The quest for top talent remains a critical mission for any organization. Top-performing employees are essential driving forces behind an organization’s success. But what makes an employee truly exceptional, and how can managers and HR professionals ensure they’re identifying and nurturing these key individuals?
Understanding the Top Performer Profile
TalentClick has become a trusted resource for many organizations striving to understand the psychology of their workforce. By using comprehensive benchmarking and fit scores, TalentClick tools can highlight what an ideal candidate looks like for various positions. But what constitutes a top performer?
Top performers are unique to each organization and role. Different traits and skills are required based on the competencies of each job, but among top performers, some attributes are shared and will be considered most important for success in the role.
5 things to look for when determining your top performers:
- Job Proficiency: Their good job performance is sustained over time.
- Team and Culture Fit: Beyond skill, they match the values and work well with teams within the organization.
- Tenure: They perform well, stay in the role for more significant periods and plan to grow within the organization.
- Counter-productive behaviors: They have low incidents of errors, safety infractions, and management concerns.
- Attendance/Absenteeism: Their attendance is reliable and they are engaged with low absenteeism. They show strong resilience which helps them manage stress and burnout.
**Bottom Line: Ask yourself…
”Would I hire 10 more of this kind of employee if I could?” That is your Top Performer.
TalentClick’s Approach to Identifying Top Performers
TalentClick provides tools like benchmarks and fit scores designed to easily compare an individual applicant or employee to the ideal personality profile for a given role. These benchmarks are not arbitrary. They’re cultivated from data on job-specific competencies, encapsulating the traits and behaviors most correlated with high performance and job satisfaction.
Using reliable data, TalentClick helps HR professionals and managers understand the job fit more deeply. This means looking beyond resumes and interviews to an individual’s intrinsic motivation, attitude, and personality traits.
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“Since we started to do things ‘the right way the first time,’ we have avoided hiring mistakes and the productivity of the teams has improved beyond our expectations… Poor quality in our assessment and selection process had cost us in excess of $500,000 over 2 years. In contrast, we now use [TalentClick] tools from the time we start planning to hire new people.” – President, Manufacturing |
Case Study: The Insurance Success Story
A case story of a Houston Texas-based insurance company highlights the utility of identifying top performers. The firm utilized TalentClick’s solutions to reduce turnover and improve hiring practices. By understanding the profiles of their current high achievers, they were able to establish benchmarks for new hires which led to more accurate and predictive hiring.
Results of hiring to an “ideal profile” from the case study:
- 20% decrease in employee turnover
- 14% improvement in customer satisfaction scores
- 8% increase in renewals
- 5% increase in sales
Creating Job Benchmarks
TalentClick has four methods of creating job benchmarks: Employee Metric Analysis, ‘Top Performer’ Cluster Analysis, Job Analysis Survey, and Industry Standard Benchmark Library. For full details on what methods are the best for your organization, see this infographic.
When creating custom job benchmarks from your top performer data, TalentClick follows the following steps:
- Data Collection: Analyze performance data and collect feedback on current top performers.
- Assessment Deployment: Use tools like TalentClick to conduct personality, risk, and skills assessments of top performers.
- Data Analysis: Understand which traits correlate with success in your company’s specific roles.
- Benchmark Establishment: Define the ideal fit for the role based on the analyzed data.
- Refinement: Adjust benchmarks as roles evolve and new performance data comes in.
When you understand what top performance looks like in your organization, you can tailor your hiring practice to search for candidates with similar profiles. This approach not only sets up new employees for success but can also predict long-term job satisfaction and retention.
To build a workforce of top performers and teams, organizations must venture beyond the surface level in their recruitment and assessment practices. Understanding the deep-seated attributes that drive exceptional work is crucial. HR professionals and those involved in talent acquisition can benefit greatly from using TalentClick’s user-friendly tools to easily compare a person’s traits to those of a top performer profile, and to quickly spot both strengths and potential concerns.
Remember, saving time in identifying what makes your best employees excel will pay dividends in hiring and nurturing more top performers. Sign up for a 7 Day Trial now, and get started assessing your workforce.
