Employee development is crucial especially if the employees in questions are high potentials. HIPOs tend to know their abilities and are ready to move on to other organizations if they do not feel appreciated at work.
Having a plan makes it easy to maintain such employees, as there is a clear direction on how they can improve their skills and grow as the company grows.
Both managers and employees must work hand in hand and chart a way forward for individual development. Here we discuss how to create a development plan for HIPOs (High Potential) and the best practices when it comes to developing high potentials.
Outline the business goals
Concentrating on personal development without first of all identifying the business goals may not help much. Managers and HR leaders in an organization should first of all outline the present and future goals of the company. This way, it becomes easy to identify who are the high potentials and what can be done to ensure that they grow individually as they work to grow the company even in the days to come.
Identify high potential employees
High potential employees are passionate about what they do. They will often deliver beyond expectation and go that extra mile to make every task they undertake a success. From an employee’s performance it is easy to tell a high performer from a lazy employee. There are also many other indicators the management can use to tell the employees with high potential and the right skills and attitude to get the job done.
Identifying high performers will make it easy to determine the skills these people need so as to become better and possibly take up the company leadership in the near future. This is a critical stage and different strategies should be used to identify those employees who qualify to be classified as high potentials. Anything from one on one meeting to personal evaluation works as long as it helps the management know the employees better.
Determine the existing gap and the skills that can be trained
After determining the current capabilities of employees, the company management should go a step further and find out the gaps that exist. Filling these gaps will be the only way the company will be able to meet its goals and reach the expected capabilities. Given that some skills are not trainable, a lot of effort should be put in determining the training high potential employees need to build on the skills and natural abilities they already possess.
Come up with a training plan
For training to be effective, everything from the timing to the training methods has to be right. It is also important to know what objectives the training is supposed to meet. This will make it easy for management to assess whether the training goals were met and determine when further training is needed.
Put the skills in to good use
The new skills acquired thorough training must be applied in the workplace. The essence of training is to fill both present and future competency gaps. Where possible it is always advisable to set up opportunities for the employees to apply the newly acquired skills. This will work to ensure company growth in the future and also promote employee satisfaction. In the long run, proper employee development planning will make it easy for the company to retain a strong talent pool. The company will also be able to promise high performers growth in their careers.
