Most organizations expect that more than 40% of today’s leadership roles will look dramatically different five years from now.
As a result, organizations are investing heavily in HIPO strategies, with two-thirds of companies trading away from other talent investments to fund their HIPO programs. However, the vast majority of HIPO programs are underperforming.
Rather than betting on creating agile people, leading organizations must create more agile HIPO strategies. Agile HIPO strategies move at the pace of the business to align ability, aspiration and engagement with evolving needs. Organizations with an agile HIPO strategy are 70% more likely to have a strong leadership bench.
To respond to changing future leadership needs, most organizations are betting on individual agility. However, they are more likely to cite problems with internal candidate readiness and are 71% more likely to have to look outside the organization to fill positions.
High-potential employees (HIPOs) exert 21% more effort than non-HIPOs and have a 75% chance of succeeding at roles that are critical to business performance and the future leadership pipeline.
The top objective of most HIPO programs (81%) is to build a pipeline for succession management, but most are missing the mark. Of the more than 300 strategies, programs and interventions we examined, fewer than 80 truly built employee potential.
Twenty-four percent of organizations are not measuring the effect of HIPO programs on promotion rate, 27% are not measuring the effect on engagement, and 21% are not even measuring the impact on retention.
Gartner ReimagineHR 2018 brought together 2,500+ HR leaders to learn and discuss how to drive innovation and transformation across their organizations. Learn what you missed in our 2018 series.
Group Vice President,
Gartner Research
Principal Executive Advisor
Principal Executive Advisor
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