Grooming top performers in a neutral environment - without discouraging rest of the  employees - is a big challenge for the HRfolks in a highly competitive business environment, where growing organizations are fighting it out to retain and induct  talents.

A common question i face, while recruiting top performing but passive professionals for my clients is: "what would the job offer to me in terms of 'Performance Recognition' and 'Career Growth' in the long run."

Sounds simple but a difficult question to answer, because most of the growing organizations are experiencing chaotic transition, to the best of my knowledge - based on numerous feed back received from the  professionals working in those companies.

One of the biggest advantage of being a Recruiteris, is the access to the information on " what is actually happeninginside" through candidates - turned good friends - working for thoseorganizations.

If i really want to know about the true culture - not the projected or perceived one - prevailing in the organization, i can, obviously with some extra efforts.But i rarely do it, unless a specific situation demands such probing.

I have no doubt over the normal effectiveness of "conventional" strategic and tactical interventions, practiced by HR leadership for  "Talent Grooming", but the situation demands an unconventional approach, a new way of looking at old things.

That is what i call "TalentGrooming in Neutral Environment," means, rewarding the good performersin such a way, that it does not discourage the rest - rather encouragethem to perform better - because organization just can't afford to lose  high potential average performers also - who with proper counseling may evolve into a good performer.

One of the key to success could be: initiate serious, penetrating and conclusive  counseling engagements - long term - with the average performers, and ensure arecognizable transformation, reflecting an improvement - over a periodof time - in their functioning.

I agree that, it is being done in most of the organizations, even now,but just as a routine job.What HR need to do is, to take it as a challenge with a result oriented approach.

Basic human nature is to spend more time on complaining, than trying to fix it.But when the improvement is visible, frequency of complaining comes down, facilitating further improvement.

So rewarding good performers while taking care of the average - in this way - sends a strong and positive message across the organization - creating a neutral environment.

However, there could be better ways of doing it, and it would be a challenge for the HR Leadership; to formulate a strategy, that will change the landscape of their organizations, with respect to talent grooming.

Abhijit Kar