Talent Reviews and Internal Mobility
In this tenth edition of the Career Mobility Newsletter, I will focus on Talent Reviews, one of the last two elements in my Internal Mobility framework.
How to Perform a Talent Review in 2024
What is a talent review?
This aihr.com blog focuses on How to Perform a Talent Review in 2024 (Your In-depth Guide). Monique Verduyn, the author, includes this definition:
A talent review is a structured process to assess and evaluate the skills, potential, and performance of your employees. It involves a thorough examination of each employee’s strengths, weaknesses, and future growth potential within the company.
In this process, managers and leaders talk about individual employee contributions, their career aspirations, and development needs to inform their decision making about promotions, assignments, and succession planning.
Why perform a talent review?
A talent review is a critical process for organizations to assess their current talent pool and identify areas for improvement. It helps to ensure that your organization has the right people in the right roles, with the right skills and capabilities, to meet current and future business needs.
What are the benefits of a talent review?
What are the frameworks used in a talent review?
Each of the steps in the 9-box framework is covered in this blog. ?The leadership and competency framework is a set of competencies that are considered essential for effective leadership. These can be used to assess an employee’s leadership potential and identify areas where they need development. The links above take you to more information on the specific framework.?
What are some talent review best practices?
Use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals to set clear objectives for the talent review process.
Balance qualitative and quantitative metrics to provide a comprehensive view of employees’ performance and potential.
Consult with relevant stakeholders, including managers, department heads, and employees themselves, to gather diverse perspectives and insights on employees’ strengths, weaknesses, and potential.
Ensure data privacy and confidentiality throughout the process by adhering to data protection regulations and guidelines.
Regularly review and update the process to align with changing organizational goals and priorities.
This blog also includes some great questions to ask in a talent review. For example, under the performance category:
See the article for questions under the nine other relevant categories.
How to Accelerate Employee Development with Talent Reviews
In this Next Practice Awards case study by I4cp, Catherine Nelson highlights T-Mobile’s new Talent Review approach including the results and impact of accelerating employee development.? Removing the 9-box framework has shifted the talent review discussion from rating calibrations to determining whether they have the right development approach for each of their employees.
They plan to expand talent assessments and calibrations lower into their organization with some organizations including all individual contributors. They want to use their talent review data to support employees in crafting a development plan that is unique to them to drive mutual success. They also envision using their talent assessment data to drive individual career mobility, personalized development, a diverse pipeline, as well as business continuity.
New Directions in Talent Reviews
This Best Practice Institute blog written by its CEO and founder, Louis Carter, focuses on new directions in talent reviews for GE, Netflix and Cigna.
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When human capital was plentiful, the focus was on which people to let go, which to keep, and which to reward—and for those purposes, traditional appraisals (with their emphasis on individual accountability) worked pretty well. But when talent was in shorter supply, as it is now, developing people became a greater concern—and organizations had to find new ways of meeting that need.? Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis (Harvard Business Review 2016)
Using technology – best practice at General Electric
GE dropped rankings a decade ago. It reinvented its talent discovery, assessment, and development with PD@GE (Performance Development at GE). This is a user-friendly mobile app designed to assess, manage, and acknowledge employees’ daily work. Managers can also coach, employees can feed up the line, and colleagues can acknowledge colleague achievement. At GE, potential means what it takes to take over today, in the next year, or somewhere between the next three to five years. Their training culture enables the creation of courses and curriculum for groups and individuals in anticipation of next level needs. This feedback to the Employee Management System and GE’s leadership talent pipeline.
The Talent Team work is based upon a matrix using five growth values:
Culture of expendability – best practice at Netflix
At Netflix, the business is run more like a pro-sports team. Like players on a pro ball team, sometimes they change positions and sometimes they get cut. Team reviews determine the present and future needs, and they terminate employees who no longer provide resources for new evolving strategies similar to Jack Welch’s thinking.
Netflix has also destroyed administrative Human Resources:
At Netflix, everyone gets the freedom to do their best work and the responsibility to achieve excellence. We value candor, transparency, and courage. We embrace context and avoid control, seeking insight and understanding to make sound decisions.
Connect for growth – best practices at Cigna
For talent reviews, they identify people in terms of readiness: now, mid-term, and long-term. They mark critical roles in each department according to future business requirements. Then, they identify high-potential staff that they will prepare for significant positions. The Cigna University, then, enrolls employees throughout the organization for a continuing learning opportunity that filters and channels talent.
The new normal for corporations is to treat talent less like a problem and more human. For if you treat talent like a math problem, you may win or lose, but if you treat them like human beings, you will always win.? Louis Carter
Time to Give Up on the 9 Box?
In this LinkedIn article, Andy Wild makes the case for ditching the 9-box grid:
Like with performance reviews, talent reviews need to not look backwards but spend time looking forward. Look Ahead Talent Management if you like. It might not be obvious, but a 9- box is a supply side discussion - the talent we have - it does not highlight what is needed, demand side. Andy Wild
The challenge with talent management is to create movement in organizations and ensure we are enabling employees to do the best work of their lives. In contrast, the 9-box grid simply plots people onto a grid.
The Talent Review Roadblock
This Kornferry Insights article states that an informal system of evaluating talent is getting in the way of promoting women or anyone that doesn’t look like current leaders. Although leadership consultants are being asked to develop programs that produce more high potential women, only 37% of first- or mid-level management positions are held by women. One reason is that executives often overstate the performance of their direct reports and managers often confuse an employee’s performance with their potential.
According to a recent Stanford study from more than 200 performance reviews, men got a specific clearer picture of how they are doing and what they need to do to improve than women. For example, 57% of women received vague-sounding praise on their reviews vs. 43% of men. In comparison, 60% of men had their feedback tied to business outcomes vs. 40% of women.
Based on experts, an inclusive talent review would ensure that all talent is evaluated fairly against clear performance and potential measures. Managers would be held responsible to see that everyone has equal access to pursue open roles and has equal opportunity to get development training. This new view could force managers to spend more time developing talent.
4 Secrets to Better Talent Reviews: A People Manager’s Guide
This article from the Talent Strategy Group’s Marc Effron states that a well-run talent review is the best solution to expand great talent on your team.? He shares these four talent review secrets and three tips to achieve more and better talent faster:
How do you put these secrets into action?? Read the article to learn what steps to take for each of the above in your talent review.? For example, in secret #1, ask yourself whether the person being discussed has outperformed 3 out of 4 of their peers, on average, over the past 3 years. If so, they’re a high performer and now qualify to be evaluated for their potential and interest in moving up.
Marc also shares three tips to help you get talent-building power from the talent review process.? The first of three tips is to follow-through on the talent review development plan.? The second is to make sure that your succession plan is realistic.? The third is to be transparent by telling you a high-po that they are high potential.
We know that better talent delivers better results, so use your valuable time to grow your team in the fastest, most effective way. Follow your company’s talent review process and be sure to apply the four secrets (and three tips) for the best possible results! Marc Effron
Question
Are you ready to ditch the 9-box?? If so, what other approach would you recommend for talent reviews to drive more internal mobility? Please share your thoughts in the comments.?