Shifting perspectives and sentiment on how to leverage AI and Analytics within HR and Talent.
Talent Profiling and Employee Evaluation: Let’s get it right.
Current Issues and Challenges with Talent Management Processes
Despite the importance of talent management, organisations face several challenges in implementing effective processes. These include skills mismatched, diversity and inclusion, siloed and complete data.
Talent Profiling…. Stepping away from convention.
Despite the importance of talent management, organisations face several challenges in implementing effective processes:
- Skills Mismatch: As industries evolve, there is often a gap between the skills employees possess and those required by the business. According to a study by McKinsey, 87% of companies say they either have or expect to have a skills gap in the next few years.
- Diversity and Inclusion: While many companies are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), achieving meaningful progress remains difficult. Bias in recruitment and promotion processes can hinder the advancement of diverse talent.
- Siloed and Incomplete Data: This is a major hindrance to advancing HR best practice. When information is fragmented across different systems and departments, it becomes difficult to gain a comprehensive view of an employee’s performance, skills, and potential and subsequent decisions regarding promotions, development needs and succession planning can erode trust in HR
Hello and Goodbye to the 9-box
The 9-Box Grid is a matrix seemingly evaluating employees based on their performance and potential. There are a number of issues with this approach and we call HR leaders to arms and ask them to consider its’ true value in view of the following:
Subjectivity and Bias
The 9-box grid is heavily dependent on the subjective assessments of managers regarding employees’ performance and potential. This reliance can introduce significant bias, leading to inconsistent and potentially unfair evaluations influenced by personal preferences, unconscious biases, poorly defined KPIs’ and milestones or inadequate evaluation criteria.
A Very Limited scope
While the simplicity of the grid makes it user-friendly, it also narrows the evaluation to just two dimensions: performance and potential. This limited perspective can overlook crucial factors such as specific skills, cultural fit, feedback and unique contributions that are vital for a comprehensive assessment of an employee’s true value to their employer.
Static Evaluations
The 9-box grid often captures only a moment in time, failing to reflect the ongoing development or shifts in an employee’s experience and performance with their employer. Without regular updates, the grid quickly becomes outdated and ineffective for making talent management decisions encompassing the past but rooted in the present.
What is Potential??
While identifying potential is nice, it’s conceptual, cannot be measured and when placed alongside biased performance evaluation, sets the scene to incorrectly identify leadership readiness. The grid places undue emphasis on potential, sometimes neglecting to adequately recognise and reward employees who consistently perform at a high level but are not seen as future leaders.
Development guidance?
Identifying where employees are positioned within the 9-box grid is only part of the process. The grid fails to provide actionable insights on how to help employees move to higher performance or potential categories, thus limiting its’ effectiveness in driving meaningful employee development and improvement.
%
of managers admit their performance ratings reflect their personal bias (HBR).
%
of companies strongly agree their TM system accurately assesses all employee contributions (Deloitte)
Now Imagine . . .
Predictive Analytics
To bring together disparate employee data sources for a consolidated and enriched perspective on employees and to accurately predict how they competitively sit within the organisations’ hierachy.
Bias Reduction
To identify potential evaluation bias, at the employee, team or functional level. Employees can be profiled on multiple and objective measurement inputs for increased robustness. This enables a more equitable talent management system that removes the risk of discrimination, protecting employees and employers alike.
Personalised Learning
AI-driven platforms can offer personalised learning and development plans tailored to individual employees’ needs and career aspirations. This ensures that employees receive relevant training and growth opportunities.
Conclusion
The opportunity is there for a step change in data and analytics maturity in HR. All leaders have to do is question whether their current solutions truly provide remedies to the above constraints and if not, then to openly consider new approaches and solutions that heighten objectivity, decision capability and impact.
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