High potentials - the missing element

‘High potentials’ and ‘top talent’ are terms that have been used within the business world for quite some time now.

As employers most of us now recognise that our people can give us a competitive advantage. By identifying individuals with high potential, both inside and outside our organisation, we have an opportunity to really accelerate the performance of individuals and achieve great things.

This has created many specially targeted recruitment campaigns and development programmes for high potentials, including special graduate development programmes and leadership programmes.

As a result many organisations are now investing thousands of pounds to identify and train those with high potential. But there are many questions that we need to ask ourselves:
- Are we investing money in the right areas?
- Are we doing all we can to accelerate the development of those with high potential?
- Are we doing all we can to retain those with high potential?

All too often employers miss a crucial element that could really help accelerate the development of these employees and improve their performance that little bit more – health and wellbeing.

Whilst these high potentials may need the relevant technical training so that they are equipped with the relevant technical skills to do their job research also shows individuals perform much better if they are healthy and energised.

Think about yourself. When you get a good night’s sleep and eat the right food do you feel better? Are you more alert? Are you more energised? Are you able to perform better?

Our research of over 1,000 employees shows 80% of people score just 40% with regards to their health and energy. What this means in practice is that there is a huge opportunity for us, as employers, to help our people make simple changes to improve their health, energy and performance.

Investing a little more time in developing a well thought through employee wellbeing strategy makes good business sense.

By incorporating wellbeing activities into these wider training and development initiatives for our high potentials we have a huge opportunity to improve the success of these programmes and maximise the performance of our people.

This is a great example of how focusing on marginal gains, which I discussed in my previous blog post, can be applied to the workplace.

By integrating education around health and wellbeing into wider training and development programmes organisations will really reap the benefits in terms of maximising the performance of targeted talent pools and making the most of their recruitment spend.

What we can learn from our Olympic team for workplace performance

What a fantastic Olympics – it really is inspiring to see Great Britain (GB) scooping so many medals! The coaches and the wider GB team have clearly put everything into helping our athletes reach their peak.

This got me thinking about what we, as employers, can learn from our Olympic team for workplace performance...

I saw a really inspiring interview with David Brailsford, Performance Director of the Great Britain cycling team, whose team won eight out of 10 track cycling gold medals in London. He attributes four key things to their success:

1. Talented athletes
2. Hard working athletes
3. Set a specific goal
4. Make a list of all the elements that impact on the success of your goal and work on improving each element

Brailsford refers to the different elements as ‘marginal gains’. He says that if you break down everything that goes into achieving that goal and improve each element by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.

He focused on obvious things like fitness and conditioning, the technology of the bike and clothing, but also other things like sleeping in the right position and having the same pillow when athletes are away and training in different places. Brailsford said, “They're tiny things but if you clump them together it makes a big difference to performance”.

The GB cycling team used experts in each area to help achieve these marginal gains; technology experts to improve the performance of the bike and sleep experts to ensure athletes got sufficient sleep.

Every aspect of preparation for the cycling has been meticulous. The medals are not a fluke. It’s the preparation, hard work and talent – talented athletes, talented coaches and other talented experts in each of the marginal gain areas – that has led to success.

The formula should be no different for businesses – we need to ensure we have talented people who are working hard. We also need a clear goal and by breaking this goal down we can identify and improve the different elements to ensure success. One of these elements has to be achieving a healthy, energised and engaged workforce.

I am not suggesting that we buy all of our employees a comfortable pillow, but by educating them about the simple changes they need to make to improve their health, energy and performance we have a real opportunity to help them maximise energy, improve their performance and increase business profits.

Click here to listen to our August 2012 webinar. This focused on how you can use the Olympics to inspire your workforce, drive business performance and get your employees to focus on gold.