Owning a home is traditionally the number one way the average person creates wealth in America. Successful leaders put their employees first because they understand that people are their most important asset. Working from inside out, spring cleaning is the best way to preserve the value of both home and business.
The concept of spring cleaning goes back thousands of years, symbolizing things like good luck, fresh starts, prosperity, and vibrant growth, which are equally beneficial to homes, gardens, and workplaces. When you apply the concept to your company, you create a thriving community based on a long history of progress and positivity. The cornerstone is evaluating your talent strategies with intention and purpose.
No need to get out the brooms and mops for a talent review. When it comes to talent, spring cleaning provides insight into critical questions like: Do the people I have so carefully selected still have the right skills to meet today’s needs and tomorrow’s goals? Are they able to reach their full potential in the current roles? Are they fully engaged in their work? Are they happy? Will they stay?
A talent review enables you to dig deep so you can see where you need to release or upgrade and find hidden gems who, with a little polish, can contribute in new ways.
A talent review is a structured, forward-looking process to assess and evaluate the skills, potential, and performance of employees. The process involves an examination of individual employee’s strengths, weaknesses, and future potential in the company, and it includes a strategic evaluation of your current talent pipeline and future talent needs.
Based on factors like leadership qualities, adaptability, past performance, and career progression readiness, talent reviews identify high-potential employees, top performers, and possible successors for critical roles. They also help ensure people are aligned with their role expectations as well as your company’s changing business needs and growth objectives.
These deep evaluations form the foundation for productivity and sustainability. They foster better decision making, adaptability, innovation, and employee development. They enhance employee performance, engagement, and retention. The information they provide pinpoints potential risks and opportunities and helps leaders plan for evolving market challenges and develop competitive strategies.
People risk equates to business risk. It’s that simple, and it’s the fundamental reason every organization needs an annual spring cleaning.
Skills gaps and competition for talent continue to be major challenges and organizational performance is suffering as a result. Gartner estimates that when talent is not consistently ready to meet changing business needs, overall employee performance decreases by 26 points. Ensuring you have people with the right skills and capabilities in the right roles is essential.
Additionally, 2025 World Economic Forum statistics predict that 39 percent of employees’ skills are likely to be outdated in the next five years. By focusing on continuous learning, upskilling, and reskilling, you can improve your company’s workplace agility and ability to anticipate and manage future skill requirements.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, spring cleaning your home benefits your brain and body along with your space by:
· Giving you a sense of accomplishment from seeing and feeling tangible results
· Restoring a sense of control and peacefulness when you’re stressed or overwhelmed
· Improving your focus
· Reducing potential hazards as things around you are organized
· Getting you up and moving around
· Elevating your mood
Your newly uncluttered and organized home makes the renewal and rebirth of spring a reality. A spring talent review can do the same for your workplace culture.
When employees are in the wrong roles, don’t see an opportunity for professional development, or don’t believe they are valued or cared about, they will ultimately feel unsuccessful. Recruitment and retention problems will surely follow. A talent review enables you to understand the people you currently have and how aligned they are with your company values and culture. It enables you to measure whether employees are meeting role expectations and assess their fit in potential future positions.
The spring-cleaning process gets HR and management out of their offices listening and talking, helping ensure people are in the right roles and feel they matter. It lifts morale and engagement along with it, creating a happier workplace
The first step in spring cleaning your home is to quit procrastinating! The same holds true for your talent review. Make a plan.
· Define goals, which are primarily to identify and nurture high-potential talent for development and strategic placement, address skills gaps, and ensure you have the right people in the right roles.
· Prioritize the skills needed for today’s performance as the #1 risk and on future skills as the #2 risk. (Gartner researchh finds that focusing on today’s skills has a five times greater impact on sustained performance than the skills of tomorrow.)
· Make adequate time for managers and leaders to collaboratively discuss individual employee’s contributions, career aspirations, development needs, and preferences as they make decisions about assignments, promotions, and succession.
· Consider both company priorities and employee wellbeing when making decisions about employee mobility to avoid retention issues.
· Keep in mind that technical skills are the easiest to acquire; judgment, wisdom, and experience often create more value.
HR guru Josh Bersin puts it well, “Get your act together with AI.” For decades, companies have taken a wait-and-see approach to our rapidly changing technologies. What used to be a safe strategy has become a risk. There are many tools to integrate in your talent evaluation process. I recommend the following two as examples:
Assessments. A variety of assessments have long been used in hiring. They are critical tools in evaluating employee job and culture fit, performance, and potential in talent reviews. Personality, behavioral, cognitive ability, integrity, emotional intelligence, technical, and communication skills assessments inform your understanding and decision making. Two that I highly recommend are the 9-block grid and Prevue.
· The 9-block grid. Based on a grid divided into nine boxes, this assessment evaluates an employee’s future with your organization based on two axes, past performance and future potential. It provides a framework for discussions on recognizing high performers, supporting those who need improvement, and identifying under performers. It is especially helpful in succession planning.
· Prevue. This validated, predictive assessment benchmarks specific positions across industries and geographies. It can be customized to compare employees already in a specific position in your company with candidates you are considering for that role. Prevue enables you to clearly see the value individual traits add to success in a specific position and find the best match for the role, whether a new hire or current employee.
The often-dreaded task of spring cleaning brings clarity about what you have and no longer have or need. When it comes to your company, a talent review may help you find hidden skills in people you hadn’t noticed. You may discover future leaders who can take you to the next level of success. Or you may find you are losing the potential value of good people who aren’t thriving in their current role.
Whatever is going on beneath the surface, you need to understand it deeply before you can act strategically in today’s complex environment. A year can be a long time, don’t let dust gather between your talent reviews. Do them quarterly for optimum success.