Talent Review

What a talent review is

A talent review (مراجعة المواهب) is a periodic session at which managers and human resources discuss the employees of a unit or establishment in a structured way. They discuss each employee’s performance, potential for larger roles and likelihood of leaving, and what will be done in the coming period about development, assignments and moves. The session ends in written recommendations and actions, each with an owner and a date.

The session is the occasion on which scattered information about individuals becomes recommendations about people. It is not a procedure for appraising performance, and it is not a general meeting to present results. What follows is an explanation of the management concept, not a procedure prescribed by a particular body.

How a talent review differs from neighbouring sessions and tools

Several other sessions and tools in performance and talent management feed a talent review or are used by it. They are told apart by what each does:

• Performance calibration is a session that fixes the meaning of a rating with shared examples before ratings are adopted. It is a session on ratings, whereas a talent review begins after ratings are adopted and asks what is to be done with the people who hold them.
• The 9 box grid is a display tool that places employees in cells at the crossing of performance and potential. It may be shown in the session, but it is not the session.
• Potential assessment is an estimate of an employee’s capacity for a larger role, based on evidence and rated on a scale. A talent review is where this estimate is used in a decision.
• Succession planning identifies the critical positions and who succeeds to each of them. A talent review is a suitable occasion to update the names of the candidates in a succession plan.

What goes into the session

The session works on inputs gathered before it, and without them it becomes a discussion of impressions. Proposed inputs are:

• The performance ratings as approved after calibration, not the initial ratings.
• The potential estimate for those whose potential was estimated, with its evidence.
• Each employee’s individual development plan, and what has been achieved in it since the previous review.
• The list of critical positions, their holders and the candidates to succeed them.
• What the employee has stated about wanting a role or a move, since a wish is asked about and not assumed.
• The manager’s estimate of the likelihood that the employee will leave, and the probable reason. The estimate is adopted only after it is written down with evidence.

A short summary in one format is prepared for each employee. That way the discussion is not long for employees whose manager presents them well and short for the others.

What a talent review produces

The session produces written outputs, each with an owner. The outputs expected to be recorded are:

• Recommendations on named employees: an assignment to a project, a move to another team as internal mobility describes it, training, or a nomination to a programme such as the leadership development programme. The description of that programme says that a graduate may be presented at the periodic talent meeting (اجتماع المواهب الدوري).
• The names of those responsible for each action, and its dates.
• Updates to the list of candidates to succeed to critical positions.
• The names of those who need special monitoring, whether because they may be lost or because their performance needs to be addressed.

We do not propose that decisions on pay or on termination of service be taken in the session, since each has a different track and different evidence. The session feeds them with what appears in it without deciding them.

How the session is run

These arrangements are our proposal, aimed at making the session easier to manage, and they are not a rule taken from elsewhere:

1. A chair for the session. The chair may be the head of human resources, or a manager who has no team under review, so that the same questions are put about everyone.
2. An order for the time. The session discusses critical positions first, then those whose situation has changed, then the rest.
3. Evidence for each opinion. If an employee is said to be “ready”, the session asks what the evidence is and whether other managers have seen the same thing in the employee’s work.
4. A view from outside the team. The session invites a manager from another team who knows the employee, so that the opinion is not one manager’s alone.
5. A close with actions. The end of the session is set aside for reviewing what was recorded and who owns each action.

How a talent review relates to the performance management cycle

The performance management cycle is the annual sequence that passes through goals, monitoring, appraisal and then the decisions built on appraisal. A talent review is not necessarily a stage of that sequence. It uses ratings the cycle has adopted, but it can run on its own date.

What connects them is that a talent review uses the results of the cycle and adds what a rating does not measure: what the employee could do next. A rating is not argued again in the session, because the session starts after ratings are adopted. If those present do not understand a rating, that is a matter for calibration before the names reach the review, and not a matter for negotiation in front of people who are considering development plans.

Who attends and who does not

The managers who know the work of the employees under discussion attend, with someone who represents human resources. A manager from a higher level may be added where the expected decisions are moves between teams. We suggest that the employee under discussion not attend, and that those who report to that employee in the structure not attend either.

If attendance widens, the conversation may lose its frankness, and the confidentiality of what is said may become hard to control. If it narrows, fewer people know the employee and the opinion may become one person’s. Balancing the two is a decision that the establishment makes according to the size of the unit.

