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Who do you involve when talking talent?

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 …

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How to mitigate age and gender bias in the Talent Review?

Why are most high potentials males younger than 40?

Recent research demonstrates the risks of age and gender bias in Talent Management practices.

How to mitigate these biases in the Talent Review?

A recent study at the University of Leuven* shows that appraisals of potential are more likely to be age or gender biased than appraisals of performance.
This can be explained by the fact that ‘potential’ is a future oriented prediction of behavior while performance refers to the evaluation of behavior in the past. Predicting the future is always a more abstract exercise than evaluating the past, disposing of factual data and observations to base your evaluation on.
The results of the study show that
“appraisals of potential seem inherently biased against older employees and to a lesser extent women”
The observation that employees older than 40 to 45 years, are less identified as high potential, can have an important effect on their career. More specifically, this can impact in a rather negative way their
  • pay raise
  • promotion opportunities
  • access to development possibilities
  • visibility in the organization
And for the organization this means a risk of less diversity in age and gender of the talent pool. This talent pool being the source for future leaders.
BUT the good news is, that there are ways to lower the risk of age and gender bias.
Some suggestions:
1. Define ‘potential’ as tangible as possible by using observable behaviors – and ask leaders to give examples of these behavior the high potential already has demonstrated;
2. Ask employees input on their potential – offer them the possibility of a self-assessment, based on the behavioral definition of potential;
3. Use evidence-based questionnaires, completed by the employee on the one hand and the manager on the other hand, as input for the Talent Review discussions;

4. Present evaluators with descriptions of real challenges that people face in the role for which potential is appraised and ask them to imagine how the employee would behave in this situation.

* De Boeck G., Brosi P., Dries N.   Are Appraisals of Potential, Due to Their Prospective Nature, More Prone to Bias than Appraisals of Performance?, June 2019