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Find the secrets to fostering a thriving workplace through strong talent development and retention strategies.
Building and Retaining High-Potential Employees
What did your path to arrive at where you are today look like? Looking back, how much of it would you attribute to -
- Chance - just luck, serendipity. You were in the right job, company, or place at the right time. Although, it's been said, "luck is an accident that happens to the competent."
- Your own will and drive - you were actively seeking out opportunities, learning, and seeking new opportunities. "I want to thank me for believing in me."
- Intentional systems and programs - pathways for learning and development grew your skills and potential. This could have involved experiences, formal mentoring, training and skills development, and even an intentional company culture and environment that supported your success. "The quality of the customer experience, and results, will never be greater than the quality of the employee experience."
After taking that moment to look back, you might think a few things.
First, you might find yourself tipping your hat to Lady Luck for orchestrating a perfectly timed symphony of support just when you needed it.
At the same time, you might consider how small and simple improvements to the quality and consistency of those experiences and programs could have made an even greater impact with not much additional investment. What could have happened if the experiences that meaningfully accelerated your growth and career were deeply embedded in the employee experience?
The truth is talent pipelines and employee potential slip past us because we neglect to intensely maximize that third pathway: strategic talent development. Need proof? Less than ten percent of organizations can give an enthusiastic, 'yes!' when asked if they feel confident their strategies for talent development and potential are present and effective.
Perhaps even more concerning is the fact that a majority of employees believe a lack of learning and development programs is not only preventing them from achieving their full potential, but even even completing core responsibilities within their current role.
Training and development starts with selection and how we promote and place employees when hired. Hiring high-potential employees must happen for development to start, and to keep any organization competitive and innovative. When we talk about high-potentials we're thinking about employees with a combination of talent, drive, and the ability to grow and succeed in more advanced roles. Our ability to retain and nurture this group affects all aspects of success. In fact, the highest performing 1% of employees accounts for 10% of a company's output, while the top 5% account for 26%.
Competency Pathways to Identify High Potentials
Hiring and developing potential happens by building competency driven processes. While competencies are talked about in many capacities, we can think of them as clusters of behaviors, skills, knowledge, and mindsets that drive performance. They dually support our culture as well as operations. When shared, understood, and believed in throughout our teams we have a clear picture of not only what performance looks like, but the potential to support and grow strengths at milestones across the employee journey: from recruitment through retention.
Competencies can lead to and ensure that appraisals of performance (whether a psychometric assessment or performance review) are unbiased and comprehensive. This includes evaluating current performance as well as the employee's capacity for learning, leadership abilities, and alignment with the company's strategic vision.
To drive the success of high-potential employees, here are some recommendations (and ways we've helped leaders) build pathways to define and nurture performance as well as the experience of high potential employees -
- Start with your foundation: build a competency framework and associated job group specific competency models. Make educating and building awareness about these shared standards for performance a company-wide initiative.
- Connect competencies to the early employment experience. What about a 30-60-90 day review where leaders gather performance feedback, formally or informally, from those working with new employees? These early moments can provide a glimpse into strengths and bring high potentials to the forefront.
- Create a regular cadence of performance feedback using your competency framework. By providing more frequent feedback, especially as part of ordinary daily operations, high potentials can set and achieve goals even faster — and pivot and course correct as needed. The ability to pivot is a key outcome of frequent feedback. As feedback becomes part of our routine, regular conversations give greater direction, instruction, and perspective, equipping high potentials with the knowledge and context to act.
- Goals and priorities within a business change fast and quarterly performance check-ins set you up to maximize potential. Adding a quarterly review process also increases your ability to find and maximize high potential talent as leaders and their teams increase their focus on goals and forward momentum.
- Build self-awareness with validated assessments for shared understanding and development. Intentionally chosen assessments educate employees, and their teams and leadership, about the core resources and approaches they bring to any situation. For high potentials, assessments will support them engage in sense-making around their experiences. Urgency to act is more likely to happen when we see the connection between who we are and the feedback we receive.
