What are you doing to let your high-potential talent know you want to invest in their career development?
In today’s dynamic marketplace, it takes much more than good pay and benefits to attract and retain talent critical to your organization’s growth. The best people join organizations that will take an active interest in their career – and stay with those that give them the opportunity to develop the skills to advance within the company.
High-potential employees are those you consider critical to your organization. They are essential to delivering on your business strategy and have important intel and skills that would be costly to lose. Research from Gartner as shown that high-potential employees are 91% more valuable to your business long-term than employees who have not shown the same level of potential. Therefore, these team members should be your top priority when it comes to development, advancement and retention opportunities.
Identifying and Onboarding
Understanding what high performance looks like and knowing who has the greatest potential to keep growing and advancing within your business is often left determined through subjective perspectives and bias. Creating an objective lens for comparing talent and accountability is critical to reducing bias and understanding who and where your high potential and performance team members are. Utilizing benchmarks and assessments do just that
Retaining
Last spring, I wrote a blog about developing your talent to lead, not leave. This is crucial for retention. Business leaders often ask how they can develop talent to lead their organization, without them wanting to leave for a better opportunity with their newly acquired skills.
The key is to create an engaging path forward that continuously pushes your rising leaders while they wait for the next opportunity to advance within your organization. This avoids them feeling stuck and undervalued and shows you’re invested in their future. Offering a great development course or two is only the first part of successful development. Keeping the talent engaged, free from feeling they have been set on that shelf to wait, is the difference.
Becoming a High-Potential Employee
Becoming a high-potential employee starts with knowing who you are. Meeting expectations and receiving good feedback on your performance reviews is only one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is to own your path and invest in developing in yourself. I recently wrote about how self-discovery is an ongoing process and once you begin to have a solid understanding, you can write down your goals and assign realistic timelines. Connect the skills – soft and technical – to what’s required to reach your ultimate destination. Through this, you will also identify your gaps and see what you need to improve to reach your goals.
Consider the various ways to fill those gaps, grow your experience, gain new opportunities and expand your network. When you have this visibility to your pathway, it allows you to navigate every career move, development opportunity and step that will lead you to where you want to be. We have a great program, IYP2, that focuses on just this.
Your people are the most valuable assets to your organization, and if you’re struggling to retain them, it can create a lot of stress on your business. Identifying, onboarding and retaining your high-potential employees is crucial for the long-term growth of your business.
If you are interested in how our IYP2 program can help support high performers within your business – or you’re looking develop the skills to own your path and become a high performer – reach out today.