What is prepared for each employee before the session

A summary of one page with fixed fields gives the discussion of every employee the same shape. We propose these fields:

• The current role and the time spent in it, and the last approved performance rating.
• The potential estimate, if there is one, stating which dimension of it needs new evidence.
• The employee’s readiness for a higher or different role: now, after a year or later.
• What the employee has stated by way of wishes, and what prevents a move, if the employee mentioned it.
• The development ideas put forward and what was achieved of the previous plan.
• The likelihood that the employee will leave and the estimated reason, with evidence.

The summary is given to attendees before the session in time to read it, so that session time is not spent on reading what can be read at a desk.

What the employee is told after the session

The employee is not told everything that was said in the session. What concerns the employee, such as the plan and the assignment, is turned into a conversation with the manager. We suggest that the employee should know what is being built for the employee in the development plan, what is expected, and when it will be reviewed.

Whether to announce that an employee is “high potential” to those who are included and those who are not is discussed in high potential employee (HiPo), which states that the classification is not permanent. The minutes stay restricted in circulation, because they contain judgements about named people.

Questions put about each employee

Fixed questions help the discussion proceed in the same order for each case. This wording is our proposal:

• What has the employee achieved since the previous review, and what is the evidence?
• What role might suit the employee next, and what is missing for reaching it?
• Does the employee want that role, and how do we know?
• What will we do to bring the employee closer to it in the coming period, and who is responsible?
• What might push the employee to leave, and do we know that from the employee or are we guessing?

A hypothetical worked example

Suppose a hypothetical unit of 24 employees and a review session of three hours, which is 180 minutes. The session sets aside 15 minutes for the opening and 15 for the close. That leaves 150 minutes for discussion, since 180 minus 30 = 150.

Six employees hold critical positions and each is allotted 10 minutes, which is 60 minutes in all. The remaining 90 minutes (150 minus 60) are shared by the other 18 employees, which is 90 ÷ 18 = 5 minutes for each.

The session ends by recording nine actions: four assignments to projects, three moves to other teams and two nominations to succeed to two critical positions. The total is 4 + 3 + 2 = 9. If each action concerned a different employee, an action was recorded for 9 of 24 employees, which is 37.5%, and none was recorded for 15 employees, which is 62.5%.

After three months, six of the nine actions had been completed, which is 6 ÷ 9 = 66.7%, and three remained incomplete. The absence of a recorded action for an employee is not taken as a failure towards that employee, because the employee may not need a new decision in this cycle. In the next session the review asks about the three actions that were not completed: who owns them, and what held them up.

The figures are hypothetical and set to illustrate. They do not represent an establishment or a study, and the example does not mean that a completion rate of this size is customary.

Where a talent review is limited

The session works on what those present know, and that limits it. For an employee who works remotely, has joined recently or reports to a manager who is not present, the evidence may be thin, and the discussion then rests on less information than it does for others.

A manager may also rely on what others have told the manager and not on what the manager has seen directly, so the employee may be credited with an image that another person’s presentation created. Where evidence is thin, the session records that the judgement is provisional, and evidence on the employee is collected before the next session.

The session does not take a decision that binds the employee. What emerges from it is recommendations that need approval from whoever owns the decision in each case, and a conversation with the employee.

How a talent review is misused

• Turning into a ranking. The establishment requires the session to distribute names across categories in fixed proportions, which penalises a team that is genuinely strong.
• Discussing the top alone. Critical positions that are not held by leaders drop out of the discussion.
• Being settled by the loudest voice. The decision becomes that of whoever talks most and not of whoever holds the evidence.
• Treating classifications as permanent. A name stays in a category for years without review.
• Writing minutes and not monitoring the actions. Managers learn that what is said in the session has no effect.
• Replacing the individual conversation. A decision about an employee who has not heard it from the manager may reach the employee from someone else.

Frequency, attendance and duration

In the sources we reviewed, we found no published source that fixes a frequency, a number of attendees or a duration for a talent review, and we propose no figure of our own. The size of the establishment, the number of employees in the unit and what changes in it between one review and the next determine these.

A talent review remains a way of making what is recommended about people rest on evidence and on more than one opinion. It shows the establishment whom it needs to monitor, and what is decided afterwards rests on each employee’s conversation with the manager and on the nature of the roles that the establishment needs.

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