Talent's progress

Is there a perspective that can throw light not only on the progress of  employees, but also on the effectiveness of people management in the organization? Tracking the changes in the positioning of employees on the talent grid over a period of time can be an excellent option!

There are many ways in which the progress of an employee ('talent') in an organization can be depicted. The most concrete one is in terms of the roles the employee takes up in the organization. Then there are aspects like compensation, responsibility level etc. that can also be used to track the progress of an employee in the organization.

In this post, let's look at the progress of employees in the organization in terms of a more abstract (though very widely used) representation - in terms of the changes in the mapping of the employee to the performance-potential grid. This grid, often called the talent grid, is typically a 9-box one, with box 9 corresponding to high performance coupled with high potential. 

If we track the changes in the positioning of the employees on the talent grid over a period of time, say for 3-5 cycles of talent review process that lead to the mapping of the employees on this grid, the trends emerging from the same can give us very interesting insights on the effectiveness of Talent Management in the organization. 

Ideally, employees should shift right and/or up on the grid. This would mean that the Talent Management in the organization has managed to help the employees to improve their performance and/or potential. Similarly, if the general trend in an organization is that employees would shift left and/or down and then out of the grid (and the organization!) it can be an indicator of lack of effectiveness of people management in the organization. 

Of course, these movements are also dependent on the employees (their performance and demonstrated potential). However, the overall trends in the movements on the grid (for a group of employees) can provide valuable indications on the effectiveness of people management in the organization.  These employees went through the selection process of the organization before they started featuring in the talent grid and hence the organization can't easily disown them or their movements on the talent grid! 

Yes, there could be other factors at play. For example, if the organization has imposed some sort of normalization on performance ratings and/or on potential ratings, this would limit the percentage of the employees who can be in box 7, 8 and 9 (the boxes in the talent grid that denote the best talent positioning). Also, if 'long term' performance (and not recent performance) is what drives the positioning on the performance axis of the grid, the degree of  'fluctuation' along the performance axis of the grid is likely to be lower. 

There is also this interesting phenomenon of stickiness of the ratings, especially potential ratings.  The extreme case is when the organization takes the stated or unstated position that the 'potential' is a non-modifiable factor, in which case no movement on the potential axis would be possible. Mercifully, most organizations consider potential to be some sort of a combination of ability, aspiration and leadership and somewhat modifiable. 

All this assumes that the definition, the rating scale and the calibration norms for performance and potential (that lead to the positioning on the talent grid) remains consistent over the years/over the period used for trend analysis. Else, there is a possibility of scenarios similar to that of 'reducing poverty by redrawing the poverty-line'!  

There could also be deeper factors like the tacit definition of 'what good looks like' and  the unstated assumptions regarding people management in the organization  (e.g. 'we hire a person based not only on the fit to the current role but also on the fit to the future roles' or 'we hire people mainly to solve a particular problem at a given point in the organization's journey'). 

As we have seen in 'Type N and Type O Organizations', in  the case of 'Type N' organizations, the relatively new employees have a great advantage over the other employees, though this advantage vanishes quite quickly as they become 'old' (tenured)! This can lead to rapid changes in the grid positioning as the employees tend to get over-positioned on the grid initially and then shift left and down (and out!) very quickly. This creates a lot of action (and an illusion of progress) on the people management front, though over a period of time it might become apparent (if the organization is open to see it) that quality of talent in the organization hasn't improved and that 'the new is not really outperforming the old'!

 So, where does this leave us? Though Talent's progress (or lack of it) on the performance-potential grid is a rather abstract way of capturing the Talent trajectory', it can indeed provide very useful insights on the effectiveness of people management in the organization! While the movement of a particular employee on the grid is mainly a function of the performance and demonstrated potential of the employee, the trends in these moves at the group level points to the effectiveness (or lack of it) of people management in the organization. These organization level trends can also be very useful in unearthing the unstated assumptions that the organization has made on people and on people management!

Any comments/ideas? 

When HR Philosophy is not just a 'philosophical issue'...

These days, many 'pragmatic' HR professionals seem to have an aversion to the term 'HR Philosophy'. They seem to think that paying attention to 'esoteric' things like this would be a needless diversion when they are busy with their HR initiatives and HR Transformation efforts. Some of them even seem to worry that paying too much attention to 'HR Philosophy' would come in the way of their 'business-orientation' and 'flexibility'. This often leads to a situation where organizations haven't given serious thought to crystallizing the basic tenets of their people management philosophy. 

There is nothing sacred about the term 'HR philosophy'. What is important is to make an attempt to reflect on, crystallize and leverage the key tenets of people management in the organization. It can very well be called the 'guiding principles of people management' instead of being called 'HR philosophy'. This term  'guiding principles of people management' also drives home the message that this is about an organization-wide aspect touching everyone in the organization and not particular to the HR function.  

