Rethinking HIPO Strategy- What Really Matters (and Doesn’t)

In the several hundred discussions I’ve held with HR leaders across 2016, several common pain points commonly emerge driven by the pace of change we’re all experiencing in our businesses. With 5 major organisational changes hitting a company on average over the last 3 years and the pace of change increasing, it is easy to assume that building agility is the panacea competency we need to build out. Despite this focus on developing agile future leaders, and 27% of L&D spend directed to HIPO programmes, we’re clearly missing the mark with only 24% of HR leaders viewing their HIPO strategies as successful.

This is getting to a critical point for organizations as only 13% of HR leaders cite a strong leadership bench at their business (down 4 points from 2013). Why does this matter? Anecdotally I’m sure we all see this issue manifest itself in many ways and CEB data also shows a weak leadership bench directly impacts performance outcomes and drives dependence on (more costly and hard to fill) external candidates.

So taking CEB’s HIPO model as a starting point (focused on aspiration, engagement, and ability), what is a better approach to developing the future talent our business will actually need? The Corporate Leadership Council research team spent the last 6 months speaking with 100+ HR leaders and diving deep into the data and found 3 key opportunities to focus on:

1. Ability- To keep pace with the business, we must expand needs identification and assessment beyond HR to ensure HIPO criteria are the right predictors of future leadership requirements; the line has the best insight on changing business needs and drivers of in-role performance.
2. Aspiration- Despite the popular view that aspiration is fixed, CEB found it can move as much as 23% over a career so HR can in fact actively manage and build HIPO aspirations over time.
3. Engagement- A common concern we hear is that once the HIPO label is used, that HIPO is straight to their manager asking for a promotion/raise or heading for the door. It is therefore essential for HR to take ownership of HIPOs’ career progression to better manage non-promotional growth opportunities.

Our next European HRD meeting on this topic will be in Zurich and is at capacity but we’ll also share this in some of our upcoming London member meetings as well. If interested in learning more on this CEB research and related company support, feel free to get in touch more directly.