High Potential Employee (HiPo)

What a high potential employee is

A high potential employee (الموظف عالي الإمكانات), shortened to HiPo, is an employee whom the organisation judges capable of succeeding in a role larger than, or different from, the one they hold now. An employee who performs the current role excellently is not, on that alone, a high potential employee.

The definition rests on a judgement made by the organisation. It is an estimate of how the employee would do in a role they have not yet held, and the role in question may be larger than the present one or simply different from it. The definition therefore looks forward, to a role the employee may move into, and not back at the record of the role the employee already performs.

The second sentence of the definition sets a boundary. Excellent performance in the current role is not excluded by the definition, but it is not enough. A high potential employee is identified by the capacity the organisation judges the employee to have for a larger or different role, and excellence in the present role does not establish that capacity by itself.

The costly confusion between performance and high potential

High performance in the current role and potential for a larger role are two different dimensions. One concerns how well the employee does the work in front of them now. The other concerns how the employee would do in a role larger than the present one. A judgement on the first is not a judgement on the second.

An employee may excel in precise specialist work and have neither the wish nor the ability to manage a team. The reverse is also possible: an employee whose specialist work is not outstanding may have both the wish and the ability to manage one. In the first case strong performance comes without the capacity for management; in the second, the capacity for management comes without outstanding performance in the current work.

Taking performance alone as evidence of potential can produce a promotion through which the organisation loses a good specialist and gains a manager who struggles. The specialist was good at the work they were promoted out of, and the management role they were promoted into is a different role from that work. The one decision has two results: the specialist work no longer has the person who did it well, and the team now has a manager who is not succeeding in the role.

What is actually assessed in a high potential employee

• The ability to learn in a new situation that does not resemble what the employee is used to.
• The desire for wider responsibility. It is asked about, not assumed.
• The effect on others: does the performance of the people around the employee rise?
• Conduct under ambiguity, where no ready procedure exists.

The second point states how the desire is established: the employee is asked, and the desire is not assumed. An assumed desire is the organisation’s view of what the employee wants, while an answer to the question comes from the employee. It is the same wish that the specialist described earlier may lack, the wish to manage a team.

Where the first two points concern the employee, the third looks beyond the employee’s personal results. Its question is whether the performance of the people around the employee rises. Personal output describes what the employee does; the question in the third point describes what happens to the work of others when that employee is among them.

The decision that comes before a high potential programme

The question that comes before choosing names is not “who?” but “do we announce?” An organisation setting up a high potential programme decides whether the list of those included will be made known before it decides who will be on that list.

Announcing gives clarity and motivation to those who are included. At the same time it produces a second group: the employees who were not included, and who know it. Both effects come from the same act. The announcement that tells the included employees where they stand also tells the others that they are not on the list.

Not announcing avoids that, on the surface. The list in question, however, is not a document set aside; managers act on it, and a list on which managers act can be difficult to keep confidential.

If the list is discovered late, the discovery can be taken as concealment, not as confidentiality. Both words describe information that was not shared, but a list found out after the fact can be received as something that was hidden from the people it concerns, not as something that was kept discreet.

The cleanest decision is to announce the criteria and the path to everyone, and not the list. Every employee then knows what the organisation looks for and how the path through the programme runs, while the names of those currently included are not published.

A neglected condition of the high potential classification

The classification is not permanent. The employee’s circumstances change, the employee’s desire changes, and others may emerge. Each of these is a reason for a name on the list to come off it, or for a name that was not on it to be added.

The first two changes concern the employee who was classified. Circumstances that allowed the employee to take on a larger role may no longer hold, and a desire for wider responsibility that was there when the question was asked may not be there later. The third change concerns other people: an employee who was not on the list may come to show the capacity that the classification is meant to identify.

A list that is drawn up once and never reviewed can turn into an inherited privilege. Those on it remain on it because they were placed there, not because the classification still describes them. The rest of the team then sees the door as closed. That outcome is one of the things that can cause a high potential programme to lose its purpose.

How a high potential programme relates to succession planning

Succession planning starts from the critical roles and asks who would fill each one if it fell vacant. A high potential programme starts from people and asks how far they could go.

The two begin at opposite ends. Succession planning takes a role as its starting point and looks for a person to fill it. The high potential programme takes a person as its starting point and looks at the roles that person could reach.

They come together in a single table, and neither replaces the other. A list of people with no defined roles produces an expectation with nothing to meet it.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.