The key problem with the aversion to 'HR Philosophy' is that no HR initiative or HR transformation effort can be effective if it goes against the basic nature of the employer-employee relationship in the organization. For example, no 'employee engagement' (in its original meaning of 'deep emotional connect with the organization leading to discretionary effort') is possible if employees are viewed primarily as costs. If employees are primarily as costs, then 'business-orientation' of HR should require that the primary job of HR is to control this cost - through downsizing, limiting development investment  and reducing the people related spend in general. So, an HR Transformation effort that aims to transform HR into a more developmental role would be irrelevant in that context. 

When it comes to HR initiatives, lack of a clearly articulated and consistently practiced HR Philosophy  can make the organization susceptible to 'taking up the latest fad in people management and discarding it soon after to take up the next one'. 

It can also result in highly inconsistent people management practices in the organization. For example, this can lead to the organization swinging wildly between

• high empowerment and high control

• large investment in employee development and no investment in employee development

• describing the organization as a 'family' and describing the organization as a 'talent market place driven purely by supply and demand'

• 'encouraging employees to form deep emotional bonds with the company' and ''downsizing at the first available opportunity' 

• high degree of differentiation for top talent and low degree of differentiation for top talent 

•  wanting to the 'career destination' for most of the employees  and wanting to look at employment relationship as a 'short-term contract to accomplish a particular task' 

• high degree of emphasis on organization values and no emphasis on organization values etc.

This, in turn, can cause a lot of avoidable suffering, confusion and waste! More importantly, the 'way the employees are managed' will influence how the employees respond to that/how the employees behave in the organizations. For example, 'Theory X' kind of assumptions/philosophy (i.e. that the employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can) in people management will promote 'Theory X' kind of behavior among the employees. This makes people management a very dangerous domain, unless we pay close attention to the (unstated) assumptions that govern people management - which is exactly what is meant by the HR philosophy of the organization. 

Examining the unstated assumptions, similar to the ones mentioned above, can also help to avoid the strange 'new normal for HR' that has emerged in some companies in response to extraordinary situation created by the Covid crisis. It goes something like this : 'Make large contributions to Covid relief, fire a large number of employees in parallel to reduce cost and conduct mental health sessions for the remaining employees'!

Now let's look a bit more deeply at the paradoxical issue of 'business orientation of HR'. There are multiple possibilities here - each with its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, HR can agree to whatever the business leaders say on people related issues ('after all, we get paid to support the business'). HR can take this approach to the next level by trying to ‘guess’ what the business leaders will be comfortable with and advocating that ('business leaders are our primary customers and we should be anticipating customer needs'). HR can also avoid surfacing issues (or suggesting solutions) that they think the business leaders will not be comfortable with ('business leaders are already stretched, how can we risk annoying them at this point').

This approach might help in reducing the number/intensity of possible conflicts between HR and business leaders on these issues, leading to faster decision making and smoother relationships. In this case, business leaders might ‘like’ HR and hence they might be more likely to cooperate in the roll out of basic HR processes and less likely to come down heavily on HR when HR makes a mistake. Hence conflicts are avoided - making life easier for both the parties involved. However, this can also lead to HR becoming essentially an 'order-taker', to sub-optimal decisions (see 'Training the victim' for an example) and even to HR 'perpetuating the convenient collective delusions' in the company.

Of course. we have to be mindful of the possible conflict between the stated HR philosophy in an organization and the 'actual' HR philosophy practiced in the organization. What really matters is the HR philosophy (basic assumptions about people management) that emerges from/that can be inferred from (or that gets reflected in) in the decisions made by the organization. 

There is no conflict of opinion on whether HR should be business oriented. HR exists to support the business and hence it should be aligned to the business needs/goals/strategy. ‘HR for HR’ (‘I want to do some HR interventions and I will get the business to agree’) is definitely not a good idea. The paradox occurs when we look at how exactly should HR demonstrate this 'business orientation'.

A more effective option is to work with the business leaders to crystallize the HR Philosophy/the basic tenets of people management in the organization. This would also enable HR to come with effective responses to various issues/situations – based on the people management philosophy of the organization, HR functional expertise and an assessment of the context/situation. 

This is not to say that the people management philosophy is cast in stone. The people management philosophy can be revisited as the organization and its environment evolves. Also, if there are extraordinary situations, extraordinary responses are required. The idea is to be as mindful as possible about the basic tenets of  people management in the organization (HR philosophy) while coming up with those responses. For example, some companies will have to downsize because of the headwinds created by the current Covid crisis. However, if the extent and manner of that downsizing should be in line with the basic tenets of people management in the organization. This would also help in reducing the 'survivor syndrome in organizations'.

While it is unpleasant (or even traumatic), employees understand that 'surgery' is sometime unavoidable in organizations. But they would also expect that that the organization uses it after exploring all non-surgical options, that the organization uses a surgeon's blade (and not a butcher's knife!) and that too with skill, sufficient post operative care and compassion! Of course, in a connected world, the organization's actions under a crisis situation would speak much more loudly than any employer branding efforts in the future!

Any comments/ideas?