Why Your HiPo Program is a Waste of Time and Money
Abhishek Chandra
Strategic HR Leader | People Champion | Aligning Talent, Culture, & Strategy to Accelerate Sustainable Business Growth
If you don't select the right people for a 'High-Potential' program, it will never be a success!
If your organisation doesn’t yet have a high-potential (HiPo) program it’s probably only a matter of time. With competition for the hottest talent only getting fiercer, you want to make sure you’re developing your best and brightest before they’re grabbed by a competitor.
It’s well known that organisations with stronger leaders can double their revenue and profit growth. But just having a HiPo program is, in itself, a poor indicator of future business success.
In fact, as reported in CIPD and People Management, “HR is losing faith altogether”. Five out of six HR managers are unhappy with the results of their programs. Which supports our findings that:
- At least 1 in 7 people are wrongly put on the program in the first place.
- 46% of leaders fail to meet their business objectives in a new role.
- Many of them won’t stay the course – 55% drop out within 5 years.
Potentially, this means much of your investment in a HiPo program is at best wasted and, at worst, feeding your competitors with some of your most highly valued people.
If this sounds like your program, don’t despair. There’s plenty that can be done to turn things round. HiPo programs are expensive and take a lot of your time. If the engine of a top of the range car starts to clatter, you need to check it out. When did you last look under the hood of your HiPo program?
How to Select the Right People for your HiPo Program
Let’s start with your HiPo intake. How do you select people? In the worst case, it’s about rewarding people who’ve been with you for a while and are seen as doing a reasonable job. More often, it’s on the basis of past performance. Although that’s an important criterion it says nothing about potential in a more senior role – and only one in seven high performers is a HiPo.
So, you need to look at three additional criteria:
- Do your candidates have the aspiration to rise to senior roles? We’ve found that by choosing individuals who score highly for certain key motivations and behaviours the odds of achieving an executive position improve by a factor of 11.
- Do they have the ability to be effective when they attain those roles? By measuring four key attributes, you can identify the one in four early career professionals who have the right managerial and leadership potential.
- Finally, are they engaged enough to stay in those roles and with your organisation? Nearly 60% of high-potential employees with high engagement levels have a high intent to stay – more than double that of HiPos with lower engagement.
So, by using objective assessment – our equivalent of the sophisticated diagnostics tools your auto engineer might carry in his pocket – you can address the three central risks that derail HiPo programs: That they won’t ever achieve a senior position, that they won’t be effective once they get there, and that they’ll leave you for the competition.