Curating Talent

Just like a symphony has a variety of musicians and instruments who blend their sound to form a unified harmony, curating talent uses the same principles to strengthen relationships between leaders and associates, and ultimately cultivates an environment for associates to succeed. Investing in our associates is the primary way that the People Partner role can strategically grow the business and provide a competitive edge among our competitors. We believe that associates with the right skills and who are placed in the right position maximizes their contribution and attributes to a seamless customer experience and a more sustainable enterprise. To develop and retain talent effectively, you must ensure managers conduct a meticulous quarterly talent review and have conversations with leadership on talent goals.

At the end of this course you will be able to:

Develop and assess talent for future-focused skills and attributes.
Define talent pipeline.
Identify critical role gaps.
Conduct a business needs assessment.
Enact the steps to provide more visibility for associates through talent movement.
Identify and empower high potential associates.

Talent Components

Cultivating a Culture for High Potentials

Talent Risk Vs. Flight Risk

Talent Components

Before we continue, review the High Performance Culture, Talent Planning, and Culture, Diversity, and Inclusion courses under People Core by visiting this link. Specifically, review the following sections in the Talent Planning course: High Performance vs High Potential, Separating Performance & Potential, Talent Diamond Ratings, and Building a Succession Plan. Download the Talent Diamond Ratings Job Aid, found at this link, to be used as a reference later in this course.

To create a more effective talent strategy, a variety of components must work together.

Cultivating a Culture for High Potentials

High potential (HIPOs) associates are almost twice as valuable to an organization and are three times more likely to succeed as future leaders. Unfortunately, managers often fail at identifying this critical talent, often confusing them as high performers. By evaluating high potential associates and curating a culture for them to thrive, you can develop an effective succession plan and a strong leadership.

Discover HIPO associates using Ability, Agility, and Aspiration criteria.
Identify HIPO’s skills and experience gaps needed for development.
Protect HIPOs from collaboration overload.
Verbalize the preference of internal hires over external hires to HIPOs.
Communicate to HIPOs their value, compensation package, work-life balance, job security, mutual respect, and career opportunities.
Ensure development plans are individualized, relevant, committed, and evolving.
Monitor HIPO status and regularly repeat assessment.
Cultivate an environment for HIPOs to feel a sense of belonging within the team and are engaged in their work.

Talent Risk Vs. Flight Risk

Within the Talent Diamond Ratings, talent risks are associates who don’t meet expectations for the role. However, talent risk is often misinterpreted as a flight risk, which identifies high potential associates who might leave the company.

Talent vs. Flight Risk Quiz

Succession Management Playbook

Succession Management Pipeline Shifts

Critical Roles

QTP Field Succession Planning Tool

Talent vs. Flight Risk Quiz

Read the following scenarios to determine whether the person is a talent or flight risk.

Susan has been at the company for 10 years. Early on in her career, she has been identified as a high potential associate and has consistently received high ratings on her talent review. She now oversees over 50 associates as the director of customer support. Most recently, however, she’s been taking more private calls, verbalizing that she’s burned out, and has had a series of contentious conversations with her manager over her leadership style. Is Susan a talent or flight risk?

Talent Risk

Flight Risk

Check Answer

Mike has moved to a variety of roles since he joined the company 5 years ago. He’s the tech support manager, overseeing 20 associates who troubleshoot tech issues. Mike manages one of five tech support teams, and his team has consistently received low customer satisfaction ratings. Mike has implemented initiatives to raise the score, with minimal impact. Is Mike a talent or flight risk?

Talent Risk

Flight Risk

Check Answer

Penelope was recruited to the enterprise from Goldman Sachs and relocated from Dallas to Chicago. Penelope knew taking the position would catapult her career to new heights, even though she still had a community of close friends live in Dallas. She asked her manager if she could leave early on the first Friday of every month to go to Dallas. Her manager said no. Penelope has found it increasingly hard to find a community in Chicago and often feels maybe she should’ve stayed in Dallas. Is Penelope a talent or flight risk?

Talent Risk

Flight Risk

Check Answer

Congratulations!

Finish

Succession Management Playbook

Succession management is a practice used to ensure top talent is identified and prepared to take on senior leadership roles. Successors are identified from a talent pool for current and future roles between now to 3 years, and from 3 to 5 years.

