A lot is written & freely available on Talent Management on the web. This presentation however is a very personal & deeper insight into the Subject of Talent Management as well as Assessment & Development Centers & finally Career Planning. I have tried to offer greater clarity in terms of what all these steps mean & I hope this clarifies doubts & queries people usually have on this subject.

1. Benchmarked Process –
Talent Management :
Assessment Centers
&
Development Centers
Ashutosh Labroo - Director Human Capital, ISS (Official: ashutosh.labroo@in.issworld.com | Personal: alabroo@live.in)

2. Capacity (Competency + Hidden or Visible Potential) Assessments – External
Mentoring – Frequent mentoring by the Country & Group Management – Internal
Focused Development Process - Internal & External
Job Rotation/ Cross Functional/ Development Projects – Internal & External
Career Planning for Future Growth – A New Career offered
A World Class TALENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM must
focus on the following :-

3. How to do it? IDENTIFICATION STAGE
High Performers – I would recommend following the PMS Process (MBO Methodology) & or
recommendations of people from Top Management. I usually rank people through a Fair Bell Curve &
follow a Paired Comparison & Forced Differentiation method to decide our Top Performers (A & B);
Middle Performers (C ) & Bottom Performers (D & E).
Normally, A or B Rated Performers (PMS Process) for two years is a very good consideration for a
Talent Management Program. This data is usually there for all businesses. People enrolled in this
program must undergo evaluation stages to further qualify/ disqualify for the development & career
planning stages in the program.
 EVALAUTION & MEASUREMENT STAGE – Assessment Center
Assessment Centers – Capacity (Competency + Hidden or Visible Potential) Assessment of HIGH
PERFORMERS (This is also the stage of elimination of those who would be found either not fit for
DEVELOPMENT or else who would fail to meet the stringent criteria for being considered for
LEADERSHIP/ MANAGERIAL Roles. Those who are disqualified, receive documented reasons with a
report on the same.
 DEVELOPMENT STAGE – Development Center
Development Centers – At this stage we run a focused series of LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT
DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES for the ones selected out of SECOND STAGE.
 CAREER PLANNING STAGE
CAREER REPORTS & CAREER SHIFT – Each participant is given a CAREER REPORT & a CAREER PLAN
Report & alongside a new role, a new designation, a new challenge overall.

4. Important Pointers
• Get the program stakeholders on board first. Talent Management is a huge investment in terms of
a) time, b) money & c) efforts. Do not attempt it if you lack in even one of these aspects.
• Give the Program a Wide Publicity to ensure support, trust & commitment from Top.
• Purpose of any Business is to generate revenues but in order to be profitable, the employees must be
productive. Research proves, what our top class people produce is up to almost 12 times of what an
average employee produces.
• The Top Class Performers with High Potential always strive to achieve superior performances & exhibit
behaviors & traits which reflect their companies in an exemplary manner to the inside & outside world.
• A strong Talent Management Program will focus on a structured & robust but a long term plan.
• A Good Talent Management Framework will also focus to turn your High Performers into an Aware
High Capacity Individual & subsequently create Career Paths for them.
• Imagine the Un-Imagined. Capacity of an individual can be deeper than his/ her qualifications & past
experiences.
• Look forward to seeing a Finance Manager working in HR. An HR guy doing P&L Analysis as the Finance
Head. Look forward to see a High Performance & High Potential Sales Guy into hard core Operations
Role. So on & So Forth.

5. ….continues
• Talent always means – High Performers with a High Potential. Companies always make a
mistake of finding high performers (without assessing the capacity) & promoting them for
senior level roles.
• The cost of continuous search for Leadership & Management Talent from outside & then the
further investments of making them fit in or making the culture to accept them as well is a
prohibitive cost at times. In a company owning a good solid Talent Management
Program, almost 70% of their Management & Leadership Hiring & CXO Searches can end
with internal candidates.
• However, don’t mistake Talent Management as a Promotion Policy & a Reward for Loyalty&
Assured Retention. Don’t end up promoting people after having spent 3-5 years in the same
role if their capacity to do a higher level role is not ascertained or not yet established.
• The cost of internal promotions in the name of loyalty to a company has been a legacy
case of Billion Dollar Mistakes in best of the organizations.
• While Performance Management is always about Performance Assessment, Talent
Management is always about Capacity Assessment.
• Talent Management process helps you know whether your High Performers are also
possessing High Capacity (Competency + Hidden or Visible Potential) & if the answer is
‘yes’ – What to do with them?

6. Work Flow – Six Sigma Approach
• Step 1 – Define Process/ Framework & Identify the pool of possible
High Capacity (Competency + Hidden or Visible Potential)
Individuals
• Step 2 – Measure Capacity of Talent
• Step 3 – Analyze Capacity (Feed Forward) (Decide whom to
develop & whom to measure again next year or at a later time)
• Step 4 – Identify Development Plan (Improvement & Growth Plan)
• Step 5 – Review Development (Control Process)
DMAIC – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control
There is a final step after this & that is the Career
Path Decision. That is an exercise of Wisdom,
Foresight & Connecting the vision to action.

7. Step 2 & 3 – Assessment Centers
Various methods to assess capacity at our end are:
• Psychometric Tests
• Competency Based Interviews, In Basket Exercise, Group
Discussions, Business Case Presentations
• Business games, Role plays, Simulation exercises, Case Study
• Critical Incident Interview, Behavioral Event Interview
– Combination of above methods is called as Assessment
Centre (AC)
– AC is a structured methodology to identify/validate
strengths, areas of improvements of an individual

8. Step 4 & 5 - Development Centers
• I treat Development Centre & Assessment Centre separately. For me
Career Plans are an output of a good Development Centre Process.
• I run this process post a successful AC Process.
• My approach is to feed forward the feedbacks & comments/ inputs
received in the AC Report to the assessed individual in a confidential
private setting.
• This is a closed door four to five hours interactive dialogue where one
can use Coaching Methods such as Iceberg Coaching etc.
• It helps to finally consolidate & decide if the individual I am talking to
really worth investing in for a future role with a much larger stake & a
larger impact & perhaps also a larger risk.
• This exercise ensures no backfire of decisions & no wrong decisions.
• The exercise ends with a timeline driven development plan post
which the individual can move into a new career. (Career Planning)

9. Any Questions or if you want to
know more?
Ashutosh Labroo - Director Human Capital, ISS (Official: ashutosh.labroo@in.issworld.com | Personal: alabroo@live.in)
– Happy to help……………
– Do Reach Out To Me…………………….