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It took a pandemic to truly transform the daily work balance and to dramatically change how we approach jobs and careers.
Also in terms of our Talent Management practices, an accelerated shift is needed. This shift will impact all leaders of the organization.

The following 7 questions help you to start the ‘must have’ discussions and reflections on Talent Management in Covid times.

1. Do we need to rethink our build-buy-borrow talent strategy, considering this situation continues? Maybe from now, we will look at our global talent pool to fill vacancies, because working from any place is widely accepted.
2. Are we going to adjust our definition on ‘talent’ and use additional or other criteria to assess talent and potential (i.e.excellent leadership’) in our organizations?
3. Will we reassess the (future) critical skills, needed to realize the strategic goals and to excel in the roll-out of (new) critical processes? As a consequence, will we focus on the development of these critical skills rather than preparing employees for critical roles?
4. If we see an augmented turnover, do we identify people who are a top retention priority for the organization? Have we spoken with them?
5. Based on what we could observe during this crisis, who kept on investing in his/her personal development?  Who showed the required resilience, creativity, curiosity, team connectedness, …to cope with uncertainty?
6. Is there a need to make our talent processes more transparent? In current times, we should have more regularly a dialogue with each employee on his/her aspirations and development. Keep close contact with your talents to support them in their development and career initiatives?
7. Did we continue our Talent Review discussions online? This is crucial to take aligned talent decisions and requires a different preparation from all stakeholders. Do people have remote access to feedback, development plans, goals to realize, … are we digitally focused?

I guess you probably have some more Talent Management questions coming forward in these exceptional times. Let’s share them to support each other in looking for answers.
Keep in mind, the sole reason to invest in talent are the customers.

During Talent Review discussions, we base our talent decisions amongst others on the interpretation by our leaders of ‘potential’. Subsequently we invest time and money in the talents, identified by the leaders

Most organizations fail about half the time in their designation of a high potential because they do not use any scientific measure to confirm this ‘potential’ or to proactively identify the employees with the most potential. Of course, we need the support of the leader to create a development context for each of these talents, so his/her opinion should be part of the discussion … nevertheless

We lose a lot of time and effort in aligning on the identification of the ‘right’ high potentials. While we should focus our discussion on the actions we would like to propose to our talents, so they are able to evolve, develop, take up challenging assignments, …

What Wouter clearly put forward, was that potential is only partially explained if just one measure or perspective is used. It’s by combining validated scales from different perspectives that an adequate prediction of potential is attained.

Which factors are involved? Traditionally, science has focused on the below three:

1. IQ or general intelligence is still the number 1 predictor of potential
2. Conscientiousness or get things done in a result-oriented way, as 1 of the big 5 personality traits is a second vital ingredient
3. EQ or showing social abilities, being empathic, based on good self-knowledge, is a third part to explain ‘potential’

However, this has only led to a predictive value of about 49%. As such, based on newer work and their own analyses, Wouter and his team have found valuable additions in newer, validated concepts:

1. Newer multidimensional constructs regarding EQ and adaptive habits under the umbrella of learning agility.
2. Career- or metaskills
   like adaptability, self-knowledge and self-directed learning that indicate successful identity- and learning-related tendencies

Do you want your Talent Review discussion to be focused on what really matters, being (career) development initiatives and NOT on the eternal discussion if someone is yes or no a (high) potential?

The speed of change is record-breaking.

Also in Talent Management. As a consequence of Covid-19, many organizations decided to adjust their recruitment practices, to launch a COVID well-being program, to train their leaders on how to guide people from a distance, etcetera.

All of these initiatives in Talent Management were focused on keeping the business going, keep productivity and performance at acceptable levels, and giving support to people.

What about the other priorities in Talent Management?

What about the follow-up of the development of future leaders, the retention risk of high performers or the vacancy-risk of critical roles?

In other words, what about the Talent Review & Succession process.

The WEF stipulates clearly that in the fourth industrial Revolution – reskilling and upskilling are a must for each employee. If we don’t start by proactively identifying the talent and at the same time start the
reskilling, your business will lose.

What can your organization learn from Covid-19 on leadership & talent?

