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The purpose of this paper is to provide practical how-to information for those looking to develop high-potential employees within their organizations or for their clients.

The paper is based on a combination of recent surveys and studies of what is happening with the development (or lack thereof) of high-potential employees as well as recommendations of key components for high-potential programs based on the author’s direct experience.

Though not a research paper, this work finds that while some organizations have programs in place to develop high potentials, many still do not, despite it being viewed as helpful in recruiting and retaining top talent.

The information provided can be used by both internal practitioners and external consultants to implement high-potential employee development programs for any size of organization.

High-potential employees represent future leaders. Without developing them, organizations run the risk of high attrition costs along with a lack of qualified talent to fill leadership pipelines.

The value of this paper is twofold: it offers detailed information to set the tone with stakeholders when it comes to talking about and developing high-potential talent, and it provides a starting point with first steps for successful program implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to determine key competencies used by organizations in identifying high potential employees. It also seeks to examine practices and programs to manage such employees and finally to identify problems encountered in the development programs.

The respondents of the study were HR practitioners. Convenient sampling was used and the respondents answered survey forms that were sent out using regular mails and e-mails. As a result, 237 forms were generated and used for analyses. In order to test construct validity, factor analyses were performed and mean values of each variable were also used for interpretations.

Employers put highest emphasis on employees who were customer service oriented. Three major competences were identified – results-oriented character, interpersonal competence and technical competence/flexibility. The most common method to identify potential was performance appraisal by immediate superiors. The most common method to develop high potential employees was job enlargement and the most common problem in the development programs was in dealing with those who had personal and work-life balance.

Performance appraisal done by immediate supervisor may not be the best method to gauge future performance and should be coupled with performance review or discussion with the superiors. Job experience is still effective in developing potential. Specific policies that help employees to balance personal and work life are important in development programs.

The responses from the HR practitioners shed some lights on what major competences are important in identifying potential that can be used in talent management.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the theoretical and empirical understanding of the process through which talent management (TM) practice effectiveness impacts high-potential employees’ commitment to leadership competence development.

Structural equation modelling was utilized to analyse survey data representing a sample of 439 high-potential employees from 11 Finnish multinational corporations.

First, the authors found that the more high-potential employees perceived TM practices to be effective, the more they were committed towards leadership competence development. Next, the findings revealed that the association between TM practice effectiveness and commitment to leadership competence development operates by means of psychological contract fulfilment. Finally, the authors found that female employees possessed a stronger reaction to the effectiveness of TM practices by demonstrating higher levels of commitment to leadership competence development than male employees.

This study supports social exchange theory, which postulates that when organizations invest in their employees, the employees are likely to reciprocate these corporate investments in positive ways. The findings indicate that TM practices may help high-potential employees to make sense of their employment relationship and communicate to employees those attitudes and behaviours that organizations value. The authors thus advocate that in order to have the desired effect, such as for instance the increased commitment to leadership competence development, it is crucial for organizations to invest in those TM practices that are perceived as effective by employees.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implicit beliefs both high potentials and HR directors hold about the terms of the exchange relationship between high potential employees and their organizations. The paper positions the study within the framework of the psychological contract, exploring specifically whether strategic ambiguity and information asymmetries in high potential programs create a heightened risk of psychological contract breach.

A total of 20 high potentials and 11 HR directors from nine different organizations were interviewed. Open and axial coding of the qualitative data was performed by three raters.

Information asymmetry in high potential programs, indeed, poses a potential risk for psychological contract breach. Although strategic ambiguity can be an effective communication strategy in that it creates a power imbalance in favor of the organization, at all times a delicate balance must be maintained between leaving room for flexibility and intuitive decision making, and creating perceived promises in high potential employees that are subsequently broken. In fact, through information asymmetry organizations run the risk of achieving the exact opposite of the goals they had for their high potential programs in the first place.

Hardly any research has been done on the psychological effects of identifying a very small proportion of an organization's workforce as high potentials. In addition, research contrasting employee and employer beliefs about psychological contract terms is scarce.

Potential appraisal is the foremost indicator of employee's readiness to take higher responsibilities and used for multiple purposes in promotion, human resource development including training and development needs of employees. This study examines how construal level as psychological difference among employees (holistic–analytic differential in preference of thinking for various action domains among individuals) and meaningfulness of work is related to their readiness for development and responsibility. Combining meaning of work literature and cognitive psychology, the moderated mediation model is formed to examine the psychological process and social boundary conditions in the relationship between construal level and potential appraisal of employees.

Data were collected from 1,494 working executives and their 297 reporting managers across companies operating in an industrial cluster situated in India. The proposed model considered “experienced meaningfulness” as mediator and contextual factors of psychological empowerment and supervisor feedback as moderators.

Using multi-variate analysis and after controlling for industry type and experience, supervisor potential appraisal ratings of employees are found to be statistically related to construal level, and this relationship is found to be partially mediated by “experienced meaningfulness” of work. Further, contextual factors are found to be significant as moderators.

By bringing the subjective interpretation of different aspects of meaning of work from work design literature to examine its role in relationship between aspects of cognitive psychology and potential appraisal of employees, this study bridges the gap between cognitive psychology of development, meaning of work literature and HRD literature. Further implications for academic literature and managers are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between self-perceived employability resources and perceived psychological contract (PC) obligations. To examine the extent to which organizational ratings of potential, through their “signaling” function, might serve as a buffer between employability and PC perceptions that are undesirable from an employer's point of view.

