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A High-Potential Employee Development Program Ensures Long-Term Business Success in Cedar Rapids, IA

High Potentials Leadership Development Programs Help Your Business Flourish in the Cedar Rapids area

Developing a business that’s successful and profitable takes money, time and energy. However, you can have endless deep pockets and all the tangible resources imaginable, but without the right talent, a business won’t be as successful as possible. A high-potential employees program enables HR to strategically foster and grow talented individuals within your company, ensuring viable leadership succession and a strong foundation for growth. The right HiPo development programs help you identify and cultivate these rare talents.

What Are High-Potential Employees and Why Should You Develop Them?

The first step in creating a successful high-potential employee program is understanding what high-potential employees are and why it is so important to develop them.

In their Harvard Business Review article, “Are You a High Potential”, Douglas A. Ready, Jay A. Conger and Linda A. Hill describe HiPos as possessing the following characteristics:

• A drive to excel: these employees are not simply high achievers. They are willing to do whatever it takes and make sacrifices to be the best.
• A catalytic learning ability: high potential employees don't just soak up knowledge like a sponge; they know how to convert knowledge into productive actions that get results.
• An enterprising spirit: high-potential employees are trailblazers. Never satisfied with the status quo, they are always seeking new challenges and figuring out better ways to do things.
• Dynamic sensors: the most promising leaders are always on alert for the next big thing. This can make them difficult to manage. If they can't sense a long-term career payoff where they are, they often get wandering eyes.

This combination of traits makes HiPos ideal candidates to guide your company into the future. But it also means they need the right guidance and training to keep their vision and goals reconciled with those of your business. Left to their own devices, they can easily get derailed and go rogue. The master trainers at Turnkey Coaching & Development Solutions understand the psychology of HiPos. We can help you build an effective high potential leadership program that strategically grooms them to steer your company to long-term success.

Companies Must Work to Identify HiPos

According to data from the Harvard Business Review, most organizations are simply not adept at identifying and developing high potential employees. HBR reviewed data regarding 1,964 individuals who were identified across three organizations as high-potential workers. The reviews included feedback from multiple assessors, who agreed that as many as 40 percent of the identified employees were not, actually, HiPos. Instead, companies were identifying candidates with strong technical skills who consistently honored commitments and took initiative. Those are all great strengths for employees — and certainly are traits that might show someone belongs in development or leadership training. They don’t, however, mean someone is HiPo. Why does it matter? It’s not that HiPos are the only employees your organization should invest in. It’s that HiPos tend to respond to training and development in different ways than other talented employees. Therefore, it’s important to align the components of a program to the level and talent set of the employees. Some participants may warrant a workshop only, while others, such as your HiPos may benefit from Shark Tank style capstone projects, or peer-to-peer shared intelligence sessions. Simply put, it’s important to customize the program to be challenging and relevant to the high potential employees.

Our high potential employee assessment and HiPo development programs are nothing like the run-of-the-mill leadership programs you've likely sent your employees to before. We do not host one-day or one-week events where your company leaders mingle with executives from other firms and listen to so-called "trainers" rehash the same hackneyed leadership clichés that, by now, are probably seared into your brain.

Instead, we evaluate your company and its specific needs; then, we build a program from the ground up to meet them. We customize every program using high potential employee development best practices, including:

• Needs analysis using our high-potential employee assessment tools
• Culture analysis
• Employee level and experience
• Creating a "coach approach"
• Long-term sustainability
• Human resources integration and even ‘train the trainer’ options

Your hi potential employees get the opportunity to work with master trainers who specialize in developing high-potential employees. They have helped many businesses get the most out of their workforce and create seamless transitions between generations of leaders. Our master trainers HiPo program experts put their knowledge, experience and vast resources to work for your business.

When companies are able to identify high-potential employees, HR professionals and those involved with talent management can reduce dropout rates associated with people leaving the company and also save money on wasted resources and needless expenses.

When you can use a high-potential program to target these employees, this results in satisfied individuals who are more likely to stay with the company over the long-term. Of the current crop of millennial workers, who made up 53.5 percent of the labor force in 2015 according to U.S. Census Bureau data, 91 percent said they plan to stay at their current job fewer than just three years. With such high turnover rates, it’s vital that companies first identify talented individuals and then invest in HiPo leadership programs to combat attrition. When a company is able to engage in accurate high-potential employee development programs, they benefit from:

• A stronger bench of high-potential employees to fill key positions
• Shorter learning curves when transitions are made
• A larger pool of key talent and flexibility within it
• Consistently high performance from a steady supply of talent

Systematic high-potential employee identification also erases the perception from other employees that high-potential employees programs are not applied consistently, or that only a few employees are targeted for HiPo programs. To ensure high-potential programs are applied consistently and that appropriate participants are identified from all levels and departments, companies can engage in the following steps:

• Ensure existing leadership understand what HiPo employees look like
• Create a mechanism by which leadership, HR, and other stakeholders can tract potential HiPos
• Pay attention to both performance metrics and an employee’s interaction with team members, leadership, customers, problems and the work in general; metrics alone do not accurately identify HiPos
• Invest in high-potential employee training programs to best cultivate HiPo talent

It’s certainly easier said than done, and that’s why your company can benefit from a high-potential leadership program to help you identify specific criteria, find ways to make it measurable and learn how to assemble a talented pool of high-potential employees. Keeping high-potential employees engaged within your organization is important, because 55 percent of these key potential leaders are prone to leaving your company if they don’t feel engaged. Participating in our high-potential program helps ensure your most talented employees don’t decide to take their expertise and knowledge elsewhere.

Traditional day or week-long high potential employee development programs might seem like an easy way to develop your high-potential employees — after all, that's what other companies are doing, right? — but think about how many such programs you've attended in your career. Then ask yourself, "Am I really a better leader because I attended a few formulaic leadership conferences?"

If you want real results, you need a customized HiPo employee development program custom-built just for your company and with high potential development programs best practices. That's what our master trainers and certified coaches at Turnkey Coaching & Development Solutions have to offer. Typically, we work with both large and small groups of high potential employees to create a comprehensive training and HiPo development program crafted around your goals that prime your business for success.

What kind of background do your master trainers have?

Many of our master trainers have 10+ years corporate experience, thousands of hours of executive coaching, and have served as corporate executives themselves or had Fortune 500 companies as clients. In addition, many of them hold advanced degrees such as MBAs and Ph.Ds.

What kinds of results can my company expect?

The goal of our high potential employee assessment and development training programs is to first establish the results you hope to achieve and then design our program to offer the best chance of seeing those results. Perhaps your organization seeks to reduce turnover, or improve innovation, or perhaps your executives are within retiring age and you want to ensure a ready-now bench of competent leaders.  We can design a high potential employee development program to address these needs and more. In fact, many of our clients have reported increased productivity, better organizational strength, cost reductions, higher bottom-line productivity and many other positive results.

How much does a high-potential employee development program cost?

Because we custom design each program based on the client's individual needs, it is impossible to quote an exact cost up front. What we can tell you is this: We offer a variety of participation levels that let you choose the intensity and duration of the high potential development program based on your budget and the time your organization has available to invest.

Studies have shown that companies who choose to invest in their people — particularly their HiPo employees — do better, both in the short term and in the long term. High-potential individuals who receive training are much more likely to stick with their employers and tend to feel more inspired when new challenges arise. In turn, they inspire their peers and the staff members they’re entrusted with. In conclusion, when you choose a tailor-made HiPo development program and apply it to the right individuals, your initial investment rapidly pays for itself.

 

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