Succession Management Pipeline Shifts

Pipelines are built toward future leadership roles. However, there are common breaks that limit talent to filter up to meet leadership roles. A pipeline break, for example, occurs when talent isn’t ready developmentally to fill leadership opportunities. For future work environment, the hope is to resemble succession management as portfolio management, not pipeline. Review the following potential issues with pipelining and ways to streamline talent.

Critical Roles

Critical roles are positions that have a direct impact on strategic objectives, contingent on the enterprise’s success, and have low capacity on the leadership bench to fill the gap. Collaborate with business partners to identify or confirm critical roles. When you can identify the critical roles, you are able to make more informed decisions on where to prioritize investments in succession planning.

Prioritize the critical roles with the following criteria:

Capability needs
Critical success metrics
Future HIPO shifts
Critical roles
Existing talent and performance gaps
Retention risks
Internal and external talent supply
Feedback from leadership
Timing of critical role plan

QTP Field Succession Planning Tool

Conducting quarterly talent reviews provides the opportunity to build a strong and diverse management pipeline. Incorporate the principles within the succession management playbook as you review the Succession Planning Tool (by visiting this link), that allows you to rate talent, plan replacements, anticipate movements, and manage open positions.

Talent Movement

Career Conversations

Build vs. Buy Talent Market

Test Your Knowledge Quiz

Talent Movement

Talent movement increases the mobility of associates from their current roles to positions that fit their skills and interests. To do this efficiently, the enterprise must establish the infrastructure, processes, and norms to ensure associates are mobile, whether the organization moves the associate or the associate desires to switch roles. Identifying career pathing and talent risk can clarify talent mobility.

Talent Movement Benefits

Retains and transfers the skills, commitment, organizational knowledge, and networks of existing associates.
Increases employee satisfaction by fulfilling the desire for career development opportunities.
Provides opportunity to develop high quality, well-rounded leaders.
Reduces reliance on external talent and establishes strategic opportunities to fill critical vacancies.

Career Conversations

As a People Partner, you play a crucial role to guarantee that the manager and associate collaborate to develop the associate’s career path. Career conversations facilitate the environment for the manager to understand the associate’s aspirations, interests, development challenges, and possible solutions. You should encourage managers to have these meetings quarterly with associates.

These are the following topics that should be discussed in these meetings:

Current Career Aspirations
Possible Careers or Industries that align with Career Aspirations
Available Career Opportunities
Access to Career Opportunities
Skills to Develop
Networking Connections
Career Guidance

If leaders are not sure how to facilitate career conversations, point them to the Quarterly Conversation guide found at this link and the Quarterly Conversation Podcast at this link.

Build vs. Buy Talent Market

There are two options when backfilling a role: build (develop internal talent) or buy (hire successors externally). The decision will depend in part on the requirements of the role and the time pressure to fill the vacancy. External talent can bring in new ideas and spur innovation but indexing too strongly on external talent can hurt current associates’ engagement and retention.

Build:

Identify long term successors.
Drive targeted development to prepare associates.
Determine if role requires Walmart-specific skills or experiences.
Finalize the timing of when the role becomes vacant.

Buy:

Develop a plan for cultivating an external pipeline of talent.
Verify if lack of internal expertise for the role’s future requirements.
Create a timeline of soon-to-be vacant roles.

Review the Building a Talent Pipeline guide found on OneWalmart Quarterly Talent Planning, under the Prep & Execution subheader, and the Succession Planning subtopic at this link.

Test Your Knowledge Quiz

Answer the following questions.

Which of the following does not belong to the characteristics of a HIPO?

Held to Ability, Agility, and Appreciation criteria.

Prefer individualized and committed to development plans.

Misinterpreted as high performers.

Twice as valuable to the organization and three times more likely to succeed.

Check Answer

What are the benefits to talent movement? Choose all that apply.

Develops leaders.

Retains existing associates.

Reduces reliance on external talent.

Increases employee satisfaction.

None of the above.

Check Answer

Congratulations!

Finish

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Workforce Strategy & Planning

People Partner

Organizational Design

Intranet Sites

Support

Brands

Social