Should employees who are considered as high potentials by their employers know about it? According to current research, most employers do not tell them. John Sullivan, world-renowned consultant in human resources management and current professor of management at San Francisco State University, decided to gather arguments for and against. He published these arguments in two articles on ere.net.
The first article summarizes the disadvantages of informing employees about their status of high potentials:
1. Informing employees increases the likelihood that this information gets out of the company, e.g. to recruiters of competing companies.
2. You risk an increased level of frustration and turnover if opportunities wanted by high potentials do not come.
3. Employees may not take its further development seriously enough.
4. A confusion can occur in what exactly the high potential employees should improve in.
5. Employees who become aware of their position among high potentials may slow down in their current work efforts.
6. The notification could increase the ego of employees to the extent that they begin to behave arrogantly and show their privilege.
7. You will experience an increased sense of expectatations regarding promotions.
8. You will encounter increased expectations regarding financial rewards and publicity.
9. Micromanagemt of high potential's career by development teams may occur.
10. Employees with high potential can become targets of attacks by others who are not convinced that they deserves such status.
11. If your company does not have a process for updating the list of high potentials, it is threatened by the fact that employees with high potential could be the same people even though you changes the requirements for this group of employees.
12. Openness complicates future information to an employee that he has been removed from the list of high potentials.
13. Managers may not be able to identify high potentials correctly.
14. Managers can begin to restrict their high potentials so that they are not seen or even lower evaluation of their performance so that they do not leave for a higher position.
15. Increase the risk of frustration among unselected employees.
16. You will increase the risk that the unchosen employee feels inferior and cease to cooperate with high potentials.
17. You will increase the risk of high potentials being treated differently by other employees who want to appela to them.
18. You may experience increased pressure to move employees into business units that the most high potentials come from. This will weaken the other units.
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