7 of 10 Companies Internally Track ‘High-Potential’ Workers

Assess, Then Analyze: How important is terminology to advancing your career? That of course depends on the terminology, but for those seeking to move up the career ladder, it could pay to be viewed as a “high-potential” contributor. So says the Institute for Corporate Productivity (formerly the Human Resource Institute) in a survey of nearly 500 organizations. It found that about 70 percent of firms use some form of “high-potential assessment process” to identify their future leaders. Employee-created development plans are the norm in most of those cases. Nevertheless, having a process for tapping future talent is only as good as its application. Just 47 percent of the organizations diligently track the effectiveness of such assessments, meaning many budding leaders may go unrecognized. Of the companies that do track, 83 percent prefer to watch their high-potential employees internally, rather than outsourcing the function to vendors.