Source: http://www.peopletalentsolutions.com/knowledge/WP%20High%20Potential%20Employees.pdf
The process of identifying high potential employees and developing those employees to take on critical roles in the future is vital to organizational competitiveness. Identification and development are two separate concepts. Although both concepts are important, organizations would be wise to put particular emphasis on how they go about identifying high potential employees. The emphasis on identification is imperative because not all employees are equal. Some employees perform better than others, some have more knowledge, and some are just more motivated. It is the proper assessment of these individual differences between employees that should be the foundation of any succession management or leadership development program. An organization should be able to classify employees based on their potential to succeed at higher levels or in critical roles within the organization. This process of classification is necessary in order to fully understand the extent of employee development needs. In other words, identification drives development.
There is a wide range of assessment procedures organizations employ to identify high potential talent. These assessment procedures are listed in order of increasing level of sophistication:
The Buddy Approach. This approach is characterized by people with decision-making authority identifying their “buddies” as high potential. Comments used by decision makers that characterize this approach are, “John is a good guy, we should plan on promoting him” or “I like John, let’s give him the job when it’s available”.
The Tenure Approach. This approach is characterized by promoting or identifying employees that have been with the company the longest. The general theory is that the person has paid his or her dues and therefore should be moved into a critical role. Another rationalization for this approach is that the employee, because of his/her longevity with the company, must have acquired the appropriate knowledge, skill and ability to be successful in a more critical role.
The Manager Appraisal Approach. This approach is characterized by having a manager identify a subordinate for promotion or special development based on the manager’s independent judgment of what high potential means. In this approach, managers are usually left to their own devices to develop criteria from which they base their decisions.
The Decision-Makers Consensus Approach. This approach is characterized by decision-makers meeting as a group to discuss employee suitability for promotion or special development. Although better than the previous approaches, there is usually little in the way of criteria to help articulate what is meant by potential. This can result in unproductive or inaccurate decisions.
The Criteria Based Approach. This approach is characterized by having criteria that articulate how a high potential employee behaves. Decision-makers are required to use these criteria to identify talent and to justify their choices. Typically, assessment tools are used to help measure the criteria. Examples of such tools are multi-rater feedback (360-degree) and assessment centers.
With the exception of the criteria based approach, the consistent problem with these approaches is that there is no common language (criteria) from which to make decisions.
The lack of a common language or set of standards, results in an inconsistent process of talent identification because decision-makers base their judgments on their own perceptions of what is important, and these perceptions may vary. Without a common language there is no standard way to measure employee potential. When decision-makers use their own perceptions of what potential means they tend to identify those employees that are most similar to them, while ignoring equally if not better qualified employees. This can be dangerous because innovative ideas and new and diverse ways of thinking are stifled. Another problem is that if decision makers are not held accountable to use a common set of criteria to identify potential it makes hiding talented employees easier. Hiding talented employees is not an uncommon occurrence, especially if the employee makes the decision-maker look good. The criteria based approach can reduce instances of these problems but organizations should be aware of some common mistakes when implementing this particular approach.
The biggest mistake made by organizations when implementing the criteria approach is the development of criteria that are too difficult to measure. For example, consider the concept of strategic ability. Strategic ability is a wildly popular criterion that many organizations identify as being important to success at higher level and/or critical positions. Some ways that strategic ability has been defined are:
1) The science and art of conducting an activity in its large scale and long-term aspects.” (Lexicon Publications, 1989)
2) “The use of skill in achieving a purpose.” (Lexicon Publications,1989)
3) “Focused energy, to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. (www.allianceonline.org)
4) “A disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future.” (www.allianceonline.org)
At first glance, these defintions can be useful in defining the concept of strategic ability at a high level. With that said, using these defintions to determine whether a individual employee is strategic or not would be very difficult. Although it may be argued that these diffuse defintions may be better than nothing at all, they still leave much room for interpretation.
Given these issues, what should an organization do to better identify high potential employees? The simple answer is that decision makers need to agree on exactly what high potential means, and then document it. This can be achieved through three steps:
1. Identifying high potential criteria
2. Making high potential criteria measurable
3. Creating tools to measure high potential criteria
Following these three steps can create a process by which to measure and identify high potential employees.
References:
- Lexicon Publications, Inc. (1989). The new lexicon Webster's dictionary of the english
language.
- http://www.allianceonline.org/FAQ/strategic_planning/what_is_strategic_planning.faq