Get Strategic with Talent Reviews
The People of an organization breathe life into every innovative idea, make customer experiences memorable, and power its performance and progress.
So then, it must follow that we put the care, nurture, and development of our team at the top of our strategic priorities? Right?
Yes, I hear those crickets too.
Organizational day-to-day activities always conflict with the strategic work. Procrastination is easier when you’re not sure how or where to start.
That’s why using a single process that uncovers areas of strength and opportunity in your team makes sense. Enter the Strategic Talent Review.
It drives focus on the individuals across key dimensions
It aggregates the data into understandable information
It identifies your retention, turnover and succession risks
And that’s just the start.
What is a Strategic Talent Review?
A talent review is the formal process where Leadership (Executive, Business, HR) collectively evaluates the performance and future potential of all (or selected levels of) employees. Organizations can also incorporate additional dimensions such as values, ability, and willingness to perform.
What makes this process Strategic?
You’re applying a lens of the organization’s strategic priorities and initiatives as well as future development.
It gives you a long view of your team’s talent – who is growing, who can grow with proper nurturing, and maybe who needs to be pruned.
Goals of a Talent Review
The general goals of conducting a Strategic Talent Review are:
Align your People strategy with your Business strategy.
Your organization’s business strategy is your master roadmap. It responds to change. It evolves. The strategic pillars that support the overall strategy – People, Marketing, Operations – also require re-alignment.
Inform Strategic workforce planning
Talent reviews drill into the components of your workforce. Skills, capabilities, potential are examined, and identified gaps and needs are added into the workforce plan. Changes in direction are also applied in order to ensure matching of business strategy with talent.
Identify development needs across the workforce
Gaps in skills (for specific individuals) or gaps in talent (the superstar is missing) are clearly visible post the review. Once you identify the gaps, you can build action plans to address.
Evaluate the state of your leadership pipeline
Does your team include developing leaders – those people who are the next person up when someone exits or gets promoted? You want to have a steady pipeline of leadership talent ready to take on their next roles.
See the future leaders in today’s team
You likely have some individuals who have the potential and aptitude to become leaders, but who have not been identified as such. They will be in need of development action, and they can also be candidates to groom for multiple leadership roles. You can see they have what it takes to be successful in leadership roles or are ready to take on more responsibility. Now you are making that visible to the leadership team.
Measure value alignment of your team
The strongest organizations balance skilled team members who align with their values. Incorporating a look at how your team demonstrates or shares the organization’s values can be an eye-opening exercise.
Provide complementary insight to annual performance
Performance reviews are usually retrospective in nature, with guidance and coaching for the future development. The Talent Review assesses both forward-looking and retrospective dimensions. It will not replace your ongoing performance management program, but you will see your individual and team talent from a different perspective.
How do we conduct a review?
Conducting the Strategic Talent Review is like any other strategic initiative. What you plan and prepare for determines what you get out of it.
During the planning stage you’ll establish your specific objectives, identify the population for assessment, and finalize the scope of dimensions (what you will measure). You should plan for this being an ongoing part of your overall People strategy, so consider items that you can monitor changes and growth in over time.
The execution stage is when you gather the actual data from across the leadership team. You have various options on how to capture the data, so plan for a method that is: 1) easy to use by your team, 2) repeatable in the data capture, and 3) efficient for the team who will summarize.
In the review stage the output is shared with the leadership team, with analysis and initial recommendations. Individual leaders then add specific actions for their team members.
What data will I see?
The core data is available as it was input into the process, at the individual level. This is helpful to each leader in cultivating the employee development plans.
Summarized (or aggregated) views are available to see how your talent aligns across the dimensions. Is everyone a star performer? Does everyone score low in a specific dimension or value? You can think of this data similar to a heat map to drive focus.
Succession planning data and retention risks can also be highlighted in the outputs.
The tailored data you incorporate will also be summarized per the planning stage design.
How do I use this Data?
We perform talent reviews to guide where we need to invest in our talent. Here are a few of the things we can see:
where to apply coaching,
when to challenge team members with stretch assignments and experiential learning,
who is ready for promotion and the next stage.
What gaps do we need to fill externally.
Organizations can use the information to enhance employee development plans. You can structure succession plans and strategies – basically de-risking your organization from turnover.
A powerful use of the information is to inform leadership and management in upcoming engagement with the team. Engagement surveys provide one major input. Consider the talent review as another major input.
The key is that the information is a gold mine for you to shape into the tools your organization needs.
How do I get started?
We have conducted talent reviews and have a set of tools to get you started. Our process incorporates the activities that help you collect actionable data and establish your baseline or ongoing reviews. We’ll summarize and review the outputs with you and provide initial recommendations.
We can also assist with the follow-up plans and actions for your individual leaders and their team members.
Summary
A Strategic Talent Review identifies your next set of leaders, shows how you can prepare them for leadership, and uncovers where your retention and succession risks are. To maximize the results from your talent review, it should be a structured process that can be repeated as an ongoing tool in your People Strategy.
Align it with with your overall business strategies, and you’ll yield a high return on investment in your number one asset -- your people.