Developing high potentials

Daphne Ong

Director of Staffing, Asia Pacific and Japan, Covidien

Most leaders know the importance of developing and retaining high-potential employees but do not even have a career development discussion, not to mention a written development plan, for these employees. In my view, here are three reasons why:

If leaders are not held accountable, to develop high potentials within their teams, there will not be an impetus for them to do so, given other competing business priorities. Unless leaders have benefited from previous managers who made efforts to develop them professionally, many will not have strong convictions that development plans serve any real purpose.

Some organisations choose to adopt a conservative philosophy and do not wish to create great visibility of their high potentials. They may want to avoid falsely inflating expectations or a perceived differentiation in how different employees are treated. Despite these challenges, I believe that if employees take personal accountability for their own development plans, most leaders will be inclined to support them.

Melany Sulaiman

VP, HR and Communications, FCI Electronics

The much higher value of the High Potentials (HiPots) versus the value of average employees can normally be felt only after a certain period of time through development actions which are a form of long-term investment. In order to bear fruit, the programme should be continuous and dynamic. Just like other long term development initiatives, the HiPots programmes are difficult to sustain and the ROIs are not easy to measure. Therefore, even though many leaders believe that HiPots have a much higher value, not as many put in the effort to invest for the future.

In FCI, we have a HR process called Organisation Development & People Review (OPDR) – a platform for managers to regularly assess and review our key people, including HiPots. But we must first get aligned on the definition of HiPots. They are typically those that not only perform well in their respective roles today, but can also be groomed in the next five years to eventually assume some kind of chief executive or technical/functional expert position in the long term. We also seek those who are international, adaptable and able to thrive outside of their comfort zone. Through OPDR, we identify development needs and plan for career progression of our HiPots to feed the succession pipeline of the organisation.

Joyce Yap

Regional Head of HR, Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking, Asia Pacific

In today’s dynamic world of business, leaders clearly understand the value of high-potential employees and would like to have structured development plans for all of them. However, the majority do not get down to it. The main reason is that managers do not have the habit or the training to put the development plan in place. Also, managers have the pre-conception that they need to be more precise in writing the development plan, whereas the job of the manager is merely to identify the area lacking in development and document it. The rest of the solution would be from HR.

Also, development plans are not always about training. It can be simply to propose an on-the-job exposure in a project or activity. Managers are in the best position to propose such on-the-job development / exposure. For instance, a need to present better may not necessarily require classroom training by some of the best in class in presentation skills. Instead, the manager just needs to give the individual more practical exposure with an observer to give feedback on progress.