Regularly gathering feedback systematically delivers a clear picture of performance and an understanding of where potential lives and grows in your organization. With this in place, high-potential employees should be nurtured through what we call Growth Journeys: tailored programs, training, and challenging assignments that stretch their capabilities. Through this, regular feedback and discussions about their career aspirations and potential future roles within the company can further engage and motivate these individuals to commit to long-term growth with the organization.
For example, we led a growth journey process for experienced operational leaders that were geographically distributed across an organization focused on building self-awareness — one of the strongest predictors of enduring success in leadership. After completing the select development focused assessments, leaders were guided through action-focused conversations with their peers on topics relevant to operations across their departments and locations.
Designing Personalized Career Progression Plans
Personalized career progression plans are the heart of broadening and building opportunities for strengths-building and nurturing high potentials in the process.
Career progression planning engages employees in meaningful discussions about their unique career aspirations and conducting thorough assessments of each employee's skills and interests, organizations can craft tailored development plans that not only meet the company's objectives but also align with the employee's professional goals. These plans should encompass a range of initiatives, from targeted training sessions to cross-departmental projects, accompanied by a clear timeline for achieving specific milestones.
To ensure these plans yield significant results, they must remain dynamic and adaptable to the evolving nature of the employee's growth and your ultimate goals. Regular check-ins and adjustments to the plan are essential in keeping the employee on the right path and feeling supported throughout their career journey. This personalized approach not only boosts job satisfaction but also cultivates a deep sense of commitment and loyalty to the company.
Building Reward Systems That Drive Retention
Reward systems are a powerful tool for encouraging employee retention and reinforcing the company's commitment to its workforce. An effective reward system should recognize both individual and team achievements, and it may include financial incentives, promotions, public recognition, or additional benefits such as flexible working arrangements.
To be most effective, rewards should be closely tied to what's under the control of the employee, as well as the company’s goals, performance metrics, and cultural values. This connection helps employees see the direct impact of their work on the organization's mission and success. Regularly reviewing and updating the reward system ensures that it remains relevant and motivating for employees.
Recognition lives along side performance feedback as well as training and development.
Leveraging Mentorship and Coaching for Enhanced Employee Engagement
Mentorship and coaching are indispensable tools for enhancing employee engagement. By pairing high-potential employees with experienced mentors, organizations provide personalized guidance and support that accelerates professional growth. Case in point: having a mentor before starting a first post-MBA job results in greater compensation and a higher-level position.
Mentorship programs further build a culture of continuous learning and development, where employees feel valued and empowered to reach their full potential. How mentoring looks and operates will depend on the unique nature of your organization, culture, and operations. There's also significant value in thinking outside traditional mentor-mentee relationships. Take reverse mentoring, for which high potentials are ideal candidates. In these relationships senior leaders are mentored by younger or less experienced employees. These ties can bridge generational gaps, foster inclusivity, and enhance learning and innovation within organizations.
When hard metrics of reverse mentoring were analyzed, several studies find these programs improve the speed and quality of adapting to change. Reverse mentoring specifically enhanced curiosity and cognitive flexibility as well as resilience from the opportunity to connect and share in paradoxical paired relationship.
In addition to mentoring, coaching is a powerful experience to strengthen the growth of high potentials, and their connection and commitment to your organization. Coaching usually begins with a clear focuses on refining specific skills and competencies, or reaching a specific goal. Regular coaching sessions support employees in navigating challenges and seizing opportunities for improvement.
Coaching might trigger concerns about financial feasibility with the price tag of an external coach being out of reach to scale across a larger pool of employees. However, what about scaling coaching through shared experiences, like the growth journey experience I shared earlier? Group or cohort based coaching empowers an external coach, or members of your own team, to reach a large group of employees regularly with a shared goal for development. We often use assessments to build groups with complementary skills sets, values, or mindsets. Cohort coaching also builds ties and connections across employees that can grow over time.
Some organizations even incorporate opportunities to sustain connection with the group or cohort long-term. Even something like a Slack or Teams channel could be a meaningful reminder and tie to the experience for employees long-term. We support a range of geographically dispersed organizations where the opportunity to come together with others with shared experiences who are geographically far away builds connection and belonging.
Together, mentorship and coaching create a robust support system that keeps employees motivated, engaged, and committed to their career progression within the organization.
Building a Cycle of Continuous Learning and Development Opportunities
Learning and development often falls short because of the whirlwind we face each day. Even with the best intentions to stay the course with our goals and strategy, the push of what unexpectedly comes before us takes control. But it's this whirlwind that makes intentionally prioritizing and scaling growth, especially with our high potentials, so essential. As you consider all the components and options for learning and growth, strive to build an ecosystem, or a constellation of interconnected experiences and milestones that support the ultimate goals you're seeking to achieve.
Using a mix of formal and informal learning experiences places learning and growth centrally in your culture and makes it a part of the everyday employee experience. This also makes clear the expectation that it's expected to allocate time and resources for learning. This shows high potentials, and all employees, that the organization is invested in their personal and professional flourishing.
Creating a Culture of Engagement and Belonging
One of the most energizing aspects of working within any function involving people and culture, from talent acquisition to learning and development, is that nothing exists in isolation. A new assessment tool for recruiting and hiring influences learning and development. How we shape engagement influences our employee value proposition and recruitment.
Similarly, actions to strengthen the experience and growth of high potentials will shape the culture, and the reverse is true. Your culture ultimately sets a ceiling for what you can achieve with your strongest performers. Creating a culture of engagement and belonging is directly connected with our ability to accomplish this goal.
Culture building, and building a culture that excites and attracts high potentials, is a multifaceted endeavor that requires a deep commitment to understanding and shaping the thoughts, feelings, and intentions. By cultivating an environment where every individual feels valued and empowered to contribute their unique skills and perspectives, companies can unlock the full potential of their workforce and increase the volume of high potential employees within all job groups and across all levels.
Every suggestion we've shared so far begins with the simple act of listening carefully and recognizing the unique voices and experiences of our employees. This approach helps us make smart decisions. Whether we're dealing with supply chain hiccups, economic ups and downs, or a shortage of candidates, employees who feel seen, heard, valued, and accepted are much more likely to stay engaged over the long haul. From our experience listening to employees through exit interviews, engagement surveys, focus groups, and even coaching, we've consistently found that leaders who actively seek feedback build trust and commitment.
Take, for instance, some of the organizations we work with. They actively ask employees for feedback on future development plans. What programs, coaching, and support do they find most valuable? This feedback helps us tailor resources to create programs and offerings that truly meet their needs. Plus, when leaders decide against a particular development opportunity or benefit, they have a clear understanding of the reasons behind it. In this way, thoughtful listening equips leaders to design meaningful development strategies and craft messages that resonate with each department, region, or job group.
Strategies for creating positive feedback loops and communication to boost growth and potential:
- Start with your mission and culture. Over the past decade, the link between clearly sharing your mission and culture and boosting retention and engagement has only grown stronger. Job seekers often look for insights from employees about how core values are practiced during interviews and hiring. How can you better share your company’s mission, vision, and values?
- Get a feel for how employees experience your culture in their daily work by enhancing your listening strategies. The best way to improve communication about your mission and culture is to understand how your current employee experience reflects it. Exit surveys, quick polls like those in our CultureMap™ process, and even 360-degree feedback can offer valuable suggestions for improvement and provide a benchmark for quarterly, biannual, or yearly comparisons. Not sure where to start? We begin with a framework for the employee experience, but we know every organization is unique, so each listening tool or survey we offer is tailored to your specific challenges and goals.
- Mix up your employee listening and engagement strategies. Using various methods to connect and genuinely listen to employees has become more important than ever. Our survey work finds, not surprisingly, that high potentials are especially hungry for opportunities to communicate. Leaders we collaborate with emphasize the value of regular one-on-one meetings, even with frontline, part-time, and hourly staff. As technology becomes more fluid and seamless, how do we make sense of multiple data sources? If you have exit interviews, 360-degree feedback, engagement and experience data, and talent assessments, each can provide important insights for developing strategies.
When we feel connected to a larger mission and values we're more likely to commit to growth and resilience. By prioritizing a culture of engagement and belonging, organizations can create a positive and supportive work environment where employees thrive and contribute their best work.
