How to Turn Average Team Members into High Potential Employees

The Harvard Business Review recently released an article outlining how to identify high-potential employees.
Helping Employees Perform Well Is Crucial To Business Success

The Impact of High Performers

By understanding the Pareto principle, a theory that states that in many situations 80% of results will come from 20% of sources, organizations can better understand their employee output. This means that, in any organization,

• the top 1% of employees produce 10% of organizational output
• the top 5% of employees produce 25%, of organizational output
• the top 20% of employees produce 80% of organizational output

High potential employees also have the potential to boost the performance of their team members, raising total organizational output by significant amounts. This means that companies will perform better all around if they invest early in top talent.

How To Identify High-Performing Employees

The Harvard Business Review suggests keeping an eye out for individuals with these three qualities:

• Ability– these people are capable of completing the key tasks of their position
• Social Skills– these people have strong emotional intelligence and know how to work well with the people around them
• Drive– these people have a strong innate work ethic and ambition

Ability and Social Skills are considered “talent,” but Drive is the factor that combines with talent to make sure that the talent actually gets put to use. As the HBR says,
POTENTIAL = TALENT + DRIVE

How to Train Employees to Be High Performers

So how do you make sure that all employees are able to best demonstrate their ability, social skills, and drive? You will naturally have some employees who perform better than others, but there are a few simple ways to improve work performance. It is easy to make sure that everyone is performing at their highest potential by providing them with the systems to succeed and making sure that they know their good performance is rewarded.
The simplest way to promote success is by making it easy for employees to show their ability. Using a system like CommandHound, a leading accountability software, lets individuals to track their job’s essential tasks, allowing them to devote more time and attention to new projects. By carefully monitoring their job’s basic functions, employees will be able to demonstrate their ability to do their job while also freeing themselves up for more ambitious goals.
CommandHound also makes it easy for managers to track performance, using easy-to-read metrics to analyze when employees are completing their tasks and how many projects they are taking on. This means that everyone knows that they are accountable for their work. It also means that performance reviews are based on real data, which gives employees the security of knowing that their hard work and drive will be concretely rewarded.

CommandHound Helps Employees Perform Better

By making it easier to accomplish essential job functions and guaranteeing that hard work will be tracked and appreciated, CommandHound enables companies to track and support high-performing individuals. With CommandHound, more employees will be able to demonstrate their talent and drive, and high performing employees will know that their work is appreciated.
These changes lead to better overall company performance, as well as a sense that investing in top talent is a company priority. When people are happy, companies perform better. Use CommandHound to help your people and company thrive together.