Now is the perfect moment

1. to observe what leaders do when they don’t know what to do or when they are confronted with a major change.
2. to identify which roles really are critical to the business. Which of these roles do add value or bring revenue?
3. to get confirmation or not on the potential of a talent. Was he/she the one who came with refreshing ideas, moving the team forward as a natural leader, keeping spirits high, sharing his/her curiosity and eager to discover a new way of collaboration
4. to involve high potentials or future leaders in the strategic COVID taskforce as a learning assignement

• More than 50% of business expense is people
• Talent risk affects the big three business drivers every day: money, time, quality
• It’s about gathering different data to make better talent decisions

My clients ask me how to ensure that the data, discussed during Talent Review Meetings, are trustworthy. Only valid data will lead to right people’s decisions.
As Daniel Kahneman stipulates in his must-read book ‘Thinking fast and slow,’ people place too much confidence in human judgment. We all are subject to cognitive biases.

However, most organizations trust the feedback of the manager and the HR Business Partner to gather input on the potential, aspirations, risk of leaving, … of the employee.
We better make the data, used during Talent Review Meetings, as evidence-based as possible, including the employee’s perspective. Only then can we rely on good people’s decisions.

Today, we avoid the risk of weak people’s decisions, by using several sources to collect information on each employee discussed in the Talent Review Meeting.

Looking at the same person from different angles increases the objectivity and correctness of the advice and decisions taken. We also train the managers in the aligned interpretation of definitions and
competencies used. We make it mandatory to have a dialogue with each employee prior to the Talent Review Meeting, to clarify the ambitions. And still … we lack an evidence-based approach.

I would like to bring the Talent Review Profiler to your attention as a possible answer to this shortcoming.

This talent intelligence tool, which consists of a questionnaire completed by the employee and one by the manager, gives evidence-based input on the potential, risk of leaving, the relation between the manager and employee and other vital data to feed the discussions during the Talent Review Meeting and take informed decisions.

Within the context of the Talent Review, I have been using the word ‘agile’ since more than 15 years.
And more specifically the words ‘learning agility’ as a fundamental characteristic for employees, showing the ability and willingness to learn from their experience and use those lessons to perform effectively in new and different situations.

These days the word ‘agile‘ refers to a mindset and a methodology.
Several organisations are implementing a more agile performance management cycle, meaning they want their leaders to focus on continuous feedback conversations, preferably future oriented instead of a once-in-a-year backward looking evaluation.

What would be the advantages of applying the agile mindset to Talent Review & Succession Management?

Imagine that …

• leaders share an aligned vision on the added value of the Talent Review and Succession Management approach
• career and behavioural development in line with the business needs are at the center of the Talent Review
• the follow-up on the outcome of the Talent Review is a topic on the agenda of each leadership meeting
• the organisations’ talent pipeline is not a static list of talented employees, but an evolving pool of employees showing an agile mindset
• ‘showing an agile mindset’ is a prerequisite to become a leader in the organisation or to be identified as potential successor
• leaders participate to the Talent Review Meeting, cross divisions, to add value to the feedback and development initiatives for people they work with
• succession management of critical positions is focused on a 2 or 3 year time-horizon, instead of 5 to 6 years

… in order to be more agile in the way we look at Talent Review & Succession Management.

TALENT =
– all young and high educated employees?
– all managers as from a certain level in the organization?
– all incumbents of a critical position?
– all employees with potential to evolve vertically?
– all employees with outstanding performance?
– other?

WHO is involved when we talk about Talent Management ?

Prof. Dr. Lidewey Van der Sluis distinguishes 4 talent typologies to help C-level decide on how the organization defines ‘talent’. These 4 perspectives are on the one hand based on inclusive versus exclusive orientation and on the other hand the human versus position based approach. The definition of talent also has a direct influence on the development choices made by the organization.

The 4 perspectives:
1. Exclusive human oriented approach: talents are high potentials, so 5 to 7% of the employees are talents. Development initiatives focus on the accelerated development for these high potentials;
2. Inclusive human oriented approach: all employees are talents. These organizations invest in everyone’s development, taking into account the aspirations and talents of each individual employee;
3. Exclusive position oriented approach: critical positions should be filled by employees with outstanding performance. The development focus is on (future) incumbents of critical positions, in line with the specific requirements for this position;
4. Inclusive position oriented approach: every position requires certain competencies and knowledge. Talent is developed in line with the requirements for a certain position.

In my experience, when discussing the scope of the Talent Review, most organizations would like to discuss all talents and therefor choose an inclusive human oriented approach.
To me the Talent Review needs to start from the organizational strategy and give answer to the business requirements.  I suggest to focus and make choices.  Making clear choices, or choosing an exclusive approach, helps you to ensure the implementation and follow-up on the talents and/or critical positions identified.
Let us know what choice your organization made and why …