Talent management specialist, Right Management, kicks off the first in a series of events designed to help UK businesses accelerate their performance by giving advice on how to develop high potential (HiPo) talent. The peer-to-peer events will be run in various UK locations, starting with the Thames Valley, followed by Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh in the coming weeks. The events give businesses the opportunity to discuss key topics surrounding HiPo development, including return on investment, leadership pipeline development, best practice, innovation and more.
The events follow recent research from Right Management, which found that only 13% of senior executives and human capital managers today believe their organisations have ample leadership pipelines.* To resolve this issue, a key focus for businesses worldwide must be to grow talent internally and the events aim to demonstrate to people how to do this most effectively, providing best practice examples with interactive and experiential exercises.
Mark Hodgson, Talent Management Practice Lead at Right Management, comments: “High potential talent is critical to business growth and transformation and these events are the perfect opportunity to raise awareness of HiPo development. We will also be discussing how organisations can create successful programmes for the assessment and development of top talent and help them measure the impact on both the individual and the organisation.
“It’s concerning that so many businesses aren’t recognising the potential of their talent, especially as we are now presented with an increasingly buoyant, albeit not perfect, jobs market, which could see organisations losing out on some of their best employees. In order to retain top talent and to have strong leaders in the future who are capable of carrying out the business’ vision, businesses must identify, assess, develop and engage high potentials sooner rather than later.”
The first event took place at the Leander Rowing Club in Henley-on-Thames, a performance-driven environment and the country’s oldest and most prestigious rowing club. Subsequent events take place in Edinburgh on 30th October and Birmingham on 5th November.
Right Management offers the following advice to organisations looking to grow their high potential talent:
Establish foundations for success – To compete effectively, companies need a strategic, structured approach to talent development. Those with well-defined leadership development programmes routinely outperform their peers in the marketplace, therefore it’s important to initially think about what success looks like, and where they want to be.
Identification – The number one priority for businesses today is to create a robust pipeline of “ready now” talent with the relevant capabilities to move into positions of greater scope and responsibility. Organisations must determine the competencies required for success, and measure individuals against this criteria to see if they are a high potential individual.
Development – Even when correctly identified, individuals identified as key talent may fail to realise their potential value to the organisation due to the lack of a well-defined, relevant and customisable development path. Organisations must ensure they have clear development plans in place in order to accelerate the growth of leadership talent.
Sustainability – Retaining talent is becoming increasingly challenging in the current economic environment where we have a highly competitive labour market. This is why organisations must look to build sustainability into their high potential talent programme to achieve the desired return on investment.