Both self-report data (i.e. self-perceived employability resources and perceived PC obligations) and data reported by the HR departments of the participating organizations (i.e. organizational ratings of potential) were collected in a case-control design (n=103).

Self-perceived employability resources are not related to lower intentions to stay with one's current employer. High-potential employees did not perceive themselves as particularly obliged to reciprocate their organizations’ additional investments in them by expressing longer term loyalty, or a higher performance level.

Organizations should not be hesitant to assist their employees in enhancing their employability resources. In addition, they should engage in deliberate PC building with their high-potential employees so as to align their perceived PC obligations with the organizational agenda.

The relationship between self-perceived employability resources and perceived PC obligations has been underexamined; hardly any PC research has taken organizational variables into account; hardly any research exists on the psychological implications of being identified as a high potential; and the study draws both on self-report data and data reported by the HR departments of the participating organizations.

The implicit assumption since the beginning of the science and practice of human resource management (HRM) has been that if we do HRM well, this will somehow make organizations perform more effectively. The purpose of this paper is to address this “somehow” by investigating the antecedents of work engagement among high potential employees.

The data were collected through a web-based survey from 439 high potential employees of 11 Finnish multinational enterprises. Structural equation modeling was utilized to analyze the data.

In line with the social exchange perspective, the findings demonstrate that it is through the fulfillment of psychological contract and through increased organizational identification that high potential employees become more engaged with their organizations in response to participation in leadership development activities.

Given its cross-sectional nature, the authors cannot completely exclude the possibility of common method bias having impact on the study results. The authors thus call for longitudinal research to examine the nature of causality within the associations analyzed in this study.

This is one of the first empirical studies, which examines the previously underexplored association between leadership development activities and employee attitudes. In addition, this study addresses the lack of research investigating such a specific group of employees as high potential employees, those employees who rank at the top in terms of performance and competencies, and who are considered to be of highest concern for organizations.

A survey study was conducted in seven best practice organizations in the field of talent management. By cross‐checking their existing high potential lists, the authors aimed to examine to which extent assessments of learning agility were able to predict being identified as a high potential or not above and beyond a baseline prediction by job performance. Furthermore, they aimed to investigate whether learning agility increased with career variety.

The study had a case‐control design, comparing supervisor ratings of employees recently identified as high potentials (n=32) with supervisor ratings of a carefully matched control group of non‐high potentials (n=31).

Learning agility (mediated by job content on‐the‐job learning) was found to be a better predictor of being identified as a high potential than job performance. Career variety was found to be positively associated to learning agility.

This study's design did not allow for the demonstration of causal effects. Longitudinal studies are needed to further clarify the causality of these findings and their implications for organizational performance.

Organizations should do well to incorporate measures of learning agility into their high potential identification and development processes. Furthermore, they need to reflect on how HRM practices might enhance their high potentials' career variety and commitment.

The current study responds to urgent calls in the literature for more empirical research on the identification and development of high potentials, as well as on career variety.

The purpose of the present study was to describe the high potential identification practices of Canadian organizations and to assess elements of these practices as they relate to managers' perceptions of organizational justice.

The study reviewed the literature on high potential identification practices and organizational justice to develop a survey for managers attending a leadership conference. Distributive and procedural justice was regressed against the elements of these programs (e.g. the extent of manager input into the program, the openness of communications) to determine the impact of program elements on justice outcomes.

The paper reveals that approximately one‐third (38 percent) of companies reported having a high potential identification program. High potential was most often defined in specific organizational terms based on competencies. Typically, information used to identify these individuals was based on: personal experience with the person, performance appraisals and past performance or results. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses (n=123) indicated that high potential identification programs containing manager input, open communication and formal program evaluation significantly predicted procedural justice. None of the predictions for distributive justice were significant.

This study is the first to empirically investigate the impact of high potential identification practices on managers' perceptions of organizational justice in North America. Manager's justice perceptions reflect an important criterion to evaluate high potential identification programs. The current study found that manager's perceptions of procedural justice were higher when they had more input into the development of the program, when the communication strategy was more open, and the program was evaluated. Despite these important elements, many organizations do not incorporate them into their programs, which have implications for their success.

The purpose of this paper is to identify what attention science pays to CSR communication for the process of career orientation and employer decision-making by the critical sought after top talent.

The review is structured as a systematic literature review of the CSR–HRM intersection. In 11 EBSCO online databases one of several “CSR-terms” was combined with one of several “HRM-terms”.

Although CSR has long been recognized as a relevant factor for organizational attractiveness (Greening and Turban, 2000) and talent attraction and its importance is reflected in the ongoing “war for talent” (Chambers et al., 1998) in which (prospective) leaders are considered a critical human resource for corporate success (Ansoff, 1965), few contributions are focusing on successfully recruited future leaders/high potentials.

There is a knowledge gap about the importance of CSR in high potential recruiting, which influences both resource-strong decisions on the company side and the communication behavior of applicants. Companies only know about a general CSR relevance for employees and applicants. Accordingly, no attention-optimized CSR communication can take place. In the highly competitive battle for the attention of high potentials, this leads to undifferentiated communication formats. At the same time, high potentials may not receive the CSR information of interest to them from an employer at the relevant time and therefore cannot present an optimal fit in the cover letters and thus cannot prove themselves as ideal candidates.

CSR is not only an obligatory field of communication for companies, but also a special opportunity in recruiting the young value-oriented generations Y and Z. The research on CSR communication in the course of their career decision has not been covered in a review so far, the research situation is thus explicitly addressed for the first time and practical implications for the post COVID-19 employer brand and recruiting communication are addressed.