Employee Experience and High-Performance Culture
Research: Work Psychology Series: Assessing Potential
The purpose of this Work Psychology Series is to provide an outline of work psychology theory and evidence relevant to various areas of HR activity and consider implications for HR practice.
This Work Psychology Series consists of:
- Motivation and Work Performance, research available here,
- Assessing Potential.
- Behaviour Change.
These reports contribute directly to the effectiveness of the HR function and HR professionals by providing a more detailed, elaborate and nuanced understanding of both the nature of the workplace behavioural phenomena HR is trying to shape and which practices or approaches are most likely to help do this.
As discussed in several of our previous reports – including Evidence-Based HR: A New Paradigm and Driving Organisational Performance: HR’s Critical Role – the HR function’s effectiveness depends on being able as accurately as possible to identify HR-relevant business issues and actions that will help resolve those issues.
The insights provided by work psychology research help us do both these things, taking us beyond the usually unhelpful notion of ‘best practice’ and instead to practices relevant to our business context and the specific issues our business faces.
Assessing potential sounds simple and appealing. If it can be done accurately, it means we can identify future leaders who understand the business and will be able to take on and flourish in senior roles when required.
However, like many other seemingly simple ideas, it’s a little more complicated.
There are uncertainties around how we define potential, fundamental questions such as ‘potential for what?’ and challenges in finding methods for assessing potential that accurately predict the outcomes we want.
This report starts with examining various definitions of potential and then answers some fundamental questions drawing on work psychology theory and evidence. Throughout the report we consider the implications of these findings for HR practice and address some common practitioner concerns around addressing potential.
This paper is authored by Prof Rob Briner, CRF Associate Research Director and sponsored by APS.
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