motivation and performance. Overcoming this blind spot empowers talent management to capture the emotional share of wallet instead of trying to perfect the delivery supply chain.

Originality/value

Despite new organizational complexities, the fundamental focus for talent management is to unlock the value of its resource. Despite the pristine appeal of this fundamental tenet of talent management, it is ironic that HR has drifted its focus from its core. Reframing the issue through a simple‐yet‐powerful framework, fundamentals of talent management can be restored, paving the way for a meaningful design of organizations. This is a paradigm shift for talent management to get back to basics of what really matters to the organizations.