Think about all the employees that work in your organization. Now, among them, how many of them truly stand out for you?

You can probably identify them separately as someone who is great at management or someone who grows while taking the team along with them.

Today, it’s going to be all about those top achievers!

People who have the ability to work as great leaders are known as high-potential employees.

What Are High-Potential Employees?

A high-potential employee (HIPO) consistently outperforms their colleagues in various settings.

They have the necessary skills for proper leadership and management.

They’re someone who’ll exceed the expectations and succeed in senior roles with their abilities and aspirations to rise above.

HIPOs have a hunger for growth and find new opportunities consistently.

Companies benefit from these employees as they add 91% more value to the company than the average employee. That number comes from Gartner, whose research also found HIPOs put in roughly 21% more effort than their peers.

What Is the Importance of High-Potential Employees?

High-potential employees can prove to be the most valuable assets to your organization.

In addition they are also important for building a positive employer branding strategy because high performers attract more high performers.

How Can You Identify High-Potential Employees?

The challenge of identifying HIPOs is that every organization has their own unique norms for how defines potential.

There are no set criteria for what determines the best factor in becoming a high-potential employee.

So how can you prevent talent to be underutilized or even ignored?

You need to understand that every individual is different. Not every skilled and high-performing employee can have the potential to become a great leader.

And by the definition of a HIPO, leadership must be running in the employees’ blood.

Hence, remember that not every high-performing employee can be a high-potential employee.

The research is blunt about how wide that gap is. The Corporate Leadership Council study behind the Harvard Business Review article "How to Keep Your Top Talent" found that more than 70% of today's top performers lack critical attributes essential to their success in future roles. The same research found that nearly 40% of internal job moves involving people their own companies had labelled "high potential" end in failure.

So promoting your best performer is closer to a coin flip than most leadership teams assume. That is the whole reason this list exists.

The three things potential is actually made of

Before the signals, borrow the model. It stops "potential" from being a gut feeling, and it tests three attributes rather than one:

Ability: the intellectual, technical and emotional skills, both innate and learned, to handle progressively more complex challenges.

Engagement: the personal connection and commitment the employee feels toward the firm and its mission.

Aspiration: the desire for the recognition, advancement and rewards that the next role actually offers.

A shortfall in any one of the three drags down the other two. And here is the trap: ability is the only one of the three that reliably shows up in a performance review. Engagement and aspiration have to be asked about out loud, and the answers are frequently not what managers assumed. Someone can be brilliant, committed, and simply not want your job.

The seven signals below are what those three attributes look like in everyday work. Use them to open the conversation, not to close it.

HIPO's are:

1. Success driven

Yes, being career-driven and focusing on personal success is important, but thinking about the company’s growth sets a normal employee apart from a high-potential employee.

They aim to achieve exceptional work and contribute to overseeing the company’s overall success.

2. Eager to engage in new projects

Everyone keeps running away from extra workload and responsibilities. But this is what makes a high-potential employee different than a normal one.

HIPOs have the hunger to take on new projects with added responsibilities.

They don’t view it as a burden but rather as an opportunity to grow and become a valuable asset to the company as well.

They aim to grow from new projects, develop their skills and present themselves in the best manner.

3. Strategic decision-makers

Long-term goals drive the organization. HIPOs possess the ability to make decisions wisely with proper planning.

They aim to think about the future and make realistic long-term goals that align with broader growth opportunities.

4. Proactive in situations that ask for leadership

Only possessing the hunger to grow and eagerness to learn isn’t enough.

A high-potential employee always makes it a point to take the initiative without being spoon-fed everything.

They come forward to learn new things and take the lead.

5. Effective at managing stress

Resilience is a powerful tool that every leader possesses.

Situations can become dodgy at times, and a deserving leader must handle them calmly.

Their minds should work sanely without thinking about the stress.

They take challenging situations as growth opportunities and not hurdles.

6. Flexible

Every business has to work at high-speed to thrive in the existing competition.

A HIPO is extremely flexible to survive this successfully and quickly adapts as changes come and go.

They will make necessary changes in the existing pattern where demanded.

7. Relationship builders

Leaders cannot only think about themselves.

They need to think about everyone in the team and ensure they motivate employees to boost their productivity.

A good leader always ensures a positive relationship with the team members to keep them engaged.

Spotting Them Is Not the Same as Keeping Them

Here is the uncomfortable half of the story. When the Corporate Executive Board surveyed emerging stars, one in three admitted to not putting all their effort into the job, one in four intended to be working for another employer within the year, and one in five believed their personal aspirations were quite different from what the organization had planned for them.

Read that again. The people you are working hardest to identify are, statistically, the ones most likely to be halfway out the door. They have the most options and the least patience with an employer that keeps them waiting.

So the label is not the finish line. If you name someone a HIPO and then hand them the same work, the same pay band and no visibility into where they are headed, you have not retained anyone. You have only told them they are worth more than you are paying, which is genuinely useful information for their next employer.

One last habit worth stealing from that research: rebuild the list every year. Ability, engagement and aspiration all move. A new manager, a missed promotion, a change at home, and last spring's certain HIPO is this spring's flight risk, or the quiet performer you skipped has become the obvious choice. A list you set once and never revisit is simply a list that is wrong.

Conclusion

High-potential employees are required in every organization for success. They bring more value to the table and go the extra mile to work harder, ultimately benefiting the company.

But many hiring managers fail to notice them and let them go. Keep these points in mind, so you don’t miss out on their talent.

Moreover, as an HR, it’s your responsibility to retain HIPOs, by keeping them happy and fulfilling their requirements.

Give them constant feedback and coach them so that they can improve by building strength, exploring new things, and enhancing resilience.