Confusion over performance and potential can render the term meaningless
It seems like every organisation has its own definition of a high-potential employee – or HiPo as many people call them. And at a recent Hay Group event on the subject, employers discussed the confusion around this label felt by many HR departments.
For The John Lewis Partnership, a HiPo member of staff is defined as when “ability, aspiration and engagement come together” in one person, explained Deborah Strazza, head of organisation effectiveness and talent at the department store giant.
While Whitbread, group owner of brands such as Premier Inn and Costa Coffee, describes a high potential employee as someone with “drive, insight, curiosity, courage and impact”, said Elly Tomlins, Whitbread’s talent and leadership development director.
However, when Tomlins was tasked with evaluating the group’s talent development programme, she found a fundamental confusion over the difference between potential and performance. And it was this confusion that prompted the group to scrap the term ‘HiPo’ along with HR’s traditional nine-box grid used to appraise them.
“We removed the ‘readiness’ category and evolved a contextual model based on new language, that was practical to Whitbread but also brought in proven psychological theory and research,” Tomlins said. “Potential is important, but potential for what? Organisations need to get better at recognising and rewarding mastery – the ability to deepen skills, and experience in function discipline.”
According to Hay Group research, 71 per cent of ‘HiPos’ are not high performers inside the organisation. Lubna Haq, global service development director at Hay Group, said that the leaders of tomorrow need to be more than just highly skilled.
“You need leaders who can embrace and manage change and that is why emotional intelligence is becoming increasingly important in future leaders,” she said.
“High potentials and future leaders have resilience and empathy,” Haq added. “A one size fits all development programme won’t work for the roles of the future, so you have to ask yourself who are your disruptors? Your game changers? Your strategists?
“We have to get better at developing people in context of organisational strategy.”
Strazza said: “It’s no longer about having a job for life, instead it’s a life of jobs, which means rigid vertical career ladders no longer work. We like to think of development as a climbing frame.”
John Lewis has developed a set of leadership behaviours to measure future abilities against retrospective performance.
“Identifying HiPos then becomes about developing them and for us that means leveraging diversity, meeting leadership behaviours and teaching the power of co-ownership,” said Strazza.
“There are three elements of leadership: leading self, leading others and leading the business. Future leaders will have to master all of these skills.”
The Partnership has implemented a coaching programme to develop ‘high potentials’ as future leaders. Over 80 trained and accredited internal coaches spent 6,000 hours coaching in 2014.
Whitbread has rolled out its talent development programme to all brands, and regions across the world with varying success. Tomlins added: “And when you change one model, it causes a ripple effect across the rest of the organisation’s HR processes. We have now committed ourselves to a huge amount of process redesign including recruitment and